During the Middle Kingdom, quite a few advancements had occurred. The most interesting advancement that I read about was the emergence of Egyptian literature. The texts provide us with a firmer grasp on Egyptian life such as the social unrest, famine, and every day life. A variety of texts developed over this time period. Egyptian literature was not only used for entertainment in story form, but it was used for many other things such as coffin texts, instructions, and discourses. More Egyptians were able to write and read with the establishment of the first school during the 12th dynasty. Those who were in lower ranks may have been able to read as well because coffin texts were found in graves of private individuals and not just in the ones for the royal family, as pyramid texts were during the Old Kingdom.
Also, Instead of reading about the literature that was discovered, I would like to actually read a translation of one of the Egyptian stories. As much as it is interesting to hear about excavations and artifacts discovered, it would be nice to be able to interpret Egyptian literature ourselves and get a better understanding in what they thought and felt.
Another advancement/adjustment that was made during the Middle Kingdom was the sea-faring expeditions. During this time, the Middle Nile was under control by the Kerma Kingdom and in order to obtain goods from Punt, the Egyptians had to make a new sea route to reach their destination. These sea-faring expeditions required thousands of men and careful planning to avoid disruption with Kerma.
Irrigation was another important project that took place during the late 12th dynasty. The irrigation helped this area (the Faiyum region) prosper with increased crop yields and benefited from the high Nile floods.
During the Middle Kingdom period, more aspects to the culture had developed/had been modified. I’m interested to see how ancient Egypt changes during the future dynasties we will learn about in the next lessons.
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I thought it was interesting how you focused on the advancements of from the previous eras into the Middle Kingdom. The advances in literature, agricultural methods, and social equality show the progression of the Egyptians as a culture. Another interesting aspect of the Middle Kingdom is looking into areas in which they revert back to and even sometimes do things more poorly than they did in previous times. For instance, the Middle Kingdom pharaohs also built pyramids, yet both the workmanship and the scale of these pyramids was dramatically less extravagant than in previous times. Another instance is the lack of control that the Egyptians held over the Nile Delta, which was slowly taken over by the Hyksos through immigration. The stability of the political system also seemed to be wavering, due to the fact that there were not many long reigning pharaohs, but instead many pharaohs who only ruled for short periods of time. From these digressions, it is evident that the Middle Kingdom was a time where the centralized power in Egypt was weakened. The power to gather large amounts of materials and workers for pyramid construction was crippled by the lack of strong authority over Egypt’s people and resources. Also, the Hyksos were able to gain control of a major region of Egypt, another example of Egypt’s poor control over its territory.