Twentieth Dynasty

From Greatness to Irrelevancy—The Ramesside Period Pt. 2

1186 to 1069 BC

The internecine rivalry of the Nineteenth Dynasty continues into the Twentieth, but with a backdrop of famine, drought, and disruption of the life-bringing cyclical flooding of the Nile. The combination of political corruption and the people’s misery goads Egypt toward a Third Intermediate Period as the institutions of the New Kingdom wither. The administrative center of Memphis grows so ineffectual that the High Priesthood of Amun at the religious center of Thebes assumes leadership of Upper Egypt while Smendes, a powerful local leader based in the northeastern delta city of Tanis, exerts control over Lower Egypt even as Ramesses XI still languishes on the throne. Smendes would go on to found the Twenty-First Dynasty on Ramesses XI’s death.