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Ramesses II

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Ancient History,
Classical History and Mythology

                              Persondata
   NAME              Ramesses II
   ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ramesses the Great
                     alternatively transcribed as Ramses and Rameses
   SHORT DESCRIPTION Pharaoh of Egypt
   DATE OF BIRTH     {{{Birth}}}
   PLACE OF BIRTH    Ancient Egypt
   DATE OF DEATH     {{{Death}}}
   PLACE OF DEATH    Ancient Egypt
   Preceded by:
   Seti I       Pharaoh of Egypt
                19th Dynasty    Succeeded by:
                                Merneptah
                             Ramesses II
                         Ramesses the Great
   alternatively transcribed as Ramses and Rameses
   Ramesses II: one of four external seated statues at Abu Simbel.
   Enlarge
   Ramesses II: one of four external seated statues at Abu Simbel.
   Reign        66 years
                1279 BC to 1213 BC
   Praenomen

                <

                  ra wsr mAat ra stp
                              n
                                    >
                   Usermaatre-setepenre
                   The Justice of Re is Powerful,
                Chosen of Re
   Nomen

                <

                  i  mn
                    n
                    N36 ra
                        Z1 ms s sw
                                  >
                   Ramesses (meryamun)
                Born of Re, (Beloved of Amun)
   Horus name   Kanakht Merymaa
   Nebty name   Mekkemetwafkhasut
   Golden Horus Userrenput-aanehktu
   Consort(s)   Isetnofret, Nefertari
                Maathorneferure
   Issues       Bintanath, Khaemweset,
                Merneptah, Amun-her-khepsef
                Meritamen
   Father       Seti I
   Mother       Queen Tuya
   Born         1302 BC
   Died         1213 BC
   Burial       KV7
   Major
   Monuments    Abu Simbel, Ramesseum,
                etc.

   Ramesses II (also known as Ramesses the Great and alternatively
   transcribed as Ramses and Rameses *Riʕmīsisu) was an Egyptian pharaoh
   of the Nineteenth dynasty. He was born ca. 1302 BC. At age fourteen,
   Ramses II was appointed Prince Regent by his father. He is believed to
   have taken the throne in his early 20s and to have ruled Egypt from
   1279 BC to 1213 BC for a total of 66 years and 2 months. He was once
   said to have lived to be 99 years old, but it is more likely that he
   died in his 90th or 92nd year. Ancient Greek writers such as Herodotus
   attributed his accomplishments to the semi-mythical Sesostris, and he
   is traditionally believed to have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus due to
   a tradition started by Eusebius of Caesarea. If he became king in 1279
   BC as most Egyptologists today believe, he would have assumed the
   throne on May 31, 1279 BC based on his known accession date of III
   Shemu day 27.

Naming

   As with most pharaohs, Ramesses had a number of royal names. The two
   most important, his prenomen (regnal name) and nomen (birth name) are
   shown in Egyptian hieroglyphs above to the right. These names are
   transliterated as wsr-m3‘t-r‘–stp-n-r‘ r‘-ms-sw–mry-ỉ-mn, which is
   usually written as Usermaatra-setepenra Ramessu-meryamen. It translates
   as "Powerful one of Ma'at, the Justice of Ra is Powerful, chosen of Ra,
   Ra bore him, beloved of Amun". In the Hittite copy of the
   above-mentioned peace treaty with Hattusilis, the Pharaoh's name
   appears as Washmuaria Shatepnaria Riamashesha Maiamana. Some scholars
   believe this is possibly a closer approximation of the actual
   vocalization of the Egyptian king's name.

Life

   Tablet of treaty between Hattusili III of Hatti and Ramesses II of
   Egypt, at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.
   Enlarge
   Tablet of treaty between Hattusili III of Hatti and Ramesses II of
   Egypt, at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.

   Ramesses II was the third king of the 19th dynasty, and the second son
   of Seti I and his Queen Tuya. Ramesses' older brother (perhaps
   Neb-en-khaset-neb) predeceased him before adulthood. The most memorable
   of Ramesses' wives was Nefertari. Earlier wives, among others, of this
   king were Isetnofret and Maathorneferure, Princess of Hatti. The writer
   Terence Gray stated in 1923 that Ramesses II had as many as 20 sons and
   20 daughters but scholars today believe his offspring numbered almost a
   hundred in total. In 2004, Dodson and Hilton noted that the monumental
   evidence "seems to indicate that Ramesses II had around 100
   children--[with] 48-50 sons and 40-53 daughters." His children include
   Bintanath and Meritamen (princesses and their father's wives),
   Sethnakhte, Amun-her-khepeshef the king's first born son, Merneptah
   (who would eventually succeed him as Ramesses' 13th son), and Prince
   Khaemweset. Ramesses II's second born son, Ramesses B--sometimes called
   Ramesses Junior--became the crown prince from Year 25 to Year 50 of his
   father's reign after the death of Amen-her-khepesh.

