The New Kingdom inherited and mastered the military technology of the Hyksos period - the horse-drawn chariot, the composite bow and bronze weapons such as the khepesh (sickle-sword) - and built a permanent, professional force organised into divisions under the king as commander-in-chief. This army created the empire: Thutmose I reached the Euphrates, Thutmose III fought seventeen campaigns and won the Battle of Megiddo (c. 1457 BC), and Amenhotep II held the Levantine and Nubian territories whose tribute and booty flowed back to Egypt.

What is the bureaucracy?

Egypt was administered by a literate scribal class headed by two viziers, one for Upper and one for Lower Egypt. The vizier's sweeping responsibilities - justice, taxation, land, appointments - are set out in the "Duties of the Vizier," a text preserved in the Theban tomb of Rekhmire (TT100), vizier under Thutmose III and Amenhotep II. Empire added a provincial layer: the Viceroy of Kush (the "King's Son of Kush") governed Nubia and its gold, while the treasury and granary officials managed the incoming wealth.

What is the priesthood of Amun?

As the kings promoted the Theban god Amun into Amun-Re, "King of the Gods," and credited him with their victories, they endowed his temple at Karnak with a growing share of tribute, land, captives and booty. The priesthood delivered the god's endorsement of the king and, in return, accumulated wealth and personnel on a scale that made it a great institution in its own right (see the crown-Amun relationship below).

What is the royal women?

Authority in this dynasty was also female. Queen mothers such as Ahhotep (honoured for helping defend Egypt in the war of liberation) and Ahmose-Nefertari were powerful figures, and the King's Great Wife secured the legitimacy of the succession. Crucially, the office of God's Wife of Amun (Hemet-netjer en Amun) was endowed early in the dynasty for Ahmose-Nefertari with its own estates and income, giving a royal woman a permanent, wealthy institutional role in the cult of the state god.

§-Syllabus dot point

NSWAncient HistorySyllabus dot point

How did the early New Kingdom pharaohs construct and exercise power and authority, and how do historians reconstruct the period from its propagandistic and fragmentary sources?

The nature of power and authority in early New Kingdom Egypt - divine kingship and Ma'at, the smiting-pharaoh image and royal titulary, the practical instruments of rule (the professional army, the bureaucracy and viziers, the priesthood of Amun and the royal women, including the God's Wife of Amun), and the crown's relationship with the emerging Amun establishment; and the historiography of the period, including the problems of propagandistic official sources, monument erasure and usurpation, chronological uncertainty and the tomb-biography perspective, and the interpretations of modern Egyptologists

A focused answer to the HSC Ancient History dot point on power, authority and historiography in New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Thutmose IV. Divine kingship and Ma'at, the army, bureaucracy, Amun priesthood and the God's Wife of Amun, and reconstructing the period from propagandistic official sources.

Generated by Claude Opus 4.814 min answerUpdated 2026-07-01

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Quick answer

Power and authority in New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Thutmose IV rested on a single integrated system. The ideology of divine kingship (the king as living Horus and son of Amun-Re, sole upholder of Ma'at against isfet, broadcast through the titulary, smiting scenes and divine-birth reliefs) legitimised the king, while the practical instruments - the professional chariot army that won the empire (Thutmose I to the Euphrates; Thutmose III at Megiddo, c. 1457 BC), the two-vizier bureaucracy and the viceroy of Kush, the wealthy priesthood of Amun at Karnak, and the royal women, including the endowed God's Wife of Amun (Ahmose-Nefertari) - actually delivered it. The crown's partnership with Amun was mutually reinforcing but built the rival institution that later kings would confront. Because almost every source is the crown's own propaganda (royal annals, triumphal reliefs, self-serving tomb biographies, selective king lists distorted by erasures such as Hatshepsut's and by chronological uncertainty), historians must read against the bias: Gardiner and Redford on the limits of the record, Bryan on how much can still be reconstructed for this period, and Shaw and Cline on the material and international bases of royal power.

