Scope: There is a bit of a mystery about Ramses’s reign—his personality seems to have changed from the great warrior/builder to a more sedentary pharaoh. Today, we would call it a midlife crisis. We will discuss the last forty years of Ramses’s reign and see how they differed from the glorious beginning. We will also see how a pharaoh with the resources of Ramses prepared his family for the next world.
Outline
I. Ramses’s days as a warrior were limited to his earliest years.
A. In year 8, Ramses rode out to Syria and, although successful, he did not take Kadesh nor make a permanent conquest of the region.
B. Because Egypt never had an occupying army in Syria, repeated campaigns were necessary to gain tribute.
C. The Hittite peace treaty (year 21) told a great deal about Ramses.
1. The Hittites, weakened by fighting both Assyrians and Egyptians, needed a treaty.
2. It was first written on a silver tablet in cuneiform and then rewritten in hieroglyphs on the walls of the Karnak and Abu Simbel temples.
3. The treaty, perhaps the first written down in history, contained defense and trade agreements and a nonaggression pact. Ramses, who didn’t seem to have any fight left in him, accepted.
D. Ramses took a Hittite bride (year 34), which suggests he wanted peace.
1. He boasted of her dowry (silver, gold, horses, minerals): “Greater will her dowry be than that of the daughter of the King of Babylon.”
2. It was an 800-mile trip, and the bride came with an escort.
3. Hittite and Egyptian soldiers “ate and drank face to face, not fighting,” according to an inscription on a temple wall. This was amazing! Hittites were one of Egypt’s nine traditional enemies.
E. Huttusilis II, king of the Hittites, asked for an Egyptian physician for his sister who couldn’t have children, yet another indication of a new friendship between rivals. Egyptian medicine had such specialists as gynecologists and eye doctors.
F. Ramses took a second Hittite bride (year 44) to further establish peace. Ramses, it would seem, was mellowing.
II. Ramses experienced several major deaths in the family.
A. Nefertari died as Abu Simbel was completed (year 20). Her death wasn’t formally announced; we know of it because she merely disappears from the historical record.
B. First-born son Amunhirkepshef, the crown prince, died in around year 17.
C. Khaemwaset, the overachiever son who labeled the pyramids, died and is perhaps buried in the Serapeum.
III. Ramses became the tomb builder. No more great temples—he looked instead toward death.
A. Nefertari’s tomb in the Valley of the Queens is the most beautiful of all, restored by the Getty Institute by removing salt crystals beneath the plaster before replastering. Today, visitors to the tomb are limited, because their presence—as in any tomb—affects the humidity.
B. KV 5, the tomb of Ramses’s sons, is the largest in Egypt. He did have fifty-two sons!
1. Found early in the nineteenth century and later lost, the tomb was rediscovered (in 1987) by Dr. Kent Weeks’s Theban Mapping Project.
2. It’s the largest tomb in all of Egypt. The architecture, with hundreds of rooms on several levels, is unique. Perhaps some of the rooms were chapels for offerings to the sons. It may take over a century to excavate KV 5 safely.
C. Ramses’s tomb is a reflection of his greatness.
1. The workmen’s village at Deir el Medineh was supported by Ramses just to build tombs. We know more about this town than about any other ancient city in the world.
2. Because of this town, we know how to build a royal tomb. There were two gangs, one left-hand and one right-hand, working simultaneously. Bronze chisels were weighed at the beginning and end of the week so no one could steal any bronze. An entire city was erected to work on the tombs of Ramses and his sons.
3. The burial chamber of Ramses the Great probably held more treasure than any other single room in antiquity.
D. Why did Ramses have a midlife crisis? The Exodus, as we shall see in the next lecture, may have had something to do with it.
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 events suggest a change in Ramses’s personality?
2. Why is the tomb of Ramses considered so extraordinary?