Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt

Several of Egypt's most famous pharaohs were from the Eighteenth Dynasty, including Tutankhamun (c. 1341 BC – c. 1323 BC). Other famous pharaohs of the dynasty include Hatshepsut (c. 1479 BC–1458 BC), the longest-reigning woman pharaoh of an indigenous dynasty, and Akhenaten (c. 1353–1336 BC), the "heretic pharaoh", with his Great Royal Wife, Nefertiti.

The Eighteenth Dynasty is unique among indigenous Egyptian dynasties in that it had two queens regnant women who ruled as pharaohs: Hatshepsut and Neferneferuaten, usually identified as Nefertiti.

History

Early Dynasty XVIII

Dynasty XVIII was founded by Ahmose I, the brother or son of Kamose, the last ruler of the 17th Dynasty. Ahmose finished the campaign to expel the Hyksos rulers. His reign is seen as the end of the Second Intermediate Period and the start of the New Kingdom. Ahmose's consort, Queen Ahmose-Nefertari was "arguably the most venerated woman in Egyptian history, and the grandmother of the 18th Dynasty." She was deified after she died. Ahmose was succeeded by his son, Amenhotep I, whose reign was relatively uneventful.

Amenhotep I probably left no male heir and the next pharaoh, Thutmose I, seems to have been related to the royal family through marriage. During his reign, the borders of Egypt's empire reached their greatest expanse, extending in the north to Carchemish on the Euphrates and in the south up to Kanisah Kurgus beyond the fourth cataract of the Nile. Thutmose I was succeeded by Thutmose II and his queen, Hatshepsut, who was the daughter of Thutmose I. After her husband's death and a period of regency for her minor stepson (who would later become pharaoh as Thutmose III) Hatshepsut became pharaoh in her own right and ruled for over twenty years.

Thutmose III, who became known as the greatest military pharaoh ever, also had a lengthy reign after becoming pharaoh. He had a second co-regency in his old age with his son Amenhotep II. Amenhotep II was succeeded by Thutmose IV, who in his turn was followed by his son Amenhotep III, whose reign is seen as a high point in this dynasty.

Amenhotep III's reign was a period of unprecedented prosperity, artistic splendor, and international power, as attested by over 250 statues (more than any other pharaoh) and 200 large stone scarabs discovered from Syria to Nubia. Amenhotep III undertook large scale building programmes, the extent of which can only be compared with those of the much longer reign of Ramesses II during Dynasty XIX. Amenhotep III's consort was the Great Royal Wife Tiye, for whom he built an artificial lake, as described on eleven scarabs.

Akhenaten, the Amarna Period, and Tutankhamun

Amenhotep III may have shared the throne for up to twelve years with his son Amenhotep IV. There is much debate about this proposed co-regency, with different experts considering that there was a lengthy co-regency, a short one, or none at all.

In the fifth year of his reign, Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten (ꜣḫ-n-jtn, "Effective for the Aten") and moved his capital to Amarna, which he named Akhetaten. During the reign of Akhenaten, the Aten (jtn, the sun disk) became, first, the most prominent deity, and eventually came to be considered the only god. Whether this amounted to true monotheism continues to be the subject of debate within the academic community. Some state that Akhenaten created a monotheism, while others point out that he merely suppressed a dominant solar cult by the assertion of another, while he never completely abandoned several other traditional deities.

Later Egyptians considered this "Amarna Period" an unfortunate aberration. After his death, Akhenaten was succeeded by two short-lived pharaohs, Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten, of which little is known. In 1334 BC, Akhenaten's probable son, Tutankhaten, ascended to the throne: shortly after, he restored Egyptian polytheist cult and subsequently changed his name to Tutankhamun, in honor to the Egyptian god Amun. His infant daughters represent the final genetically related generation of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

Ay and Horemheb

The last two members of the Eighteenth Dynasty—Ay and Horemheb—became rulers from the ranks of officials in the royal court, although Ay might also have been the maternal uncle of Akhenaten as a fellow descendant of Yuya and Tjuyu.

Ay may have married the widowed Great Royal Wife and presumed half-sister of Tutankhamun, Ankhesenamun, in order to obtain power; she did not live long afterward, with Ay instead ascending to the throne with his long-time wife Tey, who was originally Nefertiti's wet-nurse.