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What this dot point is asking
The answer
How to read a source on this topic
Historians and the historiography

What this dot point is asking

This is the capstone dot point of the period. It draws together two big questions that run under everything else in "New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Thutmose IV." First, the NATURE OF POWER AND AUTHORITY - what an early Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh actually was, how his authority was justified (the ideology of divine kingship and Ma'at), and how it was actually delivered (the army, the bureaucracy, the priesthood of Amun and the royal women). Second, the HISTORIOGRAPHY - how historians reconstruct all of this from a source base that is overwhelmingly the crown's own propaganda, and how named modern Egyptologists have read that evidence differently. You are not being asked to narrate reigns; you are being asked to analyse a system of power and to be honest about how we can and cannot know it.

In plain English

Think of the pharaoh as the chief executive of a company that has just won a huge takeover war and suddenly controls half the region. Two things keep him on top. The first is the story everyone is told: that he is not just the boss but chosen by God, the only person who can keep the whole world in order, so obeying him is basically a religious duty. That is "divine kingship." The second is the actual machinery: the army that won the takeover, the managers and accountants who run the branches, the huge, cashed-up temple that blesses him in exchange for donations, and the powerful women of the founding family who keep the bloodline and the money in-house. Now here is the catch for anyone trying to write the company's history three thousand years later. Almost every surviving document was written by the company's own PR department: glossy annual reports where the boss never loses, monuments where he is ten times taller than everyone else, and even the gravestones of his managers boasting about how loyal they were. So the historian's job is not just to read the PR, but to work out what it is quietly hiding - which is exactly what this dot point is about.

The answer

Divine kingship: the ideology of royal power

The single most important fact about early New Kingdom authority is that the king was not merely a political ruler but a sacred one. In life the pharaoh was the living Horus, the falcon-god of kingship; he was the son of the sun-god Ra and, increasingly in this period, the bodily son of Amun-Re of Thebes; and at death he became Osiris while his successor took up the Horus role. His single overriding duty was to uphold Ma'at, the interlocking Egyptian idea of cosmic order, truth and justice, against isfet, the chaos that threatened whenever the king failed. Because the king was the sole legitimate intermediary between the gods and humanity, his authority was in principle absolute and total, sanctioned by the divine order itself.

This ideology was broadcast through a consistent visual and textual programme. The fivefold royal titulary (the Horus, Two Ladies, Golden Horus, throne and birth names) announced the king's cosmic role on every monument he touched. The smiting scene, carved at giant scale on temple pylons, showed the king clubbing cowering foreign captives, the "Nine Bows," and so presented royal violence as the maintenance of order rather than mere conquest. Most striking of all, kings claimed literal divine parentage: the divine-birth reliefs of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri (and, later in the dynasty, of Amenhotep III at Luxor) depict Amun fathering the future king, and Thutmose IV's Dream Stele has a god personally promise him the throne. Ideology, in other words, was itself an instrument of power: it turned obedience into piety.

The reigns behind the ideology

The instruments of power

Ideology explained WHY the king should be obeyed; a set of practical institutions made obedience real.

