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Facts About Ancient Egypt They Didn’t Teach In School

Khalid Elhassan October 29, 2023 31 min

Egyptian - The Great Pyramids of Giza, as they would have looked when newly built — The Great Pyramids of Giza, as they would have looked when newly built. Quora

The Queen Who Saved Ancient Egypt

Detail from a ceremonial ax depicting Queen Ahhotep’s son, Pharaoh Ahmose I, slaying a Hyksos. K-Pics

Queen Ahhotep successfully led her armies against the Hyksos. She fought them to a standstill, and kept them at bay long enough for her son to grow up and take over the struggle. When he came of age, her son – a heroic figure in his own right – took the reins of power, took on the Hyksos, defeated and chased them out of Egypt, and reunified the country. As Pharaoh Ahmose I, he founded the Eighteenth Dynasty, during which the Egyptian Empire reached its zenith.

Jewels, weapons, and decorations found in the tomb of Queen Ahhotep. Wikimedia

At its height, Ahmose’s realm stretched from Syria in the north to Nubia in the south, and from Mesopotamia in the east to the Libyan deserts in the west. Ahhotep was not done fighting, however. Rebels sympathetic to the Hyksos tried to seize the throne while her son was away fighting the Nubians. So Ahhotep rallied loyal troops, fought them off, and foiled their attempt. For that, she was awarded the “Golden Flies of Valor” – Ancient Egypt’s highest military award for courage. It was discovered in her tomb, along with weapons and jewelry, thousands of years later.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.