Khakhaure Senusret III (also written as Senwosret III or Sesostris III) was a pharaoh of Egypt. He ruled from 1878 BC to 1839 BC, and was the fifth monarch of the Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. He was a Great Pharaoh of the twelfth Dynasty and is supposed to be the most powerful Egyptian ruler of this time. For this, he is regarded as one of the sources for the legend about Sesostris.

Senusret III cleared a navigable canal through the first cataract and relentlessly pushed his kingdom's expansion deep into Nubia (from 1866 to 1863 BC) where he erected massive river forts including Buhen, Semna and Toshka at Uronarti. He carried out at least 4 major campaigns deep into Nubia in his Year 8, 10, 16 and 19 respectively. His Year 8 stela at Semna documents his victories against the Nubians through which he thought having made safe the southern frontier, preventing further incursions into Egypt. Another great stela from Semna mentions his military activities against both Nubia and Palestine. In it, he admonished his future successors to maintain the new border which he had created:

"Now as for every son of mine who shall establish this boundary, which my Majesty has made, he is my son, he is born of his Majesty, the likeness of a son who is the champion of his father, who maintains the boundary of him who begat him. Now as for him who shall relax it, and shall not fight for it; he is not my son, he is not born to me."

His final campaign in Year 19 was less successful because the king's forces were trapped by a low Nile current and had to retreat and abandon their campaign to avoid being trapped in hostile Nubian territory. Such was his forceful nature and immense influence that Senusret III was worshipped as a god in Nubia by later generations. Jacques Morgan, in 1894, found rock inscriptions near Sehel Island documenting his digging of a canal under the king. Senusret III erected a temple and town in Abydos, and another temple in Medamud.

His pyramid was constructed at Dahshur. A papyrus in the Berlin Museum shows Year 20 of his reign is equivalent to Year 1 of his son Amenemhat III. This means that he initiated a co-regency with his son in this year. According to Josef W. Wegner, a Year 39 hieratic control note was recovered on a white limestone block from

a securely defined deposit of construction debris produced from the building of the Senwosret III mortuary temple. The fragment itself is part of the remnants of the temple construction. This deposit provides evidence for the date of construction of the mortuary temple of Senwosret III at Abydos.

Wegner stresses that it is unlikely that Amenemhet III, Senusret's son and successor would still be working on his father's temple nearly 4 decades into his own reign and notes that the only possible solution for the block's existence here is that Senusret III had a 39 Year reign, with the final 20 years in coregency with his son Amenemhet III. Since the project was associated with a project of Senusret III, his Regnal Year was presumably used to date the block, rather than Year 20 of Amenemhet III. This implies that Senusret was still alive in the first 2 decades of his son's reign prior to his death.

Visually, Senusret III is known for his strikingly somber sculptures in which he appears careworn and grave.

* W. Grajetzki, The Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt: History,Archaeology and Society, Duckworth, London 2006 ISBN 0-7156-3435-6, 51-58

* Josef Wegner, The Nature and Chronology of the Senwosret III–Amenemhat III Regnal Succession: Some Considerations based on new evidence from the Mortuary Temple of Senwosret III at Abydos, JNES 55, Vol.4, (1996), pp.249-279

* Stela of Senusret III from Deir el-Bahri (hieroglyphic text in russian web-site)