[1069–665 BCE] Third Intermediate Period

The year is 1069 BCE. The colossal statues of Ramesses the Great still gaze across the Nile, but the giant they represent has stumbled. Egypt, the eternal kingdom, the beacon of the ancient world for two millennia, is entering an age of shadows. The New Kingdom, an era of unparalleled power and wealth, has died not with a bang, but with a long, drawn-out sigh. This is the story of the four centuries that followed, a time of division, foreign kings, and a desperate struggle for a lost identity: the Third Intermediate Period. The fracture began, as it so often does, with a crisis of power. In the north, in the Nile Delta, a man named Smendes has declared himself king, founding a new 21st Dynasty from his capital at Tanis. But his authority is a pale imitation of the pharaohs of old. Travel south, up the Nile, past hundreds of miles of farmland and villages, and you would arrive in Thebes, the traditional religious heart of the nation. Here, the pharaoh’s name is barely a whisper. The real power resides with the High Priests of Amun-Ra. These men, generations of whom had controlled the vast wealth of the temples, now rule Upper Egypt as de facto kings. Egypt is a nation torn in two. Imagine the confusion for the average Egyptian. The farmer planting his barley, the craftsman inlaying a wooden chest, the soldier guarding a provincial fort. For centuries, their world had been defined by a single, divine ruler—the Pharaoh, Horus on Earth. Now there were two masters. For the most part, daily life continued its eternal rhythm, dictated by the river’s flood and the sun’s journey across the sky. People still wore simple linen kilts or sheath dresses, still lived in mudbrick houses, and still prayed to the same gods. But a creeping instability was in the air. With no strong central hand to guide the state, the magnificent royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, once inviolable, were systematically plundered. The treasures meant to fund a pharaoh’s afterlife were being melted down to pay soldiers and bribe officials. The new northern kings at Tanis knew they could never rival the glory of Thebes. So they did something extraordinary: they created a copy. They built their city into a "Thebes of the North," going so far as to dismantle monuments from the old capital of Pi-Ramesses and float them downriver to adorn their new home. When archaeologists in the 20th century uncovered the royal tombs at Tanis, they found them intact, filled with stunning gold masks and silver coffins. It was a treasure trove second only to Tutankhamun's, a testament to the wealth they still commanded, yet it was all hidden within the confines of a temple wall—a sign of their insecurity in a fractured land. Into this power vacuum stepped a new force, but not a foreign invader in the traditional sense. For generations, Libyan tribes, the Meshwesh, had been settling in the Delta, first as prisoners of war, then as mercenaries and farmers. They had adopted Egyptian customs, names, and gods. By 945 BCE, one of their own, a powerful military leader named Shoshenq I, seized the throne, founding the 22nd Dynasty. Shoshenq was a man of action. He sought to reunite Egypt and project power abroad for the first time in over a century. Around 925 BCE, he marched his army into the Levant, an event famously recorded in the Bible, where he is named as "Shishak." He swept through Judah and Israel, sacking towns and demanding tribute, even plundering treasures from Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. A great relief carved on the temple walls at Karnak in Thebes lists the 150 cities he conquered. It seemed, for a moment, that the glory days might be returning. But this Libyan dynasty was built on a weak foundation. To maintain control, Shoshenq and his successors appointed their sons and relatives as leaders and high priests in key cities across Egypt. This network of family rule, intended to ensure loyalty, soon decayed into a web of rivalries. By 800 BCE, the country had splintered again, with multiple kings, sometimes four or five at once, all claiming to be the rightful pharaoh. As the Libyans squabbled in the north, a new, formidable power was rising in the south, in the land of Kush—what we now call Nubia. For centuries, Kush had been a colony of Egypt, its people and culture deeply Egyptianized. But now, they were an independent and mighty kingdom. Their kings, ruling from their capital at Napata, looked upon the chaos in Egypt with dismay. They saw themselves not as conquerors, but as saviors—the true guardians of Egyptian tradition, chosen by the god Amun to restore order, or *Ma'at*. Around 730 BCE, the Kushite king Piye could tolerate the disunity no longer. On his magnificent victory stela, a 6-foot-tall granite slab inscribed with his own account, he tells his story. He was a devout man, a lover of horses, and a brilliant strategist. He sailed north with his army, not just to conquer, but to purify. He describes besieging cities and accepting the surrender of the petty northern kings, whom he derided as decadent and impious. Piye reunited Egypt under a single crown, inaugurating the 25th Dynasty. For the next 60 years, these "Black Pharaohs" would rule. They were prolific builders, especially the great king Taharqa. He filled Thebes and other cities with new monuments, his name carved in cartouches alongside the greatest pharaohs of the past. They even revived the ancient custom of pyramid burial, constructing their own steeper, smaller pyramids back home in Nubia. Their art is unique, blending traditional pharaonic imagery with the distinct features of the Kushite rulers. On their crowns, they wore a double uraeus—two sacred cobras—symbolizing their lordship over both Egypt and Kush. But their reunification would be tested by a terrifying new empire rising in Mesopotamia: Assyria. The Assyrians were a military machine unlike any the world had seen, masters of iron weaponry, brutal siege warfare, and psychological terror. The clash came in 671 BCE, when the Assyrian king Esarhaddon invaded Egypt and defeated Taharqa, forcing him to flee south. The final, tragic act came in 663 BCE. The Assyrians returned, this time under their ruthless king Ashurbanipal. They marched south to Thebes, the sacred city of Amun, a place that had stood for over a thousand years as the spiritual center of the Egyptian world. They sacked it without mercy. They stripped its temples of gold and silver, smashed its statues, and carried off its people into slavery. The blow was catastrophic, not just physically, but psychologically. The world stood in shock. The biblical prophet Nahum would later write of Thebes, "Were you better than Thebes, situated on the canals of the Nile, with water around her... yet she was taken into exile." The glorious city of Amun had fallen. The Kushite kings retreated to their homeland, their dream of a restored Egypt shattered. The Assyrians placed a puppet king on the throne in the north, and the Third Intermediate Period drew to its bloody, heartbreaking close. Egypt had survived, but it was a shadow of its former self, a pawn in the games of greater empires. The age of supreme, unquestioned pharaonic power was over, lost in the long twilight of a divided land.