The New Kingdom of Egypt

The New Kingdom of Egypt, roughly 1550 to 1070 BCE and spanning the Eighteenth through Twentieth Dynasties, was ancient Egypt's imperial age, the period of its greatest territorial extent, wealth and international power, following the expulsion of the Hyksos and reunification under Ahmose I. Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs including Hatshepsut, one of the few women to rule Egypt as pharaoh in her own right, Thutmose III, whose military campaigns extended Egyptian control deep into the Levant, and the religious reformer Akhenaten, who briefly imposed worship of the sun disc Aten and moved the capital to Amarna, gave the period much of its dynamism, while Akhenaten's young successor Tutankhamun is now the best known of all Egyptian pharaohs owing to the near-total survival of his tomb's treasures, discovered intact in 1922. The Nineteenth Dynasty pharaoh Ramesses II, who reigned an extraordinary 66 years and fought the Hittite Empire to a stalemate at the Battle of Kadesh around 1274 BCE, built more monumental architecture, including Abu Simbel, than any other pharaoh. The New Kingdom declined amid invasions by the mysterious Sea Peoples and internal weakness, ending around 1070 BCE as Egypt again fragmented into the Third Intermediate Period.