Original subtitles

- [Narrator] Ancient Egypt.

For over 3,000 years,

the world's most vibrant and puzzling civilization

flourished through war and peace.

The Egyptians built great cities,

enduring monuments.

They advanced mathematics and technology.

Their astonishing legacy survives to this day.

As the country grows richer,

its neighbors grow bolder.

Now, archeologists have revealed

Egypt's brilliant strategy to repel the foreign threat,

a strategy devised by its greatest warrior king,

Thutmose III.

By striking first, Thutmose hopes to extend his empire

and stabilize Egypt's borders.

His plan is untested,

his generals are skeptical,

and he risks losing everything.

But his enemies have left him no choice.

In 1457 BC, Egypt finds itself in great danger.

The country's former allies in the Near East

have joined forces, threatening Egypt's borders.

But Pharaoh Thutmose III and his soldiers

won't wait for the enemy to strike.

They head towards Megiddo,

a fortress city near the Carmel Mountains

in modern Israel.

Beyond these hills,

the enemies of Pharaoh wait, ready to attack.

Going out to meet them is a high-risk strategy.

The future of the pharaoh and of his empire

depend on its success.

In the face of this barrier, Pharaoh's armies halt.

As they gather in the camp,

there is a critical disagreement

about the best route to take.

No one knows where the enemy has positioned his forces.

His generals advise Thutmose

to send his men around the mountains.

Pharaoh must decide.

The fate of the empire is at stake.

The Egyptians are in Canaan,

four weeks' march from their own territory.

This region, now roughly Palestine and Lebanon,

is Egypt's security zone.

The city-states here were neutral or under Egyptian control

until the Mitanni, Egypt's greatest rival,

stole their loyalty.

Meanwhile, in Egypt's capital Thebes,

the pharaoh's subjects eagerly await news of the campaign.

Like all of Egypt, Thebes' wealth depends on trade

and the tributes of subdued territories.

Now, all that is at risk.

Bustling with more than 50,000 people,

this is one of the biggest cities in the world.

Time hasn't diminished its magnificence.

Even some of the bright paint

miraculously clings to the columns.

Triumphant reliefs tell of Thutmose's glorious reign.

Yet with foreign powers threatening the country,

the proud Egyptians were forced to acknowledge

they weren't alone in the world.

- This required an interesting change in attitude,

because in early periods of Egyptian history,

the Egyptian word for Egyptian

was the same as the Egyptian word for human being.

In the New Kingdom, they began to recognize

the greater equality of foreigners.

Syrians, Sudanese, Cretans, whatever.

- [Narrator] Egypt's neighbors enviously gazed

on the country's enormous prosperity.

While adjacent peoples

suffered from frequent droughts,

the Egyptians were blessed by geography

and enjoyed regular, plentiful harvests.

Though Egypt is 90% desert,

the Nile watered wide, fertile fields

that grew ample grain to feed some 3 million people.

This easy abundance made the empire

one of the most stable societies

of the ancient world.

And through trade,

the people of the Nile magnified their wealth,

funding the world's largest monuments,

the pyramids.

Clearly, the gods must have loved the Egyptians.

- Egyptians were probably a very arrogant people

because they were convinced

that no one had it better than the Egyptians.

The gods had given Egypt

the most wonderful country in the world.

And most foreigners who came here

said the same thing.

You've got this wonderful river

that always provides water.

You've got these wonderful fields

that always provide crops.

You don't have to work very hard to grow these things.

This is heaven on earth.

- [Narrator] Thutmose grows up in a world

that knows neither famine nor war.

He comes to the throne as a child

after his father's early death.

But the little king is far too young to rule.

So his aunt and stepmother, Hatshepsut,

takes over as regent.

Tradition dictates that pharaohs be men

but Hatshepsut aspires to divine authority

to rule for life.

She gathers power and finally claims the throne

through classical political networking.

- I've tried to put together myself

a list of all those governmental officials

and high nobility who stood behind her.

And that may be the secret.

There may have been a kind of,

I was going to say cabal,

but that may be too strong a word,

a coterie of supporters

who were quite influential,

more so than we think today.

- [Narrator] To affirm her legitimacy as regent,

Hatshepsut alters her appearance on temple reliefs

and official statues.

At first, she's portrayed as a woman,

with breasts and feminine features.

But soon she dons the ceremonial beard

worn by pharaohs before her.

Hatshepsut has officially transformed

into a male pharaoh.