Ay's reign was short. His successor was Horemheb, a general who appeared to have been Tutankhamun's heir presumptive, and whose wife Mutnedjmet might have been sister of the former queen Nefertiti. It is possible that Horemheb took throne away from Ay in a coup d'état. Although Ay's son or stepson Nakhtmin was named as his father/stepfather's Crown Prince, Nakhtmin seems to have died during the reign of Ay, leaving the opportunity for Horemheb to claim the throne next.

Horemheb also died without surviving children, having appointed his vizier, Pa-ra-mes-su, as his heir. This vizier ascended the throne in 1292 BC as Ramesses I, and was the first pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty.

This example to the right depicts a man named Ay who achieved the exalted religious positions of Second Prophet of Amun and High Priest of Mut at Thebes. His career flourished during the reign of Tutankhamun, when the statue was made. The cartouches of King Ay, Tutankhamun's successor appearing on the statue, were an attempt by an artisan to "update" the sculpture.

Relations with Nubia

The Eighteenth Dynasty empire conquered all of Lower Nubia under Thutmose I. By the reign of Thutmose III, the Egyptians directly controlled Nubia to the Nile river, 4th cataract, with Egyptian influence / tributaries extending beyond this point. The Egyptians referred to the area as Kush and it was administered by the Viceroy of Kush. The 18th dynasty obtained Nubian gold, animal skins, ivory, ebony, cattle, and horses, which were of exceptional quality. The Egyptians built temples throughout Nubia. One of the largest and most important temples was dedicated to Amun at Jebel Barkal in the city of Napata. This Temple of Amun was enlarged by later Egyptian and Nubian Pharaohs, such as Taharqa.

Relations with the Near-East

After the end of the Hyksos period of foreign rule, the Eighteenth Dynasty engaged in a vigorous phase of expansionism, conquering vast areas of the Near-East, with especially Pharaoh Thutmose III submitting the "Shasu" Bedouins of northern Canaan, and the land of Retjenu, as far as Syria and Mittani in numerous military campaigns circa 1450 BC.

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Dating

Radiocarbon dating suggests that Dynasty XVIII may have started a few years earlier than the conventional date of 1550 BC. The radiocarbon date range for its beginning is 1570–1544 BC, the mean point of which is 1557 BC.

Anthropological and genetic data

A 1973 X-ray examination of southern king, Seqenenre Tao, by American Egyptologists, Kent Weeks and James E. Harris identified cranial similarities between his cranio-facial complex along with other Nubian and Old Kingdom Giza Skulls. In their view, this was supportive of scholarly interpretations that Sequenre Tao and his family may have held Nubian ancestry.

Robins and Shute (1983) performed X-ray measurements on the physical proportions of Upper Egyptian rulers such as Thutmose III, Amenhotep III, Tutankhamun. The authors reported that the limbs of the pharaohs, like those of other Ancient Egyptians, had "negroid characteristics", in that the distal segments were relatively long in comparison with the proximal segments. An exception was Ramesses II, who appears to have had short legs below the knees.

James Harris and Fawzia Hussien (1991) conducted an X-ray survey on southern based 18th dynasty royal mummies and examined the mummified remains of Thutmose II. The results of the study determined that the mummy of Thutmose II had a craniofacial trait measurement that was common among Nubian populations.

A genetic study, published in 2020, revealed Tutankhamun had the haplogroups YDNA R1b, which originated in western Asia and which today makes up 50–60% of the genetic pool of modern Europeans, and mtDNA K, which originated in the Near East. He shares this Y-haplogroup with his father, the KV55 mummy (Akhenaten), and grandfather, Amenhotep III (and his entire male ancestral line), and his mtDNA haplogroup with his mother, The Younger Lady, his grandmother, Tiye, and his great-grandmother, Thuya (and his entire female ancestral line). The profiles for Tutankhamun and Amenhotep III were incomplete, and the analysis produced differing probability figures despite having concordant allele results. Because the relationships of these two mummies with the KV55 mummy had previously been confirmed in an earlier study, the haplogroup prediction of both mummies could be derived from the full profile of the KV55 data.

