Thutmose III baby. Under him (and his aunt Hatshepsut, who was the real Pharaoh during his first twenty or so years and he was like a military commander for her) New Kingdom Egypt reached its height of power. Dude was a brilliant strategist whose feints and tactics were so amazing that a British general during WWI in the exact same area as one of Thutmose III's crushing victories (Battle of Megiddo) just followed the exact same tactics and also achieved a crushing victory at his Battle of Megiddo. 3000 years later and his strategy still worked perfectly. That's pretty impressive.
Otherwise I actually really like the Hyksos. Avaris seemed like a really bustling Bronze Age trading entrepôt that was open to the Mediterranean and its world system in a way that Egypt, even under the New Kingdom, never quite seemed to manage. Akhenaten is also pretty cool, there's something always attractive to me about crushing the power of a priestly bureaucracy to declare yourself a god.
Thutmose III baby. Under him (and his aunt Hatshepsut, who was the real Pharaoh during his first twenty or so years and he was like a military commander for her) New Kingdom Egypt reached its height of power. Dude was a brilliant strategist whose feints and tactics were so amazing that a British general during WWI in the exact same area as one of Thutmose III's crushing victories (Battle of Megiddo) just followed the exact same tactics and also achieved a crushing victory at his Battle of Megiddo. 3000 years later and his strategy still worked perfectly. That's pretty impressive.
Otherwise I actually really like the Hyksos. Avaris seemed like a really bustling Bronze Age trading entrepôt that was open to the Mediterranean and its world system in a way that Egypt, even under the New Kingdom, never quite seemed to manage. Akhenaten is also pretty cool, there's something always attractive to me about crushing the power of a priestly bureaucracy to declare yourself a god.