Scope: Ramses II (the Great) ruled for sixty-seven years and was considered one of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs. We will see how this reputation rests on two areas—Ramses as warrior and Ramses as builder.
Outline
I. The early years, before Ramses became king, were promising ones.
A. He campaigned with his father, Seti I, in Syria and is shown next to his dad’s chariot.
B. He was named “eldest son,” even though he had no brothers.
C. He is shown in the Hall of the Ancestors in the Abydos Temple helping his father, Seti I.
D. Ramses took two chief wives, Nefertari and Istnofret. They had five sons and two daughters.
1. Nefertari, the Great Wife, bore the Crown Prince Amunhirkepshef.
2. Istnofret bore Khaemwaset, who became High Priest of Memphis and labeled the pyramids. He also built the Serapeum, the burial place of the Apis Bull.
3. Istnofret also had Merneptah, the thirteenth of Ramses’s fifty-two sons, who would become pharaoh.
II. The young pharaoh was very bold.
A. Ramses’s five names and epithets indicated a future military career:
1. Horus, “Strong Bull, Beloved of Truth.”
2. Two Ladies, “Protector of Egypt Who Subdues Foreign Lands.”
3. Golden Horus, “Rich in Years, Great in Victories.”
4. King of Upper and Lower Egypt (Usr-maat-Re), “Strong in Right is Re.”
5. Son of Re, Ramses II, “Beloved of Amun.”
6. His own name, literally translated, is no less impressive: Ra = sun god; mses = is born.
B. Ramses completed Seti’s temple at Abydos and carved his own inscription, then built a temple behind it. He also completed the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak Temple and claimed credit for it as his own.
C. The battle of Kadesh (year 5) established his reputation. Syria, controlled by Hittites, was independent of Egypt; when there was a revolt in the Levant, Ramses rode out!
1. Four military divisions (Amun, Re, Ptah, Set) of 5,000 men each marched through Gaza to Kadesh. They took town after town. But the logistics of food and water proved to be difficult.
2. In the official Egyptian account, two captured spies told Ramses that Muwatallis the Hittite king was fleeing. (In truth, he had 40,0 troops and 2,500 chariots hidden in the woods.)
3. Ramses, believing the spies, proceeded ahead of his lagging army; behind him, the Division of Re was attacked.
4. Ramses’s camp was surprised by the Hittite attack, but the pharaoh rallied a few troops, counterattacked, and saved the day.
5. Egyptian troops arrived and drove the Hittites across the Orontes River. The Prince of Aleppo, fighting with the Hittites, nearly drowned, and his predicament was ridiculed in Egyptian records.
6. The next day Egyptians and Hittites fought to a standoff. Ramses refused a peace treaty with the Hittites, accepting only a temporary truce. He returned to Egypt.
7. The battle account is carved everywhere—Egypt's version of George Washington Crossing the Delaware. Ramses is shown as larger than life, a king leading his army to save the day.
III. Ramses was unequaled as a builder.
A. He moved the administrative capital from Memphis to Pi-Ramses (Qantir) in the Delta, a more strategic location from a military point of view.
B. He built a famous temple at Abu Simbel, south of Aswan, in Nubia.
1. He had the unique temple carved out of a mountain. It was a great piece of architectural propaganda for Nubians sailing north on the Nile, its walls depicting bound Nubian captives.
2. Inside, the battle of Kadesh is depicted, and Ramses is shown among the gods as a statute. Twice a year, the sun illuminated the temple interior.
3. He also built a second temple, for Nefertari, with an inscription above the doorway that says, “she for whom the sun does shine.”
4. Both temples were moved to higher ground by UNESCO in the 1960s when the Aswan Dam was built. They were dismantled and reassembled exactly as they would have appeared in ancient times, fallen statues and all.
5. In addition, Ramses built the Ramesseum, his mortuary temple. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”—“King of Kings—look upon my monuments and despair”—is about the ruined statue at the Ramesseum. Shelley, however, had never seen it.
C. Ramses established himself as a great leader and builder. But Ramses the Great was due to have something of a midlife crisis.
Essential Reading:
K. A. Kitchen, Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramses II.
Supplementary Reading:
Rita E. Freed, Ramses the Great.
Questions to Consider:
1. What really happened at the battle of Kadesh?
2. What was novel about the temple at Abu Simbel?