PERIOD GUIDE · Egypt
According to the Met's timeline, the Theban king Mentuhotep II reunited Upper and Lower Egypt and ushered in the Middle Kingdom, about 2030-1640 BCE. Three objects from tombs are placed in it on this site.
Approximately 2030-1640 BCEMove through the periods
The whole scheme with this period marked; the periods before and after are its neighbours in the row. Boundaries follow the sources and are not to scale.
Trails · Museums
Trails that pass through an object of this period, and the museums that display its objects according to the records. Every chain is documented and labelled as such.
Trails through the period
Reading trail
A self-contained story, with no link to the Levant: a culture with its own chronology, an amulet from a tomb, a figurine from a tomb, and a question about what a museum shows and what it does not. Four steps.
Passes through Scarab amulet from Lisht.
Where objects of the period are on view
Display status is what the public record said on the day it was checked; confirm on the museum's site before visiting.
Both of the Met's timeline pages for Egypt, for 8000-2000 and 2000-1000 BCE, date the Middle Kingdom about 2030-1640 BCE, from mid-Dynasty 11 to Dynasty 13. According to the source, the Theban king Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II reunited Upper and Lower Egypt, established the capital at Thebes and ushered in the Middle Kingdom; a renewed flowering of the arts is evident in his innovative funerary temple in western Thebes and in the painted reliefs decorating it and the tombs of officials in the surrounding cemeteries. Amenemhat I, founder of Dynasty 12, moved the capital from Thebes to Itj-tawy in the north; under this dynasty, according to the source, Egyptians traded extensively with cultures of the eastern Mediterranean and controlled Lower Nubia, building a series of forts on either side of the second cataract of the Nile. Sources 1, 2.
The start of the period runs through the middle of Dynasty 11, so that dynasty is split between the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom. According to the page of the Spanish mission to Heracleopolis, a tomb in the city's cemetery is dated "around 2000", that is, in the first decades of the Middle Kingdom, in a cemetery described there as one of the First Intermediate Period and the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. At the end of the period, about 1640 BCE, the Second Intermediate Period begins. Sources 2, 3.
Three objects from tombs are placed in this period. "Hippopotamus ('William')" is a faience figurine from a shaft associated with the tomb chapel of Senbi II at Meir, three of whose legs have been restored because, according to the museum, they were probably broken on purpose. The "Model Bakery and Brewery from the Tomb of Meketre" was found in 1920 in a hidden chamber of a tomb at Thebes and is dated to the early reign of Amenemhat I. The "Scarab amulet from Lisht", which its record dates about 1981-1640 BCE, Middle Kingdom, Dynasties 12-13, comes from the museum's excavations at Lisht South. The first two document the burial equipment of officials: according to the hippopotamus record, Senbi's burial equipment also included numerous models of boats and food production, and Meketre's bakery is such a model. Sources 4, 5, 6.
Source
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art · 2000 · Checked
The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Checked
Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid · Partly checked
The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Checked
The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Checked
The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Checked
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