decline
But what led up to this event, and the series of other potential 'ends' that we have already referred to? The seeds actually lay around one-and-a-half millennia earlier, when Egypt was apparently at the height of its powers in the reign of Ramesses II during what is known as the 19th Dynasty of Egyptian history. Ramesses' great foes were the Hittites of what is now modern Turkey, a key battle with whom, at Qadesh, was frequently displayed on the great pharaoh's temples.
One of the differences between their armies was that while the
Egyptians were armed with weapons of bronze, the Hittites had access to a new
material - iron. Although they had ample reserves of copper within their boundaries, the Egyptians lacked sources of the far more
effective metal. While this was by no means a decisive issue, this falling
behind in military technology was certainly a contributory factor in the coming
decline.
There were also cracks appearing in the unity of the Egyptian state, and its
cohesion was threatened by a short-lived secession of the southern part of the
country under the rebel king Amenmesse around 1200 BC, by the murder of Ramesses
III in 1153 BC, and by civil war in the far south around 1080 to 1070 BC.
Economic crises, raids by foreign bandits, and an orgy of tomb-robbing, during
which many of the graves of the ancient pharaohs were looted, accompanied these
events.
The net result was that for the century from 1070 BC onwards, under the 21st
Dynasty, Egypt was split in two, the north ruled by the pharaoh, based in the
new city of Tanis in the north-east of the country, and the south by the High
Priest of Amun at Thebes (modern Luxor). The High Priests nominally owed
allegiance to the king, but in practice they comprised an independent line of
hereditary rulers, whose status was not solely religious, as they also held the
title of Army Leader, making their regime probably more of a military
dictatorship than a Taliban-style theocracy.
Wars
A short-lived national revival began with the accession of Shoshenq I around 945
BC as founder of the 22nd Dynasty.
Although of foreign - Libyan - origins, he brought the south back under
central control by the expedient of supplanting the old High Priestly family
with his own son, and pursued an aggressive foreign policy, including military
campaigns in Palestine, during one of which Jerusalem was sacked.
However, within a century, the country had split again, with Thebes now ruled
not by High Priests, but by its very own line of pharaohs, the 23rd Dynasty,
running in parallel with the Tanite (based in Tanis) northern king.
The Theban kings soon found themselves embroiled in a long-running civil
war, while in the north a number of semi-independent principalities grew up, all
together sapping the strength of the country as a whole. This decline coincided
with the rise of a power to the south of Egypt in Nubia - spanning the borders
of the modern states of Egypt and Sudan. Long a colony of Egypt, Nubia now had
rulers (the 25th Dynasty) who regarded themselves as ideologically the heirs of
the ancient culture of Egypt, and as such they became overlords first of Thebes,
and then took over the whole of Egypt, becoming pharaohs of a united kingdom of
Egypt and Nubia around 720 BC.