Although Thutmose will be her future rival,

Hatshepsut employs the country's best teachers for the boy.

He learns astronomy, mathematics,

religion, and medicine.

They teach him about Egypt's victories,

but they also warn him about the great threat Egypt faces.

Foreign domination.

(speaking foreign language)

Only two centuries earlier,

a foreign tribe wrested control of northern Egypt,

much to the shock of the people.

They had always believed their country was invincible.

Yet, in 1648 BC,

the Hyksos, a nomadic people from the north-east,

had moved in.

They split the empire into two rival factions.

For millennia, the country had been protected

by its natural boundaries.

Inhospitable deserts flanked the empire

to the east and to the west,

making invasion almost impossible.

An army would die of thirst

before it came in sight of an enemy.

To the north, Lower Egypt was protected

by the marshes of the Nile Delta.

No enemy could cross them.

Or so it seemed.

And far to the south,

the rocks and rapids of the Nile cataracts

made the river unnavigable along great stretches.

The Egyptians were fully aware of their great good fortune.

- Egypt is naturally protected,

and if the government of the day

simply keeps up a few border forts

with a handful of garrison troops,

that's all that's needed.

You can easily keep anybody out.

And they did, for the first 15 centuries of their history,

they were remarkably successful in keeping all foreigners

that were unwanted out of the country.

- [Narrator] But the Hyksos were different.

With just one technological advancement,

they infiltrated the delta

and then went on the attack from inside the country.

To speed their invasion, the Hyksos used a new

and terrifying weapon,

the chariot.

With this superior technology,

they drove the Egyptian militias far to the south.

On and on they rolled.

It seemed nothing could stop them.

There was one attempt to fight them off.

An ancestor of Thutmose,

King Seqenenre Tao, made a stand.

A pharaoh facing the impossible,

a full-scale invasion of his country.

But he had no chance against this well-armed,

superior fighting force from distant lands.

Seqenenre Tao paid with his life.

His mummy clearly shows the terrible wounds

that led to an agonizing death.

- That really had shaken the ego of the Egyptians, you know,

to be invaded by these people that they despised.

And successfully invaded, for 108 years.

That was a blow to their pride

and a blow to their whole world vision.

- [Narrator] After King Seqenenre Tao,

King Ahmose, the ruler of Thebes,

finally put an end to the foreign domination.

Archeologists pieced together this relief,

the only account of Ahmose's victory over the Hyksos.

Ahmose had learned from his enemies

and beat them at their own game.

He built war chariots

to expel the invaders from his country.

Ahmose reunited Egypt's north and south,

heralding what's known as the New Kingdom,

whose pharaohs swore to restore Egypt's glory

and face down all foreign threats, always.

But in the Near East, a new power

is already gathering strength.

The Mitanni, a warrior tribe more formidable than the Hyksos

and bent on expansion.

The Mitanni are trying to weaken

Egypt's influence in the north-east.

They forge alliances with the rulers of the Canaan region,

promising to free them from the taxes imposed by Egypt.

As the Mitanni close in on Egypt's borders,

their ranks swell with their enemy's former vassals.

In the Egyptian capital of Thebes, time is running out.

But Thutmose, now grown,

and Hatshepsut disagree on what to do.

He wants to mobilize his army immediately

to intercept the enemy

before it reaches the borders of Egypt.

Hatshepsut prefers to wait.

She wants to avoid war at all costs,

especially a war beyond the boundaries of the empire.

And even though Thutmose is the rightful heir,

Hatshepsut has yet to surrender the throne.

Thutmose insists that his strategy

is the only way to save Egypt.

But Hatshepsut calls the shots

and he must obey.

- I think that that distinction

between Hatshepsut as a conservative,

looking backward, in a sense,

with her roots in the past,

as opposed to Thutmose III

who adopts this new outlook of expansion and involvement

and a dynamic approach to life.

- [Narrator] Thutmose, denied his war against the Mitanni,

directs his attention elsewhere,

to the region between Egypt and Nubia,

a scene of constant conflict to the south.

His ancestors had already built

a chain of fortresses along the Nile.

But the young king wants to reinforce them,

flexing his military muscle

and proving that Egypt is still strong.

The Nubians, fearsome warriors.

constantly raided Egypt from the south.

Today, most of Egypt's border fortresses have disappeared.

Their remains were swallowed up in the 1960s

when the Aswan Dam created Lake Nasser.

