The New Kingdom of Egypt: Empire, Power, and the Warrior Pharaohs
The New Kingdom of Egypt (c. 1550–1069 BCE) was Egypt’s imperial age, the era of the warrior pharaohs Ahmose I, Thutmose I, Thutmose III, Seti I, and Ramesses II; of the religious revolution of Akhenaten and the brief reign of Tutankhamun; and of the great temples of Karnak, Luxor, and Abu Simbel. The pharaohs of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties extended Egyptian power from Nubia in the south to the Euphrates in the north. It is the most familiar chapter of pharaonic history. For a broader overview, start with our guide to ancient Egyptian civilization.
The Founding of the New Kingdom
The New Kingdom was born from a long war of liberation. For nearly a century, the Hyksos, a people of mixed Levantine origin who had seized the Delta, had ruled northern Egypt from their capital at Avaris. The Theban princes who ruled the south had been reduced to vassals, paying tribute to a foreign dynasty.
The expulsion of the Hyksos around 1550 BCE, the work of the Theban prince Ahmose I, inaugurated the Eighteenth Dynasty and the New Kingdom.
The New Kingdom pharaohs, having learned the lessons of foreign occupation, were determined never to be caught off guard again. They built a permanent professional army, equipped with bronze weapons, horse-drawn chariots, and composite bows borrowed from the Hyksos. They forged alliances with foreign powers. They created a centralized state that could mobilize resources on a scale no previous Egyptian dynasty had ever attempted.
The Eighteenth Dynasty: From Conquest to Reform to Revival
The Eighteenth Dynasty (c. 1550–1295 BCE) is one of the most dramatic royal families in world history. It opened with a line of warrior pharaohs, was interrupted by one of ancient Egypt’s most extraordinary queens, then collapsed into religious revolution, and finally revived into the brief but glorious reign of Tutankhamun.
Thutmose I and the Egyptian Empire
Ahmose I was followed by a string of aggressive pharaohs: Amenhotep I, Thutmose I, and Thutmose II. Thutmose I, in particular, was a conqueror. He pushed Egyptian control south into Nubia, north into Syria, and led his armies as far as the Euphrates. He also began the tradition of building a rock-cut tomb in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of Thebes, a tradition that would last for the next four hundred years.
Hatshepsut and the Female Pharaoh
The most surprising reign of the early Eighteenth Dynasty belonged to Hatshepsut, the widow of Thutmose II who ruled as pharaoh in her own right for about twenty years. Hatshepsut is the first confirmed female pharaoh of ancient Egypt, and one of the most successful rulers of the dynasty.
She dressed as a king, wore the traditional false beard, and had herself depicted in the typical striding pose of a male pharaoh. Her famous temple at Deir el-Bahari, the Temple of Hatshepsut, is one of the architectural wonders of the ancient world, set into the cliff face in three terraced colonnades. She also sent a famous trading expedition to the Land of Punt, whose detailed reliefs show exotic animals, incense trees, and foreign peoples. To explore her life in depth, see our guide to Hatshepsut and the long-tail page on a woman who became pharaoh.
After her death, her successor Thutmose III attempted to erase her memory from the historical record, chiseling out her name and image from monuments across Egypt. Modern Egyptologists have worked to reconstruct her reign from the surviving fragments. One of the more interesting botanical details: the Punt reliefs include what look like myrrh trees, and if the species identification is right, they are the earliest known depiction of the plant in Egyptian art.
Thutmose III: The Napoleon of Egypt
Thutmose III, Hatshepsut’s stepson and co-regent, is often called the Napoleon of ancient Egypt. During his reign, he mounted at least seventeen military campaigns into Syria-Palestine, repeatedly defeating a coalition of Canaanite princes led by the king of Kadesh. The Battle of Megiddo is one of the earliest battles in world history for which we have a detailed tactical account. By the end of his reign, Egypt controlled Palestine, the Phoenician coast, and a large part of Syria, the largest empire Egypt would ever possess.
Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, and the Amarna Revolution
Thutmose III was followed by a succession of relatively peaceful rulers, ending in the long and prosperous reign of Amenhotep III, under whom Egypt reached the height of its wealth. His son Akhenaten attempted one of the most radical religious reforms in world history: the suppression of the traditional gods and the elevation of the sun disk, Aten, as the sole god of Egypt. Akhenaten moved the capital to a new city, Akhetaten (modern Amarna), and ordered the old gods’ names chiseled out of the monuments. To explore the broader religious framework, see our guides to Egyptian mythology and beliefs and Egyptian gods and goddesses.
The Amarna revolution was short-lived. After Akhenaten’s death, his young son Tutankhamun, only about nine years old when he came to the throne, was guided by his advisers to abandon the new religion, return the capital to Thebes, and restore the old gods. His reign was brief, and he died before his twentieth birthday, but his tomb, discovered almost intact by Howard Carter in 1922, has made him the most famous pharaoh of them all. See our guides to Tutankhamun, the discovery by Howard Carter, and the so-called Tutankhamun curse.
The Nineteenth Dynasty: Empire, Setbacks, and Triumph
The Nineteenth Dynasty (c. 1295–1186 BCE) saw Egypt at the height of its military power and at the start of its long decline.
Ramesses I, Seti I, and the Restoration
The founder of the dynasty, Ramesses I, was already old when he came to the throne and reigned only two years. His son Seti I launched a series of campaigns in Syria-Palestine to restore Egyptian control over territories lost during the Amarna period. He also began work on a magnificent temple at Abydos, the cult center of Osiris. The famous Battle of Kadesh was fought by his son.
