The 18th dynasty of ancient Egypt, which reigned from about 1550 B.C. to 1292 B.C., was the longest lasting.
![](https://timelineoffuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/image-317-1024x576.png)
Ancient Egypt was ruled for millennia by a series of pharaohs. Historians have divided this period into dynasties, in which rulers were either related to each other or derived from the power of their predecessors.
But which dynasty lasted the longest?
Egypt’s 18th dynasty lasted about 250 years, making it the longest dynasty in ancient Egypt. Scientists estimated the length of the 18th Dynasty by analyzing written records and radiocarbon dating. The 18th Dynasty began around 1550 BC, when Pharaoh Ahmose expelled the Hyksos, a group of people of Asian origin that had ruled parts of ancient Egypt for more than a century. The Ahmose rulers would expand the territory controlled by Egypt, eventually expanding it into an empire stretching from present-day Sudan to present-day Syria. Among the kings of the 18th Dynasty was Tutankhamun, or King Tut, a pharaoh whose intact tomb was rediscovered in 1922 by a British-led archaeological team.
Historians usually divide the history of Egypt into 30 dynasties.
But in reality, “Egypt’s ‘dynasties’ are really just flashback structures,” Michael Dee, an associate professor of isotope dating at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, told Live Science in a recent interview. email. It is only about 300 BC. Dee says that writers began to divide Egypt into dynasties. Although many pharaohs in a dynasty had direct family ties, not all were.
Marc Van De Mieroop, a history professor at Columbia University, told Live Science in an email: “Dynasties are successive members of the same family with few additions. “They were invented by Manetho, who wrote the history of Egypt in Greek in the [third] century BC.
![](https://timelineoffuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/image-316-1024x576.png)
And although the 18th dynasty was the longest of the dynasties outlined by Manetho, the periods of Greek and Roman rule were longer, Van De Mieroop said. Greek rule in Egypt began in 332 BC, when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt. Before the conquest, the area was controlled by the ancient Persians.
After Alexander’s death in 323 BC, his empire collapsed and Ptolemy, one of Alexander’s generals, became ruler of Egypt. His descendants ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years, until Cleopatra VII died in 30 BC.
After Cleopatra’s death, Roman Emperor Augustus incorporated Egypt into the Roman Empire as a province. While Roman emperors rarely visited Egypt, surviving artwork shows they were still considered pharaohs. When the Western Roman Empire fell in AD 476, the Eastern Roman Empire (commonly known as the Byzantine Empire), based in Constantinople, continued and controlled Egypt until AD 646. . J.-C., when the kingdom of Rashidun captured it. Rashidun Caliphate is based in Arabia and was established after Muhammed’s death.