But thanks to old archeological records,

we have a sense of what these forts looked like.

Around 500 soldiers lived in each fort complex,

which operated like a small, walled tower.

They contained barracks for the soldiers,

storehouses for food, workshops and temples.

Watchtowers on the walls

provided an unobstructed view for kilometers.

But these forts weren't just for defense against invasion.

They also protected the trade routes.

Every pharaoh, including Thutmose,

wanted access to the valuable raw materials of Nubia,

including gold, and human beings.

- Egypt basically and historically looks south,

not only for its conquest

but also for where it got its products.

And one of those products

that we tend forget today was manpower.

They would send caravans down, that we would perhaps today

call slave-raiding caravans,

and they would come back with thousands of Nubians.

- [Narrator] Thutmose's southern campaign is successful.

He returns from Nubia with large numbers of slaves.

His officers turn them into paid, privileged soldiers

because Nubian warriors are considered superb archers.

Equipped with newly designed bows,

they can inflict terrible injuries,

even from a great distance.

Quietly, Thutmose builds a powerful army.

The pharaoh is convinced.

He can't avoid war with the Mitanni.

And for that, he'll need not just good soldiers,

but more weapons.

He fires up the foundries.

His military workshops in Memphis forge axes and hatchets,

spears and arrowheads of bronze,

the weapons the Egyptians have long relied on.

But Thutmose plays it a little differently this time.

Taking a page from Egypt's old enemy, the Hyksos,

he's equipping his army with war chariots.

The Egyptians have taken the old Hyksos chariot

and radically improved it.

We know what these chariots looked like

from illustrations on Egyptian temple walls.

And a perfectly preserved, gilded ceremonial chariot

was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun.

It demonstrates in every detail

how the Egyptians constructed their war machines.

They built the chassis from bent wood.

Extra spokes strengthened the wheels.

The wide axle kept the chariot stable even in sharp turns.

The leather fighting platform could absorb blows.

And the chariot was held together by pins,

sockets and leather straps.

Damaged parts could be exchanged.

Soldiers could dismantle the chariot

and carry it over long distances.

Something never done before.

Maneuvering this hi-tech apparatus

takes skill and lots of practice.

Two men have to work together in a confined space,

the driver and the archer.

Chariot, horses and soldiers have to form a single unit

to be able to react quickly in battle.

Years of training were needed before they could go to war,

so they could be sure of hitting their targets,

moving at high speed over uneven ground.

The young pharaoh enjoyed his time among his soldiers,

far from life in the palace.

- Those two things, the chariotry corps and the archers,

owed a debt to the Hyksos, very definitely,

but the Egyptians now developed these two arms

into very, very important aspects of their army.

- [Narrator] Thutmose has gathered more than 12,000

men under his command, the biggest army of its time.

He now can put them to use

because the pharaoh has received important news.

His aunt Hatshepsut is dead.

It is the end of an era.

Her memorial is a huge temple at Thebes.

Built in her own lifetime, it celebrates the peaceful era

of the most powerful woman in Egypt's history.

Her ships set out to distant lands,

and returned home, loaded with exotic woods,

gold, and slaves.

Hatshepsut is laid to rest in the Valley of the Kings.

According to custom,

the country mourns the regent's death for 70 days.

And that gives Egypt's enemies to the north-east

the opportunity they've been waiting for.

It was time to join forces.

- With Hatshepsut's sickening,

the whole world began to know it.

I mean, there was communication.

And so it would appear to those forces

that wanted to get back into Egypt

that now was the time.

- [Narrator] A powerful coalition of enemy princes

gathers close to Megiddo, ready to strike west.

For years, Thutmose has failed to take action

against the Asian threat.

Now, he has to act swiftly to forestall the enemy,

by attacking first.

The pharaoh leads his army north-east from Memphis

through 400 kilometers of barren, hostile landscape

to Gaza, in Canaan.

The desert has protected the Egyptians

for thousands of years.

Now they have to cross it.

They form a gigantic column,

12,000 men and 2,400 animals.

An army this size needs regular supplies,

including 50,000 liters of fresh water every day.

Until recently, no one knew how they managed it.

But new discoveries reveal the level of foresight

and planning the Egyptians invested

in these desert campaigns.

Ancient stone route-markers

and millions of pottery fragments

strewn in remote parts of the Sahara

reveal forgotten trade routes.

Surprisingly, the ancient Egyptians

had no camels to make the journey.