The army: The New Kingdom inherited and mastered the military technology of the Hyksos period - the horse-drawn chariot, the composite bow and bronze weapons such as the khepesh (sickle-sword) - and built a permanent, professional force organised into divisions under the king as commander-in-chief. This army created the empire: Thutmose I reached the Euphrates, Thutmose III fought seventeen campaigns and won the Battle of Megiddo (c. 1457 BC), and Amenhotep II held the Levantine and Nubian territories whose tribute and booty flowed back to Egypt. Military success was not just wealth; it was legitimacy, the visible proof that the king was defeating isfet and maintaining Ma'at.
The bureaucracy: Egypt was administered by a literate scribal class headed by two viziers, one for Upper and one for Lower Egypt. The vizier's sweeping responsibilities - justice, taxation, land, appointments - are set out in the "Duties of the Vizier," a text preserved in the Theban tomb of Rekhmire (TT100), vizier under Thutmose III and Amenhotep II. Empire added a provincial layer: the Viceroy of Kush (the "King's Son of Kush") governed Nubia and its gold, while the treasury and granary officials managed the incoming wealth. This machinery let a single sacred king actually rule a large territorial state.
The priesthood of Amun: As the kings promoted the Theban god Amun into Amun-Re, "King of the Gods," and credited him with their victories, they endowed his temple at Karnak with a growing share of tribute, land, captives and booty. The priesthood delivered the god's endorsement of the king and, in return, accumulated wealth and personnel on a scale that made it a great institution in its own right (see the crown-Amun relationship below).
The royal women: Authority in this dynasty was also female. Queen mothers such as Ahhotep (honoured for helping defend Egypt in the war of liberation) and Ahmose-Nefertari were powerful figures, and the King's Great Wife secured the legitimacy of the succession. Crucially, the office of God's Wife of Amun (Hemet-netjer en Amun) was endowed early in the dynasty for Ahmose-Nefertari with its own estates and income, giving a royal woman a permanent, wealthy institutional role in the cult of the state god. That office helped make Hatshepsut's later assumption of kingship thinkable, and it tightened the bond between the royal family and the Amun establishment.

The crown and the emerging Amun establishment

The relationship between the throne and Amun is the hinge of the whole period, because it is both the foundation and the future fault-line of royal power. On one side, the king needed Amun: the god legitimised his rule, "fathered" him in the divine-birth reliefs, and "gave" him victory, so kings advertised their piety and poured wealth into Karnak. On the other side, every endowment made the priesthood richer and more independent. By the death of Thutmose IV the tension was still latent, not open - the kings were firmly in control and the God's Wife of Amun kept the office inside the royal family - but the logic that would eventually produce Akhenaten's revolt against Amun was already being set in place. For this period, the correct analysis is a mutually reinforcing partnership with a rival institution growing inside it.

How to read a source on this topic

The sources for this period are, with very few exceptions, official products of the crown, so the reading habits below matter more here than almost anywhere else in the course.

First, separate the TYPE of evidence. Ancient WRITTEN evidence includes royal inscriptions and annals (the Annals of Thutmose III at Karnak), royal stelae (Thutmose IV's Dream Stele), and the autobiographical tomb inscriptions of officials (Ahmose son of Ibana at el-Kab; Ineni; the "Duties of the Vizier" in Rekhmire's tomb). ARCHAEOLOGICAL evidence includes temple reliefs and statuary, the smiting scenes on pylons, building programmes and excavated sites. Each carries different limits.

Second, always ask WHO made it and WHY. A royal stela is the crown presenting itself; a tomb biography is an elite official presenting himself to secure his memory and status. Neither is a neutral report, and both flatter upward - the official flatters the king, the king flatters the gods.

Third, read the silences. Because this material is propaganda, its most useful evidence is often what it will not say: a king never records a defeat, a disputed succession or a limit on his power, so the practical instruments of power (the army he depended on, the bureaucrats who really governed, the priesthood he had to court) are frequently visible only as the machinery implied behind the ideology.

Historians and the historiography

Reconstructing power and authority here is a case study in reading propaganda. Named modern Egyptologists have approached the same thin, official record differently.

Alan Gardiner, in his classic synthesis Egypt of the Pharaohs (1961), stressed just how fragmentary the evidence is, famously describing what survives as a collection of "rags and tatters" and warning against writing confident narrative history from it. His caution frames the whole source problem.

Donald Redford analysed the machinery of Egyptian record-keeping itself - in Pharaonic King-Lists, Annals and Day-Books (1986) and related work - showing how royal annals and king lists were selective, ideologically shaped documents rather than neutral chronicles, and how later erasures (such as Hatshepsut's) distorted the record. He is the historian to cite on why official sources cannot be read at face value.

Betsy Bryan, whose The Reign of Thutmose IV (1991) is the standard study of the reign that closes this period, reconstructs royal power from art, monuments and administration, reading Thutmose IV's programme (including the Dream Stele) as the consolidation of dynastic and religious authority rather than mere military display; she has also written extensively on royal women and the culture of the court.

