Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egyptian Civilization

Why the New Kingdom Is Considered Egypt's Golden Age

The military, economic, artistic, and religious achievements that make the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt, c. 1550–1069 BCE, the high point of pharaonic civilization.

Why the New Kingdom Is Considered Egypt’s Golden Age

The New Kingdom of Egypt (c. 1550–1069 BCE) is often called the golden age of ancient Egyptian civilization. It was the era of Egypt’s largest empire, its most powerful army, its most magnificent temples, and some of its most famous pharaohs: Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, Seti I, and Ramesses II. For a full overview, see our guide to the New Kingdom of Egypt.

Why a “Golden Age”?

Almost every civilization has been described as having a golden age. In Egyptian history, the term has been applied to the Old Kingdom (the age of the great pyramids), the Middle Kingdom (the age of literature and reunification), and the New Kingdom (the age of empire and monumental temple building). The New Kingdom is most often singled out because it combined the achievements of the earlier golden ages with something extra: a level of military and political power, and a sophistication of international diplomacy, that the Old and Middle Kingdoms never attained.

I want to register a small dissent here. The New Kingdom is the golden age for a popular audience because it is the most photogenic: the temples, the tombs, the gold of Tutankhamun, the colossal statues of Ramesses II. As a piece of intellectual and administrative culture, the Middle Kingdom is in my view the more interesting period, and the case for it is in Wilkinson’s The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt (2011), in Assmann’s writing, and in the older German tradition associated with Grapow and Erman. But for a “golden age” in the popular sense (temples, empire, famous rulers) the New Kingdom is the right answer.

The Military: From Liberation to Empire

The New Kingdom began with a war of liberation. Around 1550 BCE, a Theban prince named Ahmose I expelled the Hyksos, a people of mixed Levantine origin who had ruled the Delta for nearly a century, and reunified Egypt. The Hyksos left behind two important military technologies: the horse-drawn chariot and the composite bow, both quickly adopted by the Egyptians. The pharaohs of the early Eighteenth Dynasty built on these technologies to create the first professional army in Egyptian history. Thutmose I extended Egyptian power deep into Nubia and as far north as the Euphrates. Thutmose III, sometimes called the Napoleon of ancient Egypt, mounted at least seventeen campaigns into Syria-Palestine. By the end of his reign, Egypt controlled an empire from the Fifth Cataract in the south to the Euphrates in the north, the largest Egypt would ever be.

This military power was maintained throughout the New Kingdom. Seti I and Ramesses II fought major wars against the Hittite Empire for control of Syria, the most famous of which was the Battle of Kadesh around 1274 BCE, one of the earliest battles for which we have a detailed account from both sides. Ramesses III repelled a major invasion by the Sea Peoples in 1177 BCE, an event so consequential that it is sometimes seen as a cause of the Late Bronze Age collapse.

The Economy: Tribute, Trade, and the Temples of Amun

The New Kingdom economy was extraordinarily rich. Three sources of wealth stand out.

Tribute from foreign territories. Nubia, in particular, was a major source of gold. The New Kingdom pharaohs built a chain of fortresses and temples deep in Nubia, and the Tribute of the Rulers of Retjenu, a relief from the tomb of Rekhmire at Thebes, shows the wealth pouring in.

International trade. The Egyptian trading network extended up the Nile into Nubia, down the Red Sea to the Land of Punt, across the Sinai to the Levant, and along the Mediterranean coast to the Phoenicians. Hatshepsut’s famous expedition to Punt returned with frankincense, ebony, ivory, gold, and exotic animals. The Amarna Letters give a vivid picture of Egypt’s diplomatic relations with the great powers of the ancient world.

The temple economy. The great temples of the New Kingdom (Karnak, Luxor, Medinet Habu) were not just places of worship. They were major economic institutions, owning vast estates, employing thousands of workers, and storing grain for the royal armies.

Art, Architecture, and Engineering

The New Kingdom is, for many people, the high point of Egyptian art and architecture.

The Royal Tombs

The New Kingdom pharaohs abandoned the pyramid (partly because the Old Kingdom pyramids had been systematically looted) and cut their tombs into the cliffs of the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes. The tombs were decorated with scenes and spells drawn from the Book of the Dead, the Amduat, and the Book of Gates. The most famous royal tomb is that of Tutankhamun, discovered almost intact by Howard Carter in 1922. See our guides to Howard Carter’s discovery and the so-called Tutankhamun curse.

