The beginning of the New Kingdom
The 18th Dynasty

• Tight central control
• Amen is the chief god of the realm. The power of his priests grows.
• Cultural sophistication. development of naturalistic and expressive art.
• Biological knowledge: the development of the scarabs from eggs, flies from maggots, frogs from tadpoles.
• The shadouf comes into use.

• Thutmose I separates his tomb from the temple, the first rock tomb in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor.

• Revolts in Nubia are suppressed, the town of Napata grows.
• The Tale of the Doomed Prince with a talking crocodile playing the role of the prince's fate.
• Books of the Dead, papyri containing miniature paintings, incantations and religious thoughts.
• Medicine is taught in the temple schools of Memphis and Thebes as part of the religious mysterium
• Human and animal excrements and urine are used as medicines.
• Frock-coat with short sleeves, shoulder collar and "sphinx-cap".
• Carved wooden spoons (the handle often has the form of a nude servant girl.)
• Vertical looms

• No more pyramids are being built. The rock tombs are guarded against grave robbers and the mummies occasionally moved to different sites

• Hatshepsut, halfsister and wife of Thutmose II orders government with the help of her favourite Senmut.
• Expedition to Punt (Somalia)
• Glass vessels are being produced
• Search for gold, silver and copper in Nubia (possibly even in eastern South Africa).
• Ships are up to 50 metres long, thin, have cabins at the bow and stern, sails, up to 30 rowers.
• Mortuary temple in honour of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir-el-Bahari
  Coloured relief depicting her birth, foreign envoys, people bearing gifts, landfall at Punt
  A statue of the Queen sitting
  The queen as sphinx
• Bronze saws
• Mercury is known
• Importation of foreign goods
• Myrrh saplings brought to Egypt from the Horn of Africa.

• Thutmose III orders the destruction of reliefs and inscriptions of Hatshepsut as king
• Relief showing Egyptian victories over Asiatic enemies in the Amen temple at Karnak.

• Egyptian empire includes Palestine and Syria. A revolt of Syrian noblemen is suppressed and seven of their bodies are publicly displayed at Thebes and Napata.
• Two obelisks are erected at Heliopolis by Thutmose II (since 1879 in London and New York)
• Temple of Amen at Karnak with reliefs and statues of Thutmose III and Hatshepsut
• Marble statue of Thutmose III kneeling offering sacrifices, the king wears simple old-Egyptian clothing: a pleated loin cloth and regal headdress
• Glass vases with coloured thread inlays.
• Wall picture showing forced labour of prisoners of war
• The manufacture of ropes depicted
• Bellows replace blow pipes
• Smelting of metal with bellows, casting of major artefacts
• Obelisks serve as sun clocks and calendars.
• Thutmose owns a portable sun clock.
• Light, horsedrawn chariots for racing and fighting
• Cleaning up the canal of Sesostris III

• The great Sphinx of Gizeh is dug out of the sand.

• Peaceful, extensive trade and correspondence with the Near East
• Culture flourishes
• Abandoning of the art traditions of the Middle Kingdom: a looser style, preference for softer, more pleasant forms, asiatic influences

• Tiye, wife of Amenhotep III and mother of Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) is of non-royal origin. The revolutionary attitude of her son may have been caused by her influence.
• Immigration of semitic nomads into Egypt.
• Temple at Luxor with columns in the form of bundles of papyrus reeds.
• Tomb of Khaemhet: Reliefs depicting people wearing court dress, jewellery and hairdressing
• Tomb of Nakht at Thebes: Wall painting depicting dancing and harp playing women, agricultural scenes (ploughing, hoeing, sowing, tree felling)
• Scrolls made of papyrus
• The Brugsch Papyrus : Medicine, theory of respiration
• Domestic chickens as a curiosity
• Courtiers wear wigs
• Two wheeled wooden chariot for battle and hunting, covered with leather.

• Tomb of Ramose: courtly sophistication, softening of the severe old-Egyptian forms

• Founds a new residence at Amarna
• His revolutionary measures cause resistance of the army and the priesthood
• Hymns of Akhenaten praising the Sungod Aten (Aton, Atum)
• Suppression of all cults (especially the worship of Amen) but Aten's
• Building of new Aten temples in the whole empire
• Head of Tiye made of yew
• Plaster masks made by the sculptor Thutmose at Amarna, realistic style

• The Amarna Period is a time of naturalistic depiction, strong resistance against the new formalism.
• Coloured wall paintings in the tombs at Thebes.

• Sculptor's tomb with pictures of the artisan's activities

• Close contact of the pharaohs with foreign powers through marriage, exchange of presents, trade. Lively contact with the Near East and the Aegean by land and sea
• Archive of clay tablets at Amarna: royal correspondence with foreign rulers and vassals (Babylonia, Assyria, Mitanni, Palestine, Syria, Cyprus, Hatti, Crete). Decreasing Egyptian influence in Asia
• Sculptors use more auxiliary lines and outlines
• Limestone sculpture of Akhenaten kissing his daughter
• Relief of Akhenaten and Nefertiti playing with their children protected by the rays of the sun god Aten
• Stone busts of princesses (some showing traces of caricature)
• Egyptian music retains a toneladder of five tones (the Syrian tone system containing half and full tones is not adopted). Music is intimately connected with religious and ethical mysticism. Instruments: Harp, oboe, percussion instruments.

• Painted limestone bust of Queen Nefertiti
• Painted negative relief of Nefertiti
• Phoenician wares found in Egypt (e.g. wooden models for gold jewellery)

• Memorial stone of a Syrian mercenary: the soldier with his Egyptian wife and son, sucks beer from a jar through a pipe.

• Pressured by the Amen priests he returns to Thebes and restores the worship of Amen

• Horemheb stops the advance of the Hittites in Syria
• The orthodox cult of the state god Amen is restored
• The art style of Amarna is continued, but in a less radical form
• Chair showing the king and queen on its back
• Chest with inlaid pictures: a hunt conducted from a two-wheeled chariot, battles against negroes
• Gilded wooden statuette of the king
• Shrine covered with gold sheet reliefs: The king and queen hunting wild ducks
• It has been proposed that Tutankhamen was murdered, but there is no evidence for this.

• From a papyrus (at Leiden): All gods are three, Amen, Re and Ptah, and there is none equal to them. "Hidden" is his name as Amen, his face is Re's and his body Ptah.
• Relief from the king's tomb shows Canaanite prisoners in double rows
• Restauration of the Egyptian art parallel to the reintroduction of the cult of Amen: softer style similar to the pre-Amarna style, but with a stronger emphasis on the corporeal and spacial.
• Wooden statuettes of officers
• Relief in a Memphis tomb: Celebration of the dead with psychological-individualistic depiction of the figures.
• Gilded bronze mirror with a handle in the form of a nude woman.
• The Great Edict of Horemheb attempts to restore law and order.

• Memphis replaces Thebes as capital
• Statue of Horemheb
• Painted reliefs in the tomb of Horemheb, in the severe pre-Amarna style: Horses from Asia are brought to Tutankhamen.