THUTMOSE III

died 1426 BC Egyptian king of the 18th dynasty (reigned 147926 BC), often regarded as the greatest of the rulers of ancient Egypt. Thutmose III was a skilled warrior who brought the Egyptian empire to the zenith of its power by conquering all of Syria, crossing the Euphrates to defeat the Mitannians, and penetrating south along the Nile to Napata in the Sudan. He also built a great number of temples and monuments to commemorate his deeds. Additional reading There is no separate life of Thutmose III. His career and achievements are described in some detail in general histories such as J.H. Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest (1905, reprinted many times); and, more recently, A.H. Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs (1961). The newly revised edition of The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 2, part 1 (1971), contains chapters by William C. Hayes on the early part of the 18th dynasty; and by Margaret S. Drower on the Egyptian Challenge and Egypt in Asia. The bibliographies to these chapters are very full. The text of Thutmose's annals and other inscriptions may be found in J.H. Breasted (ed.), Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. 2 (1906, reissued 1962). For a better translation of the more important texts, see J.B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Illustrating the Old Testament, 3rd ed. with suppl. (1969).