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Middle Kingdom

(Encyclopedia)Middle Kingdom or Middle Country, Mandarin Zhongguo, Chinese name for China. It dates from c.1000 b.c., when it designated the Chou empire situated on the North China Plain. The Chou people, unaware o...

Amenemhet I

(Encyclopedia)Amenemhet I äˌmĕnĕmˈhĕt, āˌ– [key], d. 1970 b.c., king of ancient Egypt, founder of the XII dynasty. The son of a powerful Theban family, he seized the kingship c.2000 b.c. The XII dynasty u...

Bani Hasan

(Encyclopedia)Bani Hasan bäˈnē häsänˈ [key], village, E central Egypt, on the Nile near Al Minya. There are 39 tombs, carved out of solid rock in the XII dynasty of ancient Egypt. The name is also spelled Ben...

Pyramids, battle of

(Encyclopedia)Pyramids, battle of, July, 1798, during the French Revolutionary Wars, battle fought between the French forces under Napoleon Bonaparte and the Egyptian Mamluks led by Murad Bey. Napoleon's victory ga...

Hyksos

(Encyclopedia)Hyksos hĭkˈsōs [key] [Egyptian,=rulers of foreign lands], invaders of ancient Egypt, now substantiated as the XV–XVIII dynasties. They were a northwestern Semitic (Canaanite or Amorite) people wh...

Breasted, James Henry

(Encyclopedia)Breasted, James Henry brĕsˈtĭd [key], 1865–1935, American Egyptologist, b. Rockford, Ill., grad. North Central College, 1888, M.A. Yale, 1891, Ph.D. Univ. of Berlin, 1894. He began teaching at th...

Nile

(Encyclopedia)Nile, longest river in the world, c.4,160 mi (6,695 km) long from its remotest headstream, the Luvironza River in Burundi, central Africa, to its delta on the Mediterranean Sea, NE Egypt. The Nile flo...

Baker, Sir Benjamin

(Encyclopedia)Baker, Sir Benjamin, 1840–1907, English civil engineer. He helped build London's underground railway, Tower Bridge, and the Blackwall Tunnel, and with Sir John Fowler he designed and built the bridg...

Mitanni

(Encyclopedia)Mitanni mĭtănˈē [key], ancient kingdom established in the 2d millennium b.c. in NW Mesopotamia. It was founded by Aryans but was later made up predominantly of Hurrians. Washshukanni was its capit...

papyrus

(Encyclopedia)papyrus pəpīˈrəs [key], a sedge (Cyperus papyrus), now almost extinct in Egypt but so universally used there in antiquity as to be the hieroglyphic symbol for Lower Egypt and a common motif in art...