Sesostris was the name of a legendary king of ancient Egypt.

According to Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus (who calls him Sesoosis), and Strabo, he conquered the whole world, even Scythia and Ethiopia, divided Egypt into administrative districts or nomes, was a great law-giver, and introduced a caste system into Egypt and the worship of Serapis. He has been considered a compound of Seti I and Rameses II, kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty.

In Manetho, however, he occupied the place of the second Senusret (formerly read Usertesen) of the Twelfth Dynasty, and his name is now usually viewed as a corruption of Senwosri. So far as is known, no Egyptian king penetrated a days journey beyond the Euphrates or into Asia Minor, or touched the continent of Europe. The kings of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties were the greatest conquerors that Egypt ever produced, and their records are clear on this point. Senusret III raided south Palestine and Ethiopia, and at Semna above the second cataract set up a stela of conquest that in its expressions recalls the stelae of Sesostris in Herodotus: Sesostris may, therefore, be the highly magnified portrait of this Pharaoh.

Khian, the powerful but poorly-documented Hyksos king of the Sixteenth dynasty of Egypt, whose prenomen might be pronounced Sweserenre, is perhaps a possible prototype, for objects inscribed with his name have been found from Baghdad to Knossos. Sesostris is evidently a mythical figure created to satisfy the pride of the Egyptians in their ancient achievements, after they had come into contact with the great conquerors of Assyria and Persia. When we recollect that the Nubian Taharqa of the 7th century BC, who was hopelessly worsted by the Assyrians, was credited by Megasthenes (4th century) and Strabo with having extended his conquests as far as India and the Pillars of Hercules, it is not surprising if the dim figures of antiquity were magnified to a less degree.

In the case of Taharqa, the miscellaneous levies which he employed himself and those which composed the Egyptian and Assyrian armies opposed to him, and the lands that Egypt and Nubia traded with, must all have been counted, partly through misunderstanding and partly through wilful perversion, to his empire.

Bibliography

Herodotus ii. 102-Ill; Diod. Sic. 1. 53-59; Strabo xv. p. 687; Kurt, Sethe, Sesostris, 1900, in his Unters. z. Gesch. u. Alterlumskunde Agyptens, tome ii.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.