gained access to important commodities such as cedar from Lebanon and luxury materials such as lapis lazuli and turquoise. The artwork produced during the New Kingdom falls into three broad periods: Pre-Amarna, Amarna, and Ramesside. Although stylistic changes as a result of shifts in power and variation of religious ideals occurred, the statuary and relief work throughout the New Kingdom continued to embody the main principles of Egyptian art: frontality and axiality, hierarchy of scale, and composite composition. Pre-Amarna The Pre-Amarna period, the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty of the New Kingdom, was marked by the growing power of Egypt as an expansive empire. The artwork reflects a combination of Middle Kingdom techniques and subjects with the newly accessed materials and styles of foreign lands. A large portion of the art and architecture of the Pre-Amarna period was produced by Queen Hatshepshut, who led a widespread building campaign to all gods during her reign from 1473 to 1458 B.C.E.. The queen made significant additions to the temple at Karnak, undertook the construction of an extensive mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri, and produced a prolific amount of statuary and relief work in hard stone. The extent of these building projects was made possible by the centralization of power in Thebes and reopening of trade routes by previous New Kingdom ruler Ahmose I. The Queen's elaborate mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri provides many well-preserved examples of the artwork produced during the Pre-Amarna period. The massive three-level, colonnaded temple was built into the cliffs of Thebes and adorned with extensive painted relief. Subjects of these reliefs ranged from traditional funerary images and legitimization of Hatshepsut as the divine ruler of Egypt to battle and expedition scenes in foreign lands. The temple also housed numerous statues of the Queen and gods, particularly Amun-ra, some of which were colossal in scale. The artwork from Hatshepshut's reign is trademarked by the re-integration of Northern culture and style as a result of the reunification of Egypt. Thutmoses III, the predecessor to the Queen, also commissioned vast amounts of large-scale artwork and by his death Egypt was the most powerful empire in the world. State-Sponsored Temples During the New Kingdom - the 18th Dynasty especially - it was common for Kings to commission large and elaborate temples dedicated to the major gods of Egypt. These structures, built from limestone or sandstone (materials more permanent than the mud brick