Ancient Egypt: The New Kingdom {approx. 1550-1195 BC}


17th-20th Dynasties

Hatshepsut-Rameses

The New Kingdom saw Egypt attain its greatest territorial expansion. It expanded far south into Nubia and hold wide territories in the Near East. Egyptian armies fought Hittite armies for control of modern-day Syria. The Eighteenth Dynasty contained some of Egypt's most famous pharaohs, including Ahmose I, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. Queen Hatshepsut concentrated on expanding Egypt's external trade by sending a commercial expedition to the land of Punt. One of the best-known 18th Dynasty pharaohs is Amenhotep IV, who changed his name to Akhenaten in honor of the Aten and whose exclusive worship of the Aten is often interpreted as history's first instance of monotheism. Akhenaten's religious fervor is cited as the reason why he was subsequently written out of Egyptian history. In the eighth year of  Ramesses III's reign the Sea Peoples invaded Egypt by land and sea. He defeated them in two great land and sea battles. He was also compelled to fight invading Libyan tribesmen. The heavy cost of this warfare slowly drained Egypt's treasury and contributed to the gradual decline of the Egyptian Empire in Asia.

Khopesh and Shield

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The Khopesh, also called the sickle sword or a Sappara is a sword that was actually a hybrid between a sword and an ax. This is why it has such an unusual shape. This is a real sword design and these swords were really used over 3,000 years ago and not again since. There are still some examples of this sword in museums and two of them were found in king Tut's treasure.
The swords of that time period were made of copper, bronze or possibly iron. And these metals are not as strong as steel. This is why the unusual curve in the blade -this added enough strength so it could be used as an almost ax style weapon.


I made our by downloading the template and using the instructions found at Storm The Castle. All you have to do is cut out the three parts of the sword and tape them together. Then you make five copies out of cardboard and glue them all together. We used some foam-board instead of some of the cardboard.

The shield was made from a piece of white foam-board which he painted with black acrylic paint. He added straps on the back with cloth ribbon and duct tape.


Pharaoh Death Mask


We used poster-board for the headdress and a full plastic face mask for the face.
We traced the mask and cut it out on the poster-board, leaving about an inch so the mask would stay still. We hand sketched out the rest of the mask and then cut it all out of the poster-board.
Then we used paper mache the front, using 1-1 ratio of flour and water for the paper mache.

We then spray painted the mask, front and back, with gold spray paint.


He then painted on the blue stripes with blue acrylic paint. He made the snake out of foil and spray painted it gold and added tiny gems for eyes. He painted and then added a portion of a paper towel tube for the beard.

High School

Sam researched and outlined the defining characteristics of each of the six eras, including politics and religion. His task then was to write summation sentences that pinpointed what, in his opinion, was the most important person, decisive event, or influential idea of that era, whether positive or not. Then for each summation sentence, he had to write three clear reasons why he felt this person, event, or idea had the most impact Egyptian on society. His reasons had to show how the impact was clear and lasting. He wrote these reasons as a way of planning an essay on the topic and supporting a thesis statement.

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