<P> Senusret III (1878--1839 BC) was a warrior king, leading his troops deep into Nubia, and built a series of massive forts throughout the country to establish Egypt's formal boundaries with the unconquered areas of its territory . Amenemhat III (1860--1815 BC) is considered the last great pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom . </P> <P> Egypt's population began to exceed food production levels during the reign of Amenemhat III, who then ordered the exploitation of the Faiyum and increased mining operations in the Sinai Peninsula . He also invited settlers from Western Asia to Egypt to labor on Egypt's monuments . Late in his reign, the annual floods along the Nile began to fail, further straining the resources of the government . The Thirteenth Dynasty and Fourteenth Dynasty witnessed the slow decline of Egypt into the Second Intermediate Period, in which some of the settlers invited by Amenemhat III would seize power as the Hyksos . </P> <P> The Second Intermediate Period marks a period when Egypt once again fell into disarray between the end of the Middle Kingdom and the start of the New Kingdom . This period is best known as the time the Hyksos made their appearance in Egypt, the reigns of its kings comprising the Fifteenth Dynasty . </P> <P> The Thirteenth Dynasty proved unable to hold onto the long land of Egypt, and a provincial family of Levantine descent located in the marshes of the eastern Delta at Avaris broke away from the central authority to form the Fourteenth Dynasty . The splintering of the land most likely happened shortly after the reigns of the powerful Thirteenth Dynasty pharaohs Neferhotep I and Sobekhotep IV c. 1720 BC . </P>

How did you become a government official in ancient egypt