The Middle Kingdom
Egypt reunifies, and produces the literature later Egyptians treated as classical.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 405 years
- Known to
- ± 30 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
Mentuhotep II reunites Egypt around 2055 BCE. The Middle Kingdom that follows is remembered less for monuments than for writing — the Tale of Sinuhe, the Eloquent Peasant, the Instructions of Amenemhat — composed in a form of the language that became the classical standard, studied by scribes for the next 1,500 years. The state also pushes hard into Nubia, building a chain of massive mudbrick fortresses along the Nile.