Religion in New Kingdom Egypt, the rise of the cult of Amun-Ra and the growing power of the Theban priesthood

What this dot point is asking

SCSA wants you to understand New Kingdom religion as a source of power and authority, because in Egypt the king ruled by divine sanction and the temples became enormous centres of wealth and influence. You need to explain the central beliefs, the rise of Amun-Ra to the head of the pantheon, the role of the great temple at Karnak, and the growing power of the priesthood that would eventually rival the throne. The Egypt option is examined through source analysis and essays, so you must name and evaluate evidence such as temple inscriptions, the Punt reliefs at Deir el-Bahari and royal dedications.

Egyptian religion was polytheistic, with many gods linked to nature, place and function, and it centred on maintaining the favour of the gods and the order of the cosmos. The king was the chief intermediary, performing or commissioning the rituals that kept the gods satisfied and Egypt safe. Belief in the afterlife was central, shaping burial customs, tomb building and the elaborate provision for the dead, which is why tombs are such a rich archaeological source for the period. Temples were not congregational places of public worship but houses of the god, where priests performed daily rituals to sustain the deity.

The defining religious development of the New Kingdom was the rise of Amun. Originally a local Theban deity, Amun was promoted as Thebes became the centre of the reunified kingdom, and he was fused with the ancient sun god Ra to form Amun-Ra, king of the gods. As pharaohs led successful campaigns abroad, they credited their victories to Amun and dedicated a large share of the plunder, captives and conquered lands to his temples. Amun thus became the imperial god, the divine author of Egypt's expansion, and his cult acquired a national, even universal, character.

The cult's centre was the temple complex of Karnak at Thebes, which successive pharaohs enlarged into the greatest religious building in Egypt. Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III added obelisks, pylons and chapels, and the temple's inscriptions record royal building, festivals and donations. Karnak and its associated sites are a major archaeological source, but the inscriptions are royal propaganda designed to display piety and legitimacy, so they reveal ideology as much as fact. The annual Opet festival, in which the image of Amun travelled in procession, publicly reaffirmed the bond between the god, the king and the people.

Religion was also the principal source of royal legitimacy. Pharaohs presented themselves as the physical sons of Amun, and Hatshepsut in particular used this claim to justify a female king. On the walls of her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari she depicted her divine birth, showing Amun fathering her, and her expedition to Punt as undertaken at the god's command. These reliefs are a famous source for both religion and the use of religion to legitimise power, and their obviously propagandistic purpose is exactly what makes them valuable evidence for royal ideology rather than for literal events.

The political consequence of this religious wealth was the rise of the priesthood. As royal donations accumulated, the temple of Amun became one of the largest landowners and employers in Egypt, controlling estates, granaries, workshops and a huge labour force. The High Priest of Amun commanded these resources, and the office grew into a power base that could challenge royal authority. The tension between crown and Amun cult is widely seen as a background factor in the most dramatic event of the period that follows, the religious revolution of Akhenaten, who promoted the sole worship of the Aten and attacked the established temples, an upheaval studied in Unit 4.

This dot point matters because religion in Egypt was inseparable from power. The king's legitimacy rested on divine descent and the maintenance of the gods' favour, military success was credited to Amun, and the wealth of the temples created a priesthood strong enough to shape politics. Understanding the cult of Amun-Ra, the role of Karnak and the growing power of the priesthood lets you explain how authority was sacralised and where the strains in that system lay.