Ian Shaw, editor of The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000) and a specialist in Egyptian material culture and warfare, represents the measured, evidence-led synthesis of current scholarship, integrating archaeology with the textual record and emphasising the technological and organisational basis of New Kingdom power.

Eric Cline, an archaeologist of the Late Bronze Age (Megiddo excavations; 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, 2014), situates Egyptian royal power within the wider international system of the age - the network of Great Powers and vassals that campaigns such as Thutmose III's at Megiddo helped build - reminding us that Egyptian authority operated in, and depended on, a connected eastern Mediterranean world.

Used together, these scholars supply the argument, not decoration: Gardiner and Redford on why the sources must be handled sceptically, Bryan on how much can nonetheless be reconstructed for this specific period, and Shaw and Cline on the material and international bases of power.

Command words, using a source, and weaving historiography

Command words: "Outline" wants a compact, sequenced set of points (the instruments of power; the reign order). "Explain" wants a causal LINK (why military success reinforced authority at home; why endowing Amun both secured and endangered the crown). "Assess" / "evaluate" / "to what extent" demand a sustained JUDGEMENT held across every paragraph, not a neutral two-sided description.
Using a source in four moves: (1) Content: what does it actually show or say. (2) Reliability: who produced it, when, with what purpose (a royal stela is self-presentation; a tomb biography is elite self-promotion). (3) Usefulness: what specific question it can answer despite that bias - royal propaganda is excellent evidence for IDEOLOGY even when useless as a factual report. (4) Perspective: whose interest it serves (the crown, an official, the priesthood).
Weaving in historiography: Never list historians. Use the pattern "[official source] presents X; but as [Gardiner/Redford] argues, this is shaped propaganda, so the more defensible reading is Y; [Bryan] shows that from the monuments we can still recover Z." That structure - source, historian's caution, qualified conclusion - is what earns historiography marks in a Section IV essay.

Model exam responses

1. Source-analysis response (a smiting scene, content and usefulness). "A smiting scene showing the giant king clubbing bound captives is useful evidence for the IDEOLOGY of New Kingdom kingship rather than for any actual battle. Its content presents the king at superhuman scale defeating the 'Nine Bows,' with a god extending the ankh, so it makes a religious claim: the king maintains Ma'at by crushing the chaos that foreigners represent. Its reliability as a record of events is nil - it is a timeless, formulaic image repeated by kings who never fought the enemies shown - but that is precisely why it is valuable: it reveals how royal authority was meant to be understood, as divinely sanctioned domination, which is the historian's real question here."

Marker's note: this response refuses to read the relief as a battle record, separates reliability from usefulness, and turns the source's bias into evidence for ideology - exactly what markers reward.

2. Essay paragraph (ideology and instruments as one system). "It is a false choice to ask whether early New Kingdom authority rested on divine kingship OR on the practical instruments of power, because each depended on the other. The ideology - the king as living Horus and son of Amun, guarantor of Ma'at - is broadcast through the titulary, the smiting scenes and the divine-birth reliefs at Deir el-Bahri; but that ideology was made real by the professional army that won Megiddo (c. 1457 BC), the viziers whose duties fill Rekhmire's tomb, and the endowed office of God's Wife of Amun. As Redford's work on the annals shows, our sources foreground the ideology and half-conceal the machinery, so the two are inseparable not only in fact but in how the evidence reaches us."

Marker's note: names a historian as part of the argument, ties ideology to dated practical evidence, and reaches a clear judgement (the two are inseparable) rather than juxtaposing them.

Common exam traps

Narrating reigns instead of analysing power: This dot point asks HOW authority worked and how we know it, not a story of Ahmose to Thutmose IV. Use the reigns as evidence for an argument about power.
Treating royal propaganda as fact: Annals, stelae and smiting scenes present the crown's version; a king never records a defeat. Say what the source is USEFUL for (ideology, self-presentation) rather than believing its factual claims.
Splitting "ideology" from "instruments" as if they compete: Divine kingship and the army, bureaucracy, priesthood and royal women were one integrated system; the best answers show how they reinforced each other.
Listing historians instead of using them: Naming Gardiner, Redford, Bryan, Shaw and Cline earns little unless each is tied to a specific evidence problem or claim. Deploy them to build the argument.
Dating things too confidently: Absolute dates here rest on regnal counts and Sothic dating and are complicated by co-regencies; write "c." and show you know why the chronology is uncertain.