Mortuary Temples

Each New Kingdom pharaoh built a mortuary temple on the edge of the desert. The most impressive surviving example is the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple of Ramesses II at Thebes. Other remarkable examples include the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari and the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu.

Abu Simbel

The most spectacular monument is the great temple of Abu Simbel, built by Ramesses II in the far south, near the modern border with Sudan. The temple is carved into the cliff face and guarded by four colossal seated statues of the king, each more than 60 feet tall. The smaller temple, dedicated to Ramesses’ favorite wife Nefertari, is the only ancient Egyptian temple in which the statues of the queen are the same size as those of the pharaoh.

Karnak and Luxor

The temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak was expanded by virtually every pharaoh of the New Kingdom. The great hypostyle hall built by Seti I and Ramesses II contains 134 massive columns, the largest of which are 69 feet tall. The temple of Luxor, connected to Karnak by a processional way lined with sphinxes, was begun by Amenhotep III and completed by Ramesses II.

The Pharaohs: From Conquerors to Reformers to Builders

The New Kingdom is the era of the most familiar pharaohs of Egyptian history. The Eighteenth Dynasty produced a string of remarkable rulers: Ahmose I, the liberator; Hatshepsut, the woman who ruled as king; Thutmose III, the conqueror; Amenhotep III, the great builder; Akhenaten, the religious revolutionary; and Tutankhamun, the boy king. The Nineteenth Dynasty produced Seti I and Ramesses II, the latter so famous that he is the pharaoh most often mentioned in popular culture. The Twentieth Dynasty closed the era with Ramesses III, the last great pharaoh.

To explore the women of this period, see our long-tail page on the queens of the New Kingdom.

Religion: A New Theological Tradition

The New Kingdom is the era when Egyptian religion reached its most sophisticated form. The great theological traditions included:

  • The cult of Amun-Ra, the fusion of the older sun god Ra with the Theban god Amun, which became the state religion of the New Kingdom empire.
  • The Atenist heresy of Akhenaten, which attempted to replace traditional polytheism with the worship of a single solar deity, the Aten. The heresy failed, but it is one of the earliest experiments in monotheism in world history.
  • The Osirian afterlife, which reached its most elaborate form in the New Kingdom.
  • The international spread of the Egyptian gods. The cult of Isis, in particular, would eventually spread throughout the Greco-Roman world.

To explore these traditions, see our guides to Egyptian gods and goddesses, Egyptian mythology and beliefs, and mummies and the afterlife.

The Decline of the Golden Age

No golden age lasts forever. The first signs of trouble appeared in the late Twentieth Dynasty: the high priests of Amun at Thebes began to act like independent rulers, the imperial treasury was strained, and tomb robberies became epidemic. The last New Kingdom pharaoh, Ramesses XI, ruled around 1099–1069 BCE, and his reign was effectively the end of the unified state. After his death, Egypt split into a Libyan kingdom in the Delta and a Theban kingdom in the south, the start of the Third Intermediate Period. The country would not be reunified until the Late Period of Egypt.

The Legacy

The New Kingdom’s golden age has cast a long shadow. Almost everything most people “know” about ancient Egypt (the golden mask of Tutankhamun, the temples of Karnak and Luxor, the colossal statues of Ramesses II, the temples of Abu Simbel) comes from this period. The temples of Abu Simbel, which had to be moved in the 1960s to save them from the rising waters of Lake Nasser, became a global symbol of the importance of preserving cultural heritage. The New Kingdom did not last forever, but its achievements have lasted three thousand years.

One of the small things I find striking about the New Kingdom is the way its technology of statecraft became a kind of template for later Egyptian dynasties. The Late Period pharaohs who tried to restore Egyptian greatness, the Ptolemies who ruled from Alexandria, the modern Egyptian state itself, all leaned on the New Kingdom for legitimacy, in a way the Old Kingdom pyramids had never quite achieved. The New Kingdom is, in this sense, the Egypt that later civilizations kept trying to imitate.