They had to rely on oxen and donkeys.

And so they developed a sophisticated water-supply system.

Huge caravans headed out in front of the army,

loaded with thousands of liters of water,

creating artificial rest stops in the desert.

Every 70 kilometers, these advance units

would set up stores of water,

providing vitally needed refreshments

for the following troops.

Today, the millions of pottery fragments

clearly indicate the ancient trade routes

through the Sahara.

They demonstrate the unquestioned coordination

and cooperation so typical of ancient Egypt.

After ten days, Thutmose and his army reach Palestine.

They have defeated the desert of Sinai.

But 11 days' strenuous marching

still separate them from their target,

Megiddo.

A fortified town perched strategically on a hilltop

in modern-day Israel.

Its lofty position makes sneak attacks against it

virtually impossible.

Today, fields carpet the area.

Then, it was a vital part of the trade route.

It was here that Thutmose's enemies gathered.

- If you're just here at Megiddo,

you can command the Jezreel Valley.

And if you command the valley,

you command this whole region.

So Megiddo is an extremely strategic place.

Thutmose III knew it, so did the Canaanite rebels.

That's why they meet here.

It's not only a great place to fight

but whoever wins controls the entire area.

- [Narrator] Thutmose's army

is just 30 kilometers from Megiddo.

But now the Carmel Mountains stand in their way.

The pharaoh faces three choices.

He can bypass the rugged hills,

taking the northern or the southern route.

Or, he can attempt to cross them, head on.

While the soldiers rest,

Thutmose summons his generals to a war council.

The mountains are treacherous, he is told.

Crossing them is a fool's errand.

His generals are quite clear about it.

The soldiers have already endured a four-week march.

Traversing the mountain would only

exhaust them before the coming battle.

But Thutmose sees it differently, more strategically.

The pharaoh's plan of action at this crucial moment

is immortalized on the temple walls of Karnak.

So important was his decision

that the fate of Egypt depended on it.

At moments like this, history is made.

- As we see in this hieroglyphic record here,

which actually are excerpts from the king's own diary.

Pharaoh said "No, I am going to go through the narrow pass.

"so as not to give any impression to the enemy

"that I am weak or cowardly."

- [Narrator] Thutmose orders the advance,

straight over the mountains.

A narrow and extended column of troops

snakes its way uphill.

Dismantled chariots slow their progress.

As they crawl over the rocks,

the troops are vulnerable to attack.

But Thutmose knows it's too late to turn back.

There's no time for second-guessing.

His men follow without question, but surely some believe

they are marching to their deaths.

The pharaoh suspects the enemy's leader,

Canaanite King of Kadesh,

positioned his troops along the northern

and southern approaches to Megiddo.

He can only hope the king

left the mountain route undefended.

The Egyptian troops struggle

as the mountain pass squeezes tighter at every corner.

Any moment now, the coalition forces could attack.

The route is almost impassable.

The soldiers barely make any progress.

As tempers fray, Pharaoh is forced to acknowledge

this may be a terrible mistake.

But, miraculously, the Egyptians reach the end of the pass.

Ahead of them spreads the Plain of Megiddo.

They made it past this obstacle

but the hardest work still lies ahead.

The crucial battle is about to begin.

At daybreak, the Egyptians launch a surprise attack

on the enemy camp.

Too late, the King of Kadesh realizes

that he's been outwitted.

He has allowed Thutmose and his 12,000 troops

to cross the mountains unimpeded.

He has seriously underestimated

the pharaoh's ability as a war leader.

It spells disaster as the Egyptians

hopelessly outnumber the Canaanite units on the plain.

With no time to call for reinforcements,

the Canaanite coalition must retreat.

The victorious Egyptians

seem to be entering a deserted enemy camp.

In fact, the King of Kadesh is waiting for the chance

to follow his fleeing troops to safety.

Suddenly, the moment for the escape arrives

as greed gets the better of Thutmose's army.

Instead of pursuing the enemy,

the Egyptian troops stay behind to plunder the camp,

to the fury of their general and emperor.

In Pharaoh's own words, Thutmose III's own words,

taken from his daybook,

which we see here in this hieroglyphic text,

he said "If only my army had not given its attention

"to the plundering of the enemy camp.

"Megiddo would have been taken in a single day."

Thutmose has won his first great battle.

But his inexperience and his troops' lack of discipline

have let the enemy escape.

As the Egyptians gather their loot,

the Canaanite coalition holes up inside Megiddo.