Practice questions

Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.

foundation4 marksSource A: an ExamExplained reconstruction of the type of scene carved on the pylons of an early Eighteenth Dynasty temple. "The king, drawn at giant scale, strides forward gripping a bundle of cowering foreign captives by the hair with one hand and raising a mace to strike them with the other. A hovering falcon extends the ankh, the sign of life, towards him, and the accompanying text names him the son of Amun who tramples the Nine Bows." Using Source A and your own knowledge, outline what this scene reveals about the ideology of New Kingdom kingship.

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1 mark: identifies the smiting scene as a standard image of the king defeating and dominating foreign enemies.
1 mark: explains that the giant scale of the king and the tiny, cowering captives express royal power and the natural, ordered superiority of Egypt over its neighbours (the "Nine Bows").
1 mark: links the smiting act to Ma'at - the king maintains cosmic order by defeating the chaos (isfet) that foreign enemies represent, so the scene is a religious statement, not a battle report.
1 mark: notes the divine sanction - the falcon extending the ankh and the title "son of Amun" show the king ruling as the gods' chosen intermediary, legitimising his authority.

Marker's note: full marks require BOTH the power/domination point and the religious Ma'at/divine-sanction point; a response that only describes the picture without reading its ideology caps at 2 marks.

foundation4 marksOutline the role and significance of the office of God's Wife of Amun in the early Eighteenth Dynasty.

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1 mark: identifies the God's Wife of Amun (Hemet-netjer en Amun) as a senior priestly title held by a leading royal woman, usually the King's Great Wife.
1 mark: notes an early holder - Ahmose-Nefertari, wife of Ahmose I, for whom the office was endowed with its own land, personnel and income, making it economically substantial.
1 mark: explains the religious significance - the office gave a royal woman a formal, permanent role in the cult of Amun at Karnak, symbolically binding the royal family to the state god.
1 mark: explains the political significance - as an endowed, inheritable office it strengthened the standing of royal women (it later helped legitimise Hatshepsut) and tightened the crown's grip on the growing Amun establishment.

Marker's note: rewards linking the office to BOTH the Amun cult and the power of royal women, not just naming a holder.

foundation4 marksOutline the main instruments through which an early New Kingdom pharaoh exercised power.

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1 mark: the professional standing army and chariotry, which projected royal power abroad and won the empire and its tribute.
1 mark: the civil bureaucracy, headed by two viziers (north and south) and staffed by scribes, treasury officials and the viceroy of Kush, which administered Egypt and its provinces in the king's name.
1 mark: the priesthood of Amun and the temple network, which sanctified royal authority and, in return for royal patronage, delivered the god's endorsement of the king's rule.
1 mark: the royal women (queen mothers and the God's Wife of Amun) and the wider royal family, who reinforced legitimacy, held office and secured the succession.

Marker's note: rewards four distinct instruments briefly located, not one instrument explained at length; the ideology of divine kingship underpins all of them but is not itself an "instrument."

core6 marksExplain how the professionalising army contributed to royal power in New Kingdom Egypt down to the death of Thutmose IV.

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1-2 marks: describes the army - a permanent, professional force built around chariotry, the composite bow and bronze weapons such as the khepesh, developed after the Hyksos period and organised into divisions under the king as commander-in-chief.
2 marks: explains the projection of power - campaigns under Thutmose I (who reached the Euphrates), Thutmose III (seventeen campaigns, including the victory at Megiddo, c. 1457 BC) and Amenhotep II created and held an empire in Nubia and the Levant, whose tribute and booty enriched the crown.
2 marks: explains the domestic consequence - military success validated the king as the victorious maintainer of Ma'at, provided patronage for a loyal officer class, and funnelled wealth (much of it dedicated to Amun) that the crown then redistributed, reinforcing royal authority at home.

