Senwosret III (Khakaure)
1870 BCE–1831 BCE · Middle-Kingdom · Itj-tawy / Lisht
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.
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Itj-tawy / Lisht
What they did here
The Dynasty 12 royal capital from which he ruled. (coord approx)
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Senwosret III (Khakaure)’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Egyptian world
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