By Ali Abu Dashish
King Amenemhat III is considered one of the most important pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom and the 12th Dynasty. He was a resolute director, a wise politician, and a great builder.
His reign was depicted as the golden period of the Middle Kingdom and the era of peace, stability and reconstruction after the wars fought by his father, King Senusert III, who may have shared with him in the rule of Egypt for twenty years.
Dr. Hussein Basir, an Egyptologist said in his book titled " Warrior Pharaohs", that King Amenemhat III built his first pyramid, known as the Black Pyramid, at Dahshur, Giza.
Circa the fifteenth year of his rule, he built his new pyramid at Hawara, Fayoum. Perhaps the funerary temple of this last pyramid was what the famous Greek historian Herodotus and others called "the Labyrinth" (i.e. the Palace of Labyrinth).
Strabo, another Greek historian had considered that palace as one of the wonders of the ancient world.
The many wars of his great father, King Senusert III, gave this new pharaoh time to devote himself to building and construction. He carried out many military activities during his long reign. It is mentioned that he carried out a small military campaign in the ninth year of his rule.
Evidence of this military campaign came from a rock inscription near the famous Samna Castle built in Nubia.
One of the king's commanders led this military campaign. The commander stated that he had returned safely to the north with a small military pision, and that none of them had died when they went on their mission to the south.
However, the most important characteristic of this builder Pharaohs era is his great interest in sending many mining missions to different areas in the blessed Egyptian land.
A mission was sent to Wadi al-Hudi region, on the southern border of Egypt, to obtain amethyst, or purple stone. The history of such kind of mission dates back to the eleventh, twentieth and twenty-eighth years of the reign of this king.
Wadi El-Hammamet was one of the most important mining areas to which King Amenemhat III sent the missions. Missions of that wadi date back to the second, third, nineteenth, twentieth and thirty-third years of His Majesty's rule.
Perhaps the work of the two missions in the nineteenth and twentieth years in the Valley of Hammamet focused on the beginning of the preparation for the construction of the King's pyramidal group in the Hawara region.
The royal task forces also cut stones to carve the beautiful royal statues of the Pharaoh Amenemhat III.
On the shore of the Red Sea, a plaque was discovered stating that a mission was sent to Puntland during the reign of Amenemhat III.
Amenemhat III occupied a prominent position in the eyes of his contemporaries, and his biography remained a source of pride for the Egyptians.
All the following generations of the Egyptians raised him to the ranks of deities as they did with his father before.
The great King Amenemhat III was a powerful model that demonstrated how political stability based on stable military strength enables a prominent leader to build a homeland and spread peace as well as fostering development, prosperity, and prosperity.
Contributed by Ahmed Moamar
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