Marker's note: top responses connect campaigning abroad to authority AT HOME (legitimacy, patronage, tribute), and use at least one dated campaign, rather than listing battles.

core6 marksSource B: an ExamExplained reconstruction of the type of autobiographical inscription carved in the tomb of a naval officer of the early Eighteenth Dynasty. "I followed the king on foot when he rode abroad in his chariot. I fought and I brought away a hand. It was reported to the royal herald, and the gold of valour was given to me. I was rewarded with fields and with male and female servants." Using Source B and your own knowledge, explain the value and limitations of official tomb biographies as evidence for power and authority in this period.

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1-2 marks: describes the content - a self-glorifying career narrative recording loyal service to the king, participation in campaigns, and the royal rewards (the "gold of valour," land and servants) that followed.
2 marks: explains the value - biographies of officials such as Ahmose son of Ibana (el-Kab) and Ineni give rare "ground-level" detail on how royal power actually worked: how the king rewarded service, how the army operated, and how offices and land were distributed as patronage.
2 marks: explains the limitations - they are elite, official self-presentation carved to secure the owner's memory and status, so they exaggerate the owner's role, flatter the king, and record only the perspective of literate male officials close to the court, never ordinary Egyptians or a critical view of the crown.

Marker's note: rewards using the source to make the value/limitation split explicit (patronage record versus self-interested elite perspective), not merely paraphrasing the inscription.

core6 marksExplain the relationship between the crown and the priesthood of Amun in New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Thutmose IV.

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1-2 marks: outlines the ideology - the kings promoted Amun of Thebes into Amun-Re, "King of the Gods," and presented themselves as his son, credited with victory by the god (the divine-birth reliefs of Hatshepsut, and later Amenhotep III, at Deir el-Bahri and Luxor make the claim explicit).
2 marks: explains the material relationship - kings dedicated a large share of empire tribute, land, captives and booty to the temple of Amun at Karnak, endowing an ever-wealthier priestly institution as thanks for, and insurance of, divine support.
2 marks: explains the significance and tension - this was a mutually reinforcing partnership (the god legitimised the king; the king enriched the god), but it also built up an Amun establishment with independent wealth and personnel, the long-term rival to royal authority that later kings, culminating in Akhenaten, would confront.

Marker's note: rewards a two-way relationship (legitimation in return for endowment) AND recognition of the emerging tension, not a one-sided "the priests were powerful" answer.

exam10 marksSource C: an ExamExplained reconstruction of the type of text inscribed on a large royal stela set up by a New Kingdom king early in his reign. "It happened that the prince rested in the shadow of the great god. Sleep seized him, and the god spoke to him with his own mouth, as a father speaks to his son, saying, 'Clear away the sand that besets me, and the kingship shall be given to you.' The prince awoke and did as the god commanded, and he was crowned king of Upper and Lower Egypt." Using Source C and your own knowledge, evaluate the usefulness of royal stelae for reconstructing the nature of power and authority in this period.

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A 10-mark "evaluate the usefulness" answer needs to use the source, add own knowledge, and judge both usefulness and its limits.

Use the source: The stela (of the type set up by Thutmose IV between the paws of the Great Sphinx at Giza, the "Dream Stele") shows the king claiming that a god personally chose him and promised him the throne in return for pious service, presenting his accession as divinely willed rather than merely inherited.
Usefulness: Royal stelae are highly useful for the IDEOLOGY of power. They reveal exactly how kings wished their authority to be understood - as divine kingship, the king as the god's chosen son and the restorer of order - and how a king who was not the obvious heir might advertise divine selection to legitimise his rule. As official, dated, first-person royal statements they are direct evidence of royal self-presentation.
Corroborating knowledge: The same messaging runs through the divine-birth reliefs of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri, the triumphal Annals of Thutmose III at Karnak, and the smiting scenes on temple pylons - a consistent programme presenting the king as Amun's victorious son and the guarantor of Ma'at.
Limitations: A stela records the message, not the reality. It is propaganda that cannot be taken at face value: it will not admit a disputed succession, a lost battle, or the practical limits on royal power (the bureaucracy, the army, the priesthood on which the king actually depended). The "dream" is a legitimising literary device, not a record of an event.
Judgement: Royal stelae are indispensable evidence for how power was PRESENTED and legitimised, but must be read as royal ideology and corroborated against administrative and archaeological evidence before they are trusted as fact.

