His military campaigns gave rise to an era of peace and economic prosperity that reduced the power of regional rulers and led to a revival in craftwork, trade, and urban development.

He also relentlessly pushed his kingdom's expansion into Nubia (from 1866 to 1863 BC) where he erected massive river forts including Buhen, Semna, Shalfak and Toshka at Uronarti.

[8] His Year 8 stela at Semna documents his victories against the Nubians, through which he is thought to have made safe the southern frontier, preventing further incursions into Egypt.

[9] Another great stela from Semna dated to the third month of Year 16 of his reign mentions his military activities against both Nubia and Canaan.

In it, he admonished his future successors to maintain the new border that he had created: Year 16, third month of winter: the king made his southern boundary at Heh.

[12] His final campaign, which was in his Year 19, was less successful because the king's forces were caught due to the Nile being lower than normal.

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.

[22]Wegner stresses that it is unlikely that Amenemhat III, Senusret's son and successor, would still be working on his father's temple nearly two decades into his own reign.

Wegner's hypothesis is rejected by some scholars, such as Pierre Tallet and Harco Willems; according to them, it is more likely that such a coregency never occurred, and that the Year 39 control note still refers to Amenemhat III, who may have ordered some additions to Senusret's monuments.

[26] This ideology includes protecting the unity of the two kingdoms, extending the borders of Egypt, striking fear in Egyptian enemies, and ensuring the success of his subjects.

[35] It would later develop into a center for funerary complexes and would include 11 kings whose rules date from the thirteenth century and the Second Intermediate Period.

On them, the king is depicted at different ages and, in particular, on the aged ones he sports a strikingly somber expression: the eyes are protruding from hollow eye sockets with pouches and lines under them, the mouth and lips have a grimace of bitterness, and the ears are enormous and protruding forward.

In sharp contrast with the even-exaggerated realism of the head and, regardless of his age, the rest of the body is idealized as forever young and muscular, in the more classical pharaonic fashion.

[36][37] Scholars could only make assumptions about the reasons why Senusret III chose to have himself portrayed in such a unique way, and polarized on two diverging opinions.

[36] Some argue that Senusret wanted to be represented as a lonely and disenchanted ruler, human before divine, consumed by worries and by his responsibilities.

[38][39][40] At the opposite, other scholars suggested that the statues originally would convey the idea of a dreadful tyrant able to see and hear everything under his strict control.

[41] More recently, it has been suggested that the purpose of such peculiar portraiture was not to represent realism, but rather, to reveal the perceived nature of royal power at the time of Senusret's reign.

[43] Some biblical scholars consider Senusret the pharaoh mentioned in Genesis 39-47, who elevated Joseph to a high administrative post, answerable directly to him.