Throughout its long history,

Megiddo has been a formidable fortress.

Today, a team of students excavates the city,

level by level.

They dig through the sand

of thousands of years of civilization,

before reaching the city foundations

from the time of Thutmose III.

The fragments of pottery they collect

are the best way to date the different layers.

When they find foundations

from more than 3,000 years ago,

they reconstruct the shape of the fortress

and of the buildings inside.

It turns out that Megiddo was not a fortress

with great defensive walls.

They weren't necessary.

- There was a palace in a certain part of the city.

We know where the gate was.

We know where the temple was.

So the two most important components

of a city like this,

their location is well known.

And then we know that there was no major fortification

surrounding this site,

but houses built connected to each other,

and forming some sort of a belt of houses

which gave protection to the people inside.

- [Narrator] Megiddo's fortified houses

perched atop a steep hill

protect the King of Kadesh and his men.

According to ancient sources,

the siege lasts for seven months.

How they could hold out for so long

has always been a mystery.

Until archeologists discovered remnants

of a sophisticated supply system.

A huge tunnel, dug deep into the mountain,

supplied the city with water.

Thutmose III says they held out for seven months,

so they obviously had enough water and enough food.

Now, what he doesn't say

is how they finally captured the city.

They must have breached the walls,

they must have knocked down the city gates

or they paid somebody to open up the gates.

Something very common in antiquity,

they must have done.

- [Narrator] Whatever happened, Megiddo finally fell.

The Egyptians at last defeat their enemies.

The King of Kadesh and his allies

are brought before the pharaoh.

It's time for Thutmose to show his skills as statesman,

to find a way to rule this conquered territory

so far away from his capital in Thebes.

Challenging the pharaoh is like blasphemy.

Violators can expect no mercy.

The generals demand their enemies be put to death.

But the King of Kadesh begs for the lives of his family.

Once more, Thutmose ignores his generals

and follows his own instincts dealing with his enemies.

- At that point, what happened

became standard imperial practice for four centuries.

They were forced to take an oath immediately,

never again to rebel against Pharaoh and Egypt.

At the same time they were,

it was made plain to them that they had to hand in taxes,

the same kind of taxes

that the Egyptian peasants had to hand in,

whenever Pharaoh or his ministers asked for them.

And finally, they were obliged

to give up their young children.

- [Narrator] Thutmose spares the lives of the rebel leaders.

But he sends their children to Egypt as hostages.

They will guarantee that their fathers

never again disobey the pharaoh's commands.

On the Nile, they will be raised as Egyptians.

The girls will stay in Egypt.

The boys will one day return to their homeland

as vassal kings in the service of the pharaoh.

- As an Egyptian, if you're trying to conquer this region,

it makes much more sense to capture the cities

and then turn them into an Egyptian capital city,

an Egyptian stronghold, and then rule it,

which is what they do.

They rule this area, they rule Canaan

for the next 300 or 400 years from cities like Jerusalem,

like Megiddo, like others.

It makes perfect sense.

Why would you destroy it

when it makes much more sense to occupy it?

- [Narrator] Thutmose returns home in triumph,

proving himself a worthy pharaoh

and a powerful general.

Throughout the land, Egyptians hail the victory

over the King of Kadesh and the conquest of Megiddo.

Priests throw open the doors

to the sanctuaries of the imperial gods.

The spoils of war, the enemy's gold,

are offered to the god

who made this victory possible.

Amun, supreme god of the kingdom

and of the fledgling empire.

In Thebes, the capital. life feels safer, more secure.

But that feeling is deceptive.

The main enemy, the Mitanni,

have by no means been vanquished.

And they are plotting their revenge.

Thutmose tightens his hold on Canaan.

But his victory is fragile.

He decides to crush the Mitanni in their own country.

- He did it only after the first four or five campaigns

that consolidated his hold on Palestine,

what we would call today Palestine, in the south.

Then he directed his next campaigns

against the Lebanese coast.

And to do that, it would be much more useful,

and easier, perhaps, to load his army into transports

and send them by water.

Ancient records show that Thutmose planned

a land-sea campaign against the Mitanni.

But archeologists weren't convinced it was possible.

Hundreds of model boats found in tombs

and countless temple reliefs

show how important ships were

to the lives of every Egyptian.

But could they sail the high seas?

- We know, for example, that Thutmose III and his men

are in contact with Crete, with mainland Greece.