Marker's note: Band 6 responses separate "useful for ideology/self-presentation" from "unreliable as factual record," name at least one comparable source, and reach a clear judgement rather than describing the stela.

exam25 marksESSAY. To what extent did the authority of the early New Kingdom pharaoh rest on the ideology of divine kingship rather than the practical instruments of power? In your response, refer to relevant sources and to the interpretations of modern historians.

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A Band 6 essay sustains a judgement on "to what extent," ties argument to dated evidence, and weaves historiography and the problem of the sources. Plan plus model paragraph.

Thesis: Divine kingship and the practical instruments of power were not alternatives but a single system: the ideology legitimised authority, while the army, bureaucracy, priesthood and royal women delivered it. Royal authority rested on both, and because our evidence is overwhelmingly the crown's own ideology, historians must reconstruct the practical machinery from it with care.
Argument line 1 - the ideology: The king ruled as living Horus, son of Amun-Re, and guarantor of Ma'at against isfet. This is advertised in the fivefold titulary, the smiting scenes on temple pylons, the divine-birth reliefs of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri, and stelae such as Thutmose IV's Dream Stele, all presenting royal power as divinely willed. This ideology was itself an instrument: it made obedience a religious duty.
Argument line 2 - the practical instruments: Authority was exercised through the professional army and chariotry (Thutmose III's victory at Megiddo, c. 1457 BC, and seventeen campaigns), the bureaucracy under two viziers (the "Duties of the Vizier" in the tomb of Rekhmire), the viceroy of Kush, the treasury, and the royal women, including the endowed office of God's Wife of Amun held by Ahmose-Nefertari. Ideology without this machinery could not have held an empire.
Argument line 3 - the crown and Amun: The two elements meet in the crown's relationship with Amun: kings credited victory to the god and endowed Karnak from tribute, buying legitimacy while building the wealthy priestly establishment that would later rival the throne. Betsy Bryan's work on Thutmose IV shows a reign consolidating dynastic and religious authority rather than merely conquering.
Argument line 4 - the evidence problem: We can weigh ideology against practice only through sources the crown produced. Alan Gardiner warned that Egyptian "history" is a collection of "rags and tatters"; Donald Redford has shown how royal annals and king lists are shaped record-keeping, not neutral chronicle. Hatshepsut's later erasure and the usurpation of monuments, plus chronological uncertainty (regnal dating and co-regencies), mean the "instruments" are visible mostly through the ideology that framed them.
Model paragraph (line 1 into line 4): The Dream Stele is the perfect illustration of why the question cannot be answered from the sources alone. It presents Thutmose IV's accession as a god's personal gift, pure divine-kingship ideology; yet the very need to advertise divine selection hints at a practical reality the stela will not state - that he may not have been the expected heir and needed the priesthood and court behind him. As Redford argues of such official texts, they encode the message the crown wanted believed, so the practical instruments of power survive chiefly as the machinery implied behind the ideology, rather than as anything the sources describe directly.
Conclusion: To a large extent the two are inseparable: divine kingship supplied the legitimacy and the practical instruments supplied the reach, and each depended on the other. The sharper historiographical point is that our propagandistic sources foreground the ideology and half-conceal the machinery, so any verdict must be reached against, not simply from, the crown's self-presentation.

Marker's note: Band 6 answers refuse the false "ideology OR instruments" split, name at least two historians (e.g. Gardiner and Redford or Bryan) as part of the argument, use dated evidence (Megiddo c. 1457 BC, the Dream Stele, Rekhmire), and engage explicitly with the propagandistic limits of the sources.