The number of Egyptians living in urban centers rose significantly during the New Kingdom which contributed significantly to the eventual decline of the New Kingdom’s power. The percentage of Egyptians living in cities, however, probably never exceeded five percent, as the vast majority of the population was still required to farm the fields.

The New Kingdom was most characterized by wartime. This kingdom was ruled by "warrior pharaohs", mainly because the Egyptian borders in the desert regions did not offer protection from invasion any longer, as seen by the devastating earlier invasions by the Hyksos. In the New Kingdom, pharaohs greatly built up their armies and began to seek out conquering surrounding areas outside of Egypt, leading to much warring and conflict.

King Akhenaten was known as the first "individual king." He tried to instill monotheism as the dominant theme in Egypt. He felt that the sun-disc god was the most important god and should be the one to be worshipped. However, monotheism did not really take hold as most of Egypt did not feel comfortable with these very different beliefs.

When King Tuthmosis I died, the crown passed to son Tuthmosis II, who actually married Hatshepsut, his half sister. Thus, Hatshepsut was also the daughter of Tuthmosis I. As Tuthmosis II was a weak king, Hatshepsut declared herself pharaoh and led a peaceful, prosperous reign for many years until her death.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead is one of the most famous literary works that has survived from ancient Egypt. It is a series of spells that seem intended to guide an individual through their journey to the afterlife. The ancient Egyptians were fairly obsessed with the afterlife and had a great many rituals and ceremonies associated with ensuring safe passage to the underworld.

Ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for so long that the status of the various Gods in the Egyptian pantheon fluctuated dramatically. Ra, for a long time viewed as the chief God and the Creator, was replaced by Amun (or merged into Amun-Ra) when the Theban Egyptians conquered the Hyksos. Amun was the primary God worshipped by the people of Thebes and so became the chief deity after Thebes led the reunification of Egypt. This demonstrates how politics and regional identity affected the status of Egyptian Gods.

While most Ancient Egyptian pharaohs had a strong preference for tradition, Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (of the New Kingdom) did not share his predecessors’ conservative perspectives. In fact, Amenhotep IV’s main claim to fame is based entirely on his desertion of tradition. Dissatisfied with the reigning religious cult of the god Amen-Re (whose priesthood had long supported the New Kingdom pharaohs), Amenhotep IV decided to create a new political/religious order of his own. As his first step, Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten. Next, he declared that the god Aten (with his famous sun disk) would be replacing the traditional royal devotion to Amen-Re. Instead, the Pharaoh, his Queen Nefertiti, and the entire royal and religious court would follow a form of solar monotheism, in which Aten, the embodiment of the sun’s life force, would be worshipped as the only god. This ran defiantly counter to the long-established Egyptian custom of complex polytheism. When the Amen-Re priesthood objected to his actions, Akhenaten responded by confiscating their royal incomes and ordering the destruction of many religious monuments to Amen-Re. To further reinforce his new political/religious system, Akhenaten moved the Empire’s capital to an entirely new city, Amarna. In spite of the massive sociopolitical transformations inaugurated under his regime, today Akhenaten is best remembered through his connection to his son, the Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

The ancient Egyptian concept of Ma’at was a central component of their religious belief. It is probably best translated as “harmony and justice,” although it has been variously translated as “truth,” “honor,” “order,” and “morality.” Ma’at served as a guiding rule for how Egyptians were supposed to behave - it encourages harmony, morality, and the preservation of justice.

The ancient Egyptians never travelled outside of Egypt if they could help it. This is a result of their religious beliefs which taught that any Egyptian who was buried outside of Egypt would cease to exist and would not be able to access eternal life or the underworld.

The greatest and most productive era of temple building in Ancient Egypt came about during the New Kingdom, particularly once the Theban rulers established themselves as the civilization’s Eighteenth Dynasty. By this time, pyramids had fallen out of fashion; most pharaohs considered them to be archaic, albeit impressive, structures, but they desired grander, more diverse, and more integrated places of burial. Religious worship also became much more centralized during this time, so that more and more temples were built to serve as places where citizens could worship in unity, while also getting a glimpse of the reigning religious class and the current ruling dynasty’s elaborate expanse of power.