Egyptian burial practices generally conjure up images of King Tutankhamun’s exquisite funerary equipment or the great pyramids at Giza. The elaborately decorated coffins, wooden models, and monumental provincial tombs of the Middle Kingdom seldom feature. The basic cultural principles and burial practices laid down at the beginning of Egyptian civilization and standardized during the Old Kingdom were thus developed and reimagined during the Middle Kingdom.
The Middle Kingdom is cited in later sources as the classical period of Egyptian art, literature, and politics. Indeed, kings of the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties such as Mentuhotep II, Senusret III, and Amenemhat III were still known by Greek authors for their military enterprises and monuments.
The period preceding the Middle Kingdom, the First Intermediate Period, followed the collapse of the Old Kingdom at the end of the Sixth Dynasty. Whilst most Egyptologists define this period as one rampant with civil war and social anarchy, recent research has suggested that it was actually a time of comparative prosperity among
