This course traces the later political and cultural history of ancient Egypt from its first foreign dynasty, the Semitic Hyksos (c. 1650–1550 BCE), through the political and cultural highpoints of the Egyptian New Kingdom empire (c. 1550–1069 BCE), which competed for dominance in the eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds with other great powers of the period, including the Mitanni, Hittites, and Assyrians, and saw the rule of the famous female king Hatshepsut, the monotheist Akhenaten, and the imperialist Ramesses II.

The course ends with an era marked by Egypt's gradual decline and successive periods of foreign rule, known as the Third Intermediate and Late Periods (1069–332 BCE). Students use archaeological, architectural, and inscriptional primary sources to reconstruct what can be known with certainty, and to analyze and critically assess scholarly interpretations of Egypt's changing role within a shifting landscape of interregional power and competing empires.