In 2022, S.O.Y. Keita analysed 8 Short Tandem loci (STR) data originally published by Hawass et al. in studies from 2010 and 2012. The first of these studies had investigated familial relationships among 11 royal mummies of the New Kingdom, which included Tutankhamun and Amenhotep III, as well as potential inherited disorders and infectious diseases. The second of these studies had investigated the Y-haplogroups and genetic kinship of Ramesses III and an unknown man buried along with him in the royal cache at Deir el Bahari. Keita analysed the STR data from these studies using an algorithm that only has three choices: Eurasians, sub-Saharan Africans, and East Asians. Using these three options, Keita concluded that the majority of the samples had a population "affinity with 'sub-Saharan' Africans in one affinity analysis". However, Keita cautioned that this does not mean that the royal mummies "lacked other affiliations", which he argued had been obscured in typological thinking. Keita further added that different "data and algorithms might give different results", reflecting the complexity of biological heritage and the associated interpretation.

According to historian William Stiebling and archaeologist Susan N. Helft, (2023) conflicting DNA analysis on recent genetic samples such as the Amarna royal mummies has led to a lack of consensus on the genetic makeup of the ancient Egyptians and their geographic origins.

In 2025, biochemist Jean-Philippe Gourdine reviewed genetic data on the Ancient Egyptian populations in the international scholarly publication, General History of Africa Volume IX. Expanding on a previous STR analysis co-performed with Keita, on the Amarna royal mummies which included Tutankhamun, Gourdine stated the analysis had found "that they had strong affinities with current sub-Saharan populations: 41 per cent to 93.9 per cent for sub-Saharan Africa, compared to 4.6 per cent to 41 per cent for Eurasia and 0.3 per cent to 16 per cent for Asia (Gourdine, 2018)." He also referenced comparable analysis conducted by DNA Tribes company, which specialized in genetic genealogy and had large datasets, with the latter having identified strong affinities between the Amarna royal mummies and Sub-Saharan African populations.

In 2025, Christopher Ehret, David Schoenbrun, Steven A Brandt and Shomarka Keita issued a multidisciplinary review, noting the R1b M89 haplogroup subtype identified among the three Amarna pharaohs (Tutankhamun, Amenhotep III and Akhenaten) was not further specified. The authors also stated that the R1b haplogroup usually interpreted as indicating a back migration to Africa from or via the Near East could have been attributed to Asian back migration or trans-Saharan connections as the genetic marker is found at relative high frequencies among Chadic populations. Referencing a Short Tandem Report (STR) autosomal background analysis on the Amarna royal mummies, performed by Keita in an earlier publication, the authors considered this analysis could suggest closer trans-Saharan connections. Ehret et al also disclosed through personal communication with the Gad team that "other eighteenth dynasty lineages in the Amarna period were found to be E1b1a (Gad et al 2020)". The authors further postulated that association of the palaeolithic Asian lineage (R1B) and an affiliation that is tropical African (E1b1a) is an example of admixture found in some Nile Valley populations, and that a mixture of lineages could illustrate Egypt being near a crossroads.

Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty

The pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty ruled for approximately 250 years (c. 1550–1298 BC). The dates and names in the table are taken from Dodson and Hilton. Many of the pharaohs were buried in the Valley of the Kings in Thebes (designated KV). More information can be found on the Theban Mapping Project website. Several diplomatic marriages are known for the New Kingdom. These daughters of foreign kings are often only mentioned in cuneiform texts and are not known from other sources. The marriages were likely to have been a way to confirm good relations between these states. Royal brother-sister marriages were observed, as a means to strengthen the royalty by echoing the practices in their creation myths.

Comparison of regnal lists

The Eighteenth Dynasty is well-recorded across Egyptian king lists, mostly due to being written extensively by their Nineteenth Dynasty successors. The Abydos, Saqqara and Ramesseum king lists, all from the New Kingdom of Egypt, provide a list of kings of this dynasty and are in broad agreement on the order of most kings in this dynasty, though they omit Hatshepsut and the Amarna pharaohs as a form of damnatio memoriae; the repudiation of Hatshepsut and the Amarna Period had been state policy since the reign of Horemheb. A Theban tomb, TT19, also provides a king list. It's possible the Turin King List originally listed the Eighteenth Dynasty, but it's now in a fragmentary state and some information is lost, including a section that contained Dynasties 18–19/20. Manetho's now-lost work Aegyptiaca also provided individual reign lengths, however the lengths seem to be inaccurate since his sources were likely already corrupted due to the damnatio memoriae imposed over the Amarna rulers, and co-regency may have caused additional confusion. Later Epitomes of the work were then misunderstood by various writers who conflated multiple kings into a single figure, failed to understand the number of kings in this dynasty.