For a second time, it was a prince from Thebes in the south who united the country under a new dynasty, the 18th, expelled the Hyksos, and ushered in a period in which Egypt in its turn was to become involved in the great political events that occurred in the Near
East. Now the period of the New Kingdom began, which would last from around 1550 BC to around 1100 BC, the period of the 18th to 20th dynasties that in many respects was the pinnacle of ancient Egyptian history. Time and again, Egyptian armies marched into Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria in order to take possession of the coastlands for the pharaoh, especially the Lebanon with its cedar forests, Egypt itself being very poor in wood. Despite considerable successes and masses of booty and captives being brought back to Egypt, the kings of the New Kingdom never completely succeeded in subjugating both Palestine and Syria. They met with too much resistance, especially from the Hittites, who had since about 1600 BC developed into one of the strongest military powers of the Near East. From their core region in Anatolia, they extended their dominion over large parts of northern Mesopotamia and Syria. After a few large battles around 1300 BC, Egyptians and Hittites agreed to delineate their respective spheres of influence, which henceforth bordered each other in the south of Syria. Thus, for some time there was a precarious balance of power during this last phase of the Bronze Age in the Near East between Babylonia, Assyria (which had in the meantime conquered the kingdom of Mitanni), Egypt, and the kingdom of the Hittites. These states maintained standing squadrons of chariots and a relatively costly and professional military class. Bronze and horses, next to rare sorts of wood and timber for building as well as for chariot making, were the most coveted articles that every kingdom strove to acquire either by exchange, as plunder, or as gifts. Not least because of these articles, the kingdoms maintained a network of diplomatic relations among themselves, sometimes strengthened by royal weddings with foreign princesses. At the same time, these Late Bronze Age kingdoms were vulnerable: if the central leadership from the royal palace failed, and if relations with the other kingdoms were for a long time interrupted, the whole edifice of state could come down. Such a catastrophe, brought about by migrating groups across the eastern half of the Mediterranean, indeed occurred at various places around 1200 BC. About that time, the great Hittite kingdom disappeared, while in Egypt, which had managed to ward off invaders from Libya, from Palestine, and from the sea to its north, a new period of decay set in after the glories of the New Kingdom. Thus, the world of the Bronze Age in these regions came to an end in the final decades of the 2nd millennium BC.
World History
