Antiquity History

Deep Dive · Ancient Egypt

Egyptian Pharaohs: From Narmer to Cleopatra

For nearly three thousand years, a succession of pharaohs ruled the Nile valley. The word pharaoh — the Egyptian per-aa, “great house” — was originally a title for the royal palace, and only gradually came to be used as a personal title for the king himself. The pharaoh was simultaneously a political ruler, a military commander, a high priest, and (in most periods) a god in human form. Some pharaohs ruled for decades; others were deposed, killed, or erased from the official record. Some built the most impressive monuments of the ancient world; others left almost no trace.

This cluster page surveys the most important pharaohs of Egyptian history. It links out to deep dives on Cleopatra, Ramesses II, and the Pyramids of Giza cluster.

The Unification of Egypt

The first pharaoh of historical Egypt was Narmer (also called Menes), who around 3100 BCE unified Upper Egypt (the southern Nile valley) and Lower Egypt (the northern delta). The famous Palette of Narmer, a slate cosmetic palette now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, shows the king wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt and the red crown of Lower Egypt, smiting an enemy and supervising the decapitation of his rivals. The unification of Egypt marks the conventional beginning of Egyptian history and the start of the Early Dynastic Period.

The Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 BCE)

The Old Kingdom was the age of the great pyramid builders. The Third Dynasty began with Djoser, whose architect Imhotep designed the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, the earliest large stone building in the world. The Fourth Dynasty saw Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure build the great Pyramids of Giza. The Fifth and Sixth Dynasties were characterized by a decline in royal power, the rise of provincial nomarchs, and the increasing power of the sun cult of Ra.

The Old Kingdom collapsed into the First Intermediate Period, a century of famine, civil war, and decentralization, around 2181 BCE.

The Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BCE)

The Middle Kingdom was reunified by Mentuhotep II of the Eleventh Dynasty, who re-established the power of the pharaoh and inaugurated a classical age of literature, art, and imperial expansion into Nubia. The Twelfth Dynasty, the high point of the Middle Kingdom, produced a line of pharaohs — Amenemhat I, Senusret I, Amenemhat II, Senusret II, Senusret III, Amenemhat III — who built extensively, codified the law, and expanded Egyptian power deep into Nubia.

The Middle Kingdom ended with the arrival of the Hyksos, a Semitic-speaking people from the Levant who invaded the delta in the seventeenth century BCE and ruled Lower Egypt with horse-drawn chariots and bronze weapons.

The New Kingdom (c. 1550–1069 BCE)

The New Kingdom is the imperial age of Egyptian history. Ahmose I expelled the Hyksos and founded the Eighteenth Dynasty, the first of the New Kingdom dynasties. The great New Kingdom pharaohs were the most powerful rulers Egypt ever produced.

The Eighteenth Dynasty was the dynasty of the famous queen Hatshepsut, the only female pharaoh of ancient Egypt, who ruled as regent for her stepson and built the magnificent mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari. The dynasty also produced Thutmose III, the “Napoleon of Egypt,” who conquered Syria-Palestine and Nubia and built the empire that would dominate the eastern Mediterranean for a century. The dynasty ended with the controversial monotheist pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), who tried to replace the Egyptian pantheon with the single god Aten, and his son Tutankhamun, who restored the old religion and whose intact tomb, discovered in 1922, made him the most famous pharaoh of all.

The Nineteenth Dynasty was founded by Ramesses I and produced Ramesses II, the most famous pharaoh of Egypt, who ruled for sixty-six years, built more monuments than any other pharaoh, and fought the Hittites at the famous Battle of Kadesh. His grandson Merneptah was probably the pharaoh of the Exodus (if the Exodus happened at all historically). The dynasty ended with the last of the Ramessides, the last great rulers of the New Kingdom.

The Late Period (664–332 BCE)

The Late Period began with the Assyrian invasion of Egypt in 671 BCE, the first time in nearly a thousand years that Egypt had been ruled by foreigners. The Persians under Cambyses II conquered Egypt in 525 BCE, and the country became a province of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The last native pharaohs of Egypt were the Thirtieth Dynasty, which briefly reasserted Egyptian independence (380–343 BCE) before being reconquered by the Persians.

The Ptolemies (332–30 BCE)

The conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE opened the Ptolemaic period. Alexander was crowned pharaoh, and after his death in 323 BCE his general Ptolemy I Soter founded the Ptolemaic dynasty. The Ptolemies ruled Egypt for almost three centuries as Hellenistic pharaohs, while their capital Alexandria became the largest and most cosmopolitan city of the ancient world.

The most famous of the Ptolemies were:

You can read the full story of the most famous Ptolemy in Cleopatra: The Last Pharaoh of Egypt.

The Pharaohs in Egyptian Religion

The pharaoh was, in most periods of Egyptian history, considered a god. The Egyptians believed that the pharaoh was the earthly embodiment of Horus, the falcon-headed god of the sky. After death, the pharaoh became one with Osiris, the god of the underworld. The pharaoh was the link between the human and divine worlds, the guarantor of the cosmic order (ma’at), and the only person who could perform the most important religious rituals.

The Great Wives

Egyptian queens were not just consorts; many wielded significant power. Nefertiti, the wife of Akhenaten, may have ruled in her own right after his death. Hatshepsut ruled as a full pharaoh. Tiye, the wife of Amenhotep III, was a powerful political figure. Nefertari, the wife of Ramesses II, was worshipped as a goddess in her own temple at Abu Simbel. Cleopatra, the last Ptolemaic queen, was one of the most powerful women of the ancient world.

The Legacy of the Pharaohs

The pharaohs left a legacy that has outlasted the Egyptian state itself. The pyramids, the temples of Karnak and Luxor, the tombs of the Valley of the Kings, the sculptures and the jewelry, the religious and political traditions, the very idea of a divine king — all of this was carried on in modified form into the Ptolemaic period, the Roman period, the Coptic Christian period, and the Islamic period. The pharaohs are still, almost five thousand years after Narmer, among the most recognizable individuals in world history.