Senwosret III (Khakaure)

Senwosret III (throne-name Khakaure) was the most powerful king of the Middle Kingdom, reigning around 1870-1831 BCE (Shaw's conventional dates). He curbed the power of the provincial nobility, strengthening central authority, and pushed the southern frontier deep into Nubia, securing it with a chain of massive mudbrick fortresses along the Nile. His reign is also a landmark in Egyptian art: his portrait sculpture, with its strikingly careworn, almost brooding features, broke with the idealised royal image and is among the masterpieces of Egyptian portraiture. He is a principal source of the later Greek legend of 'Sesostris', the great conqueror, which conflates several Twelfth-Dynasty kings. His reign represents the political and artistic high-water mark of the Middle Kingdom.