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The height of Nubian political power in the region came during Egypt’s Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1750-1650 BC), when a foreign dynasty known as the “Hyksos” people were in control of northern Egypt. Though, the Nubians had extended their power from the Dongola Reach region around Kerma all the way north to the first cataract. <ref> Morkot, p. 62</ref> and were apparently not content with that as they were involved in an alliance with the Hyksos. <ref> Welsby, p. 12</ref> The Nubians probably had their eyes set on acquiring the region around Thebes, which also happened to be the home of the only native Egyptian dynasty at the time, but quickly had their plans destroyed when the Egyptian King Ahmose (reigned ca. 1552-1527 BC) came to power, initiating the Eighteenth Dynasty and the New Kingdom and putting Nubia once more into an inferior political position.

Nubia’s political ambitions took a dramatic turn for the worse when the Egyptian king Thutmose III (ruled ca. 1479-1425 BC) came to the throne. Thutmose III was a particularly active military pharaoh who is often compared to Julius Caesar. Most of Thutmose III’s recorded military campaigns were of his several Levant expeditions. Still, he did leave many textual and pictorial depictions of his campaigns into Nubia. He had a victory stela erected in the Nubian city of Gebel Barkal near the fourth cataract, indicating Egyptian influence, if not outright control, extended that far south during the New Kingdom. <ref> Bryan, Betsy. “The Eighteenth Dynasty before the Amarna Period.” In <i>The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt.</i> Edited by Ian Shaw. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 246</ref>