The pharaoh is today thought of as just any ruler of ancient Egypt. But, in fact, the nature of the ruler changed across different periods of ancient Egypt, with the term only being properly appropriate for those times where the religious and political aspects of the leader were both taken by a single ruler of all Egypt. So to explain how the ancient Egyptians understood the role of what we now refer to as the pharaoh it is necessary to look at how the concept of the Egyptian ruler changed over time.

The first recorded rulers in Egypt were in what is referred to as the Early Dynastic Period which lasted from around 3100-2650BC. This included three dynastic periods. This began with a protodynastic period where unification of Egypt itself was occurring and the rulers were the unifiers. Significantly, this was the first time when the Egyptian language appeared in the form of hieroglyphs.

It was in the Old Kingdom (2644-2155BC) that the monarch started off being considered the absolute lord of the land. But this concept was to change to him being considered a descendant of gods. Later on each pharaoh became identified with Horus, the son of Osiris. This god-like status of the pharaoh was perhaps reinforced by the fact that this period saw such advances in complexity and civilization in Egyptian culture.

But it is only with the Middle Kingdom (2052-1786BC) that the term Pharaoh came to be used by the Egyptians to describe their ruler himself, with the term having previously been used to refer only the palace and court of the ruler. By then the Pharaohs were considered to be gods in their own right rather than merely the earthly servants of gods. They had an all-consuming power, with the good being defined as whatever the Pharaoh likes and the evil being defined as whatever he dislikes.

It was the job of the Pharaoh to, in the eyes of his subjects, use his divine powers to ensure the annual rise and fall of the Nile and therefore ensure the prosperity of the Egyptian land through agriculture. But with the rise of the New Kingdom (between the sixteenth and eleventh centuries BC) the Pharaoh was also significant as a conqueror and empire builder, with Egypt achieving its greatest expanse of territory during this period. Ahkenaten (Amenhotep IV) and Ramesses II were two of the key players in this process.

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