At this time, you can only get there by ship.

So we've got the representations on the walls

of Rekhmire and other officials of Thutmose III

showing the ships docked at the Egyptian ports.

- Despite images and inscriptions,

there was no archeological proof

that Egyptians could build seagoing ships.

Then, a few years ago beside the Red Sea,

researchers discovered remnants

of an Egyptian sea port,

one of only two ever found.

A network of at least seven galleries

dug deep into fossilized coral.

Tangible evidence that Egyptians

could not only sail on the Nile but also on the open sea.

International experts found pottery,

the remains of ships' timbers,

and texts recording state-sponsored trading ventures.

But the caves held an even bigger surprise.

Deep inside these storehouses,

scientists found the proof.

Cargo and equipment left by Egyptian sailors.

Hundreds of meters of ancient ships' ropes,

remains of a seagoing people.

- The Egyptians built cargo ships

that were capable of long journeys

hundreds of years before Thutmose III.

- [Narrator] Marine archeologist Cheryl Ward

has excavated sections of wooden planks.

She needs just a few fragments from the stern

to reconstruct the entire ship.

These vessels were much sturdier

and bigger than the boats used on the Nile.

Each ship was made from 20 trees.

It could carry 40 people and 17 tons of freight.

With 14-meter-wide sails,

the ship could travel at 6 knots,

three times faster than donkeys on land.

- Another reason this piece of wood is really special

is that it's got great examples of the way

the Egyptians held their ships together.

They used big pieces of wood we call tenons

and they fit inside holes in each plank.

We see the ends of each tenon here.

They're in pairs, and you can imagine

another plank jammed up here next to it

with these great pieces of wood holding it together.

There's also here what we call a ligature.

They threaded strips of copper through here like ribbon

and tied the end of another plank to it,

so that the seam between that plank

and the keel was as tight as possible.

- [Narrator] This construction-kit approach made it possible

to easily dismantle the ships,

just like the Egyptian chariots.

Sailors could transport the pieces over land

and reassemble the ship at their destination.

That destination was the empire of the Mitanni,

Thutmose's arch-enemy, 900 kilometers from Egypt.

Thutmose sails north with 170 ships and a huge army.

They disembark, carrying a few disassembled ships with them,

to cross the River Euphrates.

Gathering on the far side of the river,

the Egyptian soldiers prepare for war.

But the great battle the Egyptians geared up for

never happens.

The Mitanni have retreated into the Asian plains.

Thutmose destroys their cities,

staking his territory and declaring victory.

His war diaries end soon after his Euphrates campaign.

A royal stele on the Euphrates shore

marks the furthest boundary of his empire.

Thutmose has reached the geographical limits

of his military power.

Egypt too will never reach further.

At last, Thutmose and his soldiers can return home.

No Egyptian wants to live here, so far from Egypt.

The Nile is the center of their world.

Paradise on earth.

And so this ancient superpower kept mainly to itself,

expanding only when it was reasonable and necessary.

- Thutmose III seems to exemplify that old Egyptian interest

in surrounding territories as a sphere of influence only.

Not a formal empire but just a sphere of influence

in which the Egyptian messenger can go

and tell the local chief, I want so and so,

you have to comply with Pharaoh's wishes.

And the chief will say yes, sir, yes, sir, and do so.

- [Narrator] Once again,

Thutmose returns to Thebes in triumph,

expanding the Egyptian sphere of influence as never before.

No pharaoh's power had ever been greater.

Thutmose has accomplished his life's work

and banished the danger of foreign domination.

To thank the gods for his victories,

he extends the Temple of Karnak.

And he decorates the walls with images

of the exotic animals and plants

he discovered on his campaigns.

Like all of his ancestors,

Thutmose is portrayed in the temple reliefs

as the conqueror of Egypt's enemies.

But he was more than that.

He used his victories to link Egypt with the outside world

for the first time in 1500 years.

- During the New Kingdom,

when Egypt became a much more international power

and extended its authority far into western Asia,

into the Mediterranean, into the Sudan,

this gradually changed.

Egypt became much more aware of foreigners

and became more accepting of them.

- [Narrator] Thutmose is remembered

as the greatest Egyptian general

and as an astute politician.

His 54-year reign over 3 million people

was unprecedented and brilliant.

By understanding the limits to foreign conquest,

Thutmose made Egypt more stable and secure than ever before.

Egypt could now enter its Golden Age.

(dramatic music)