Ramesses II: The Great
Ramesses II is the most famous pharaoh of the New Kingdom and of all Egyptian history. He reigned for sixty-six years, had more than one hundred children, left more colossal statues behind him than any other pharaoh, and is the pharaoh traditionally identified with the biblical story of the Exodus. (Modern scholars debate the identification, but the connection is famous.)
Ramesses II fought the Hittite Empire for control of Syria. The climactic battle was the Battle of Kadesh against the Hittite king Muwatalli II, in about 1274 BCE, one of the earliest battles in history for which we have a detailed account from both sides. Although the battle was a tactical draw, Ramesses II was able to claim victory, and he commemorated it on the walls of every major temple he built.
Ramesses II is also the builder of the magnificent rock-cut temple at Abu Simbel in southern Egypt, with its four colossal seated statues of the king guarding the entrance, and the smaller temple beside it dedicated to his favorite wife, Queen Nefertari.
Merneptah and the End of the Nineteenth Dynasty
Ramesses II was succeeded by Merneptah, his thirteenth son, who was already in his sixties when he came to the throne. Merneptah repelled a major invasion by the Libu and the Sea Peoples, the first mention of the Sea Peoples in Egyptian records, and his reign ended the dynasty.
The Twentieth Dynasty: The Last Great Age
The Twentieth Dynasty (c. 1186–1069 BCE) saw the last great rulers of the New Kingdom and the beginning of its final collapse.
The first three pharaohs of the dynasty, Setnakhte, Ramesses III, and Ramesses IV, maintained the appearance of imperial power. Ramesses III, in particular, repelled a major invasion by the Sea Peoples in 1177 BCE, one of the most consequential events in the ancient world, since similar invasions brought down the Hittite Empire and several other great powers of the Late Bronze Age. The mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu preserves detailed reliefs of the battles.
But the Twentieth Dynasty also saw the slow decay of central authority. The high priests of Amun at Thebes grew increasingly powerful, eventually controlling much of Upper Egypt. The viziers and other officials became hereditary positions. Tomb robberies, recorded in judicial papyri from the reign of Ramesses IX, were epidemic. By the time the dynasty ended around 1069 BCE, the pharaohs ruled little more than the Delta.
Society, Economy, and Daily Life
The New Kingdom was a more complex society than the Old or Middle Kingdoms. Egypt now had a permanent professional army, an imperial bureaucracy, and a vast network of foreign trade. The temples of Amun-Ra at Karnak and Luxor were among the largest religious institutions in the ancient world, owning vast estates, employing thousands of workers, and storing grain for the royal armies. For a deeper look at the role of queens in this period, see our long-tail page on the queens of the New Kingdom.
The presence of foreign peoples (Nubians, Asiatics, Libyans, Greeks, and others) increased dramatically. Many were prisoners of war who were settled in military colonies; some were merchants; some rose to high office. The royal court employed foreign bodyguards, foreign charioteers, and foreign wives.
For the broader arguments about why this era is considered a high point, see our long-tail page on why the New Kingdom is considered Egypt’s golden age.
Was the New Kingdom a Real Empire?
A question specialists still argue about is whether the New Kingdom “empire” was a real empire or a series of military campaigns held together by force. My own view is that it was a genuine empire, but a thin one. The Egyptians did not rule Palestine and Syria the way the Romans would later rule Gaul; they did not garrison the whole country, did not impose Egyptian law on the local population, and did not extract the kind of revenue that would be needed to administer an integrated province. What they did was maintain a network of client princes, garrison cities (notably the fortress of Zaru in Sinai and the line of mudbrick forts in Nubia), and a monopoly on chariot warfare that kept the local kings in line. It is what political scientists now call a “hegemony,” not an empire in the Roman sense. Most of the writing for a general reader treats the New Kingdom as if it were a modern state exercising sovereignty; that overstates the case. The most useful single treatment of the question I have read is O’Connor and Silverman’s work on the Egyptian empire in the New Kingdom, and it is in roughly the same camp.
Religion and the Afterlife
The New Kingdom is the era when many of the most familiar features of Egyptian religion took their final form. The cult of Amun-Ra reached its greatest political influence under the Eighteenth Dynasty, so much so that one pharaoh, Akhenaten, tried to replace it with the cult of the Aten. The Amun priesthood, after Akhenaten’s death, was one of the wealthiest and most powerful institutions in the ancient world.
The afterlife beliefs of the New Kingdom also grew more elaborate. The royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings were decorated with scenes and spells drawn from the Book of the Dead, the Amduat, the Book of Gates, and other funerary texts. The bodies of the pharaohs were preserved by mummification on an unprecedented scale.
The Fall of the New Kingdom
The New Kingdom did not end with a single dramatic event. It petered out over a period of decades. The high priests of Amun at Thebes ruled Upper Egypt in all but name. The pharaohs, ruling from the Delta, fought them for control. The Libyan Meshwesh, who had served as mercenaries in the Egyptian army, eventually seized the throne. Around 1069 BCE, the last New Kingdom ruler, Ramesses XI, died, and Egypt entered the Third Intermediate Period, a long era of fragmentation that would last until the Late Period of Egypt. Aidan Dodson’s Monarchs of the Nile is the best concise dynastic survey in English.