History of The Egyptian Empire

Old Kingdom
The Old Kingdom is the name commonly given to that period in the 3rd millennium BC when Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization complexity and achievement - this was the first of three so-called "Kingdom" periods, which mark the high points of civilization in the Nile Valley (the others being Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom). The Old Kingdom is most commonly regarded as spanning the period of time when Egypt was ruled by the Third Dynasty through to the Sixth Dynasty (2630–2151 BC). Many Egyptologists also include the Memphite Seventh and Eighth Dynasties in the Old Kingdom as a continuation of the administration centralized at Memphis. The Old Kingdom was followed by a period of disunity and relative cultural decline referred to by Egyptologists as the First Intermediate Period.

Middle Kingdom
The Middle Kingdom is a period in the history of ancient Egypt stretching from the establishment of the Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Fourteenth Dynasty, roughly between 1991 BC and 1648 BC.

The Middle Kingdom has been usually dated to the time when Pharaoh Mentuhotep II from Thebes defeated the last king of the Tenth Dynasty around the 14th Year of his reign to reunite Egypt thus bringing an end to the First Intermediate Period. Some authorities point to cultural differences between the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties, and date the Middle Kingdom to the beginning of that dynasty.

New Kingdom
The New Kingdom is the period in Egyptian history between the 16th century BCE and the 11th century BCE, covering the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties of Egypt. It followed the Middle Kingdom, and was succeeded by the Third Intermediate Period.

The New Kingdom saw Egypt attain its greatest territorial extent. It expanded far south into Nubia and held wide territories in the Near East. Egyptian armies fought Hittite armies for control of modern-day Syria.

One of the best-known New Kingdom pharaohs was Amenhotep IV, who changed his name to Akhenaten in honor of the Aten and whose exclusive worship of the Aten is often interpreted as history's first instance of monotheism (and was argued in Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism to have been the ultimate origin of Jewish monotheism). Akhenaten's religious fervor is cited as the reason why he was subsequently written out of Egyptian history. Under his reign, in the 14th century BCE, Egyptian art flourished and attained an unprecedented level of realism.

Notable Discoveries

Egyptian hieroglyph
Hieroglyphs are a system of writing used by the Ancient Egyptians, using a combination of logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic elements.

For many years, the earliest known hieroglyphic inscription was the Narmer Palette, found during excavations at Hierakonpolis (modern Kawm al-Ahmar) in the 1890s, which has been dated to c.3200 BC. However, in 1998 a German archeological team under Gunter Dreyer excavating at Abydos (modern Umm el-Qa'ab) uncovered tomb U-j which belonged to a Predynastic ruler, and recovered three hundred clay labels inscribed with proto-hieroglyphics, dating to the Naqada IIIA period, circa 33rd century BC The first full sentence written in hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal impression found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qa'ab in Abydos, which dates from the Second Dynasty.

Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is a dark granite stone (often incorrectly identified as basalt) with writing on it in two languages, Egyptian and Greek, using three scripts, Hieroglyphic, Demotic Egyptian and Greek. Because Greek was well known, the stone was the key to deciphering the hieroglyphs.

Ptolemy assumed the crown at the tender age of 5 after a rather turbulent time in Egyptian history.