In order to study the insulating material characteristics of MgO cable and its ampacity evaluation method, in this paper, morphology observation and composition analysis were conducted on MgO powder to determine its purity and inclusions at first. And then the dielectric and thermal characteristic parameters of MgO powder were measured, and the influence of moisture on the dielectric parameters was analyzed. Finally, an equivalent thermal curcuit model for MgO insulated multi-core cables and a simplified analytical algorithm for ampacity were proposed, which was validated by a two-dimensional numerical simulation model. The results show that the volume resistivity of dry MgO samples is higher than 10¹² Ω·m, which can decrease by more than 1 order of magnitude under the effect of moisture. In the frequency range of 10^-1‒10⁴ Hz, the dielectric constant of the dry MgO sample is about 7.9, and the dielectric loss factor is about 5×10^-4‒5×10^-3, which increases significantly after being moisture exposed, especially in the low frequency range. The electric strength of the dry MgO is 3.5‒4.8 kV/mm, and the data measured by different methods have a certain degree of dispersion. The rated ampacity of MgO insulated multi-core cable can be evaluated accurently by using the simplified analytical algorithm, which is beneficial to practical engineering applications.