   In his Year 2, Ramesses II decisively defeated the Shardana or Sherden
   sea pirates who were wreaking havoc along Egypt's Mediterranean coast
   by attacking cargo-ladden vessels travelling the sea routes to Egypt.
   The Sherden people came from the coast of Ionia or south-west Turkey.
   Ramesses posted troops and ships at strategic points along the coast
   and patiently allowed the pirates to attack their prey before
   skillfully catching them by surprise in a sea battle and capturing them
   all in one fell swoop. Ramesses would soon incorporate these skilled
   mercenaries into his army where they were to play a pivotal role at the
   battle of Kadesh. As king, Ramesses II led several expeditions north
   into the lands east of the Mediterranean (the location of the modern
   Israel, Lebanon and Syria).

Battle of Kadesh

   Ramses atop chariot, at the Battle of Kadesh, in a relief inside his
   Abu Simbel temple.
   Enlarge
   Ramses atop chariot, at the Battle of Kadesh, in a relief inside his
   Abu Simbel temple.

   After some preparations, Ramesses decided to attack territory in the
   Levant which belonged to a more substantial enemy: the Hittite Empire.
   At the Second Battle of Kadesh in May 1274 BC towards the end of the
   Fourth year of his reign, Egyptian forces under his leadership marched
   through the coastal road through Canaan and south Syria through the
   Bekaa Valley and approached Kadesh from the south.. Ramesses planned to
   seize the citadel of Kadesh which belonged to king Muwatallis of the
   Hittite Empire. The battle almost turned into a disaster as Ramesses
   was initially tricked by two Bedouin spies in the pay of the Hittites
   to believe that Muwatallis and his massive army were still 120 miles
   north of Kadesh. Ramesses II only learned of the true nature of his
   dire predicament when a subsequent pair of Hittite spies were captured,
   beaten and forced to reveal the truth before him:


   Ramesses II

   When they had been brought before Pharaoh, His Majesty asked, 'Who are
    you?' They replied 'We belong to the king of Hatti. He has sent us to
     spy on you.' Then His Majesty said to them, 'Where is he, the enemy
     from Hatti? I had heard that he was in the land of Khaleb, north of
   Tunip.' They replied to His Majesty, 'Lo, the king of Hatti has already
     arrived, together with the many countries who are supporting him...
   They are armed with their infantry and their chariots. They have their
   weapons of war at the ready. They are more numerous than the grains of
     sand on the beach. Behold, they stand equipped and ready for battle
                       behind the old city of Kadesh.'


   Ramesses II

   Ramesses had fallen into a well-laid trap by Muwatallis whose thousands
   of infantry and chariotry were hidden well behind the eastern bank of
   the Orontes river under the command of the king's brother, Hattusili
   III. The Egyptian army itself had been divided into two main forces –
   the Re and Amun brigades with Ramesses and the Ptah and Seth brigades –
   separated from each other by forests and the far side of the Orontes
   river. The Re brigade was almost totally destroyed by the surprise
   initial Hittite chariot attack and Ramesses II had barely enough time
   to rally his own Amun brigade and secure reinforcements from the Ptah
   Army Brigade (who were just arriving upon the scene of battle) to turn
   the tide of battle against the Hittites. While Ramesses II had in
   theory 'won' the battle, Muwatallis had effectively won the war.
   Ramesses was compelled to retreat south with the Hittite commander
   Hattusili III relentlessly harrying the Egyptian forces through the
   Bekaa Valley; the Egyptian province of Upi was also captured according
   to the Hittite records at Boghazkoy.

Aftermath

   Egypt's sphere of influence was now restricted to Canaan while Syria
   fell into Hittite hands. Over the ensuing years, Rameses II would
   return to campaign against the Hittites and even achieved several
   spectacular victories (at a time of Hittite weakness due to a dispute
   over Muwatallis' succession) to briefly capture the cities of Tunip,
   where no Egyptian soldier had been seen since the time of Thutmose III
   almost 120 years previously and even Kadesh in his 8th and 9th Years.
   However, neither power could decisively defeat the other in battle.
   Consequently, in the twenty-first year of his reign ( 1258 BC), Ramses
   decided to conclude an agreement with the new Hittite king at Kadesh,
   Hattusili III, to end the conflict. The ensuing document is the
   earliest known peace treaty in world history.

   Ramesses II also campaigned south of the first cataract into Nubia. He
   constructed many impressive monuments, including the renowned
   archeological complex of Abu Simbel, and the mortuary temple known as
   the Ramesseum. It is said that there are more statues of him in
   existence than of any other Egyptian pharaoh , not surprising as he was
   the second-longest-reigning Pharaoh of Egypt after Pepi II. A colossal
   statue of Ramesses II was reconstructed and erected on Ramses Square in
   Cairo in 1955.
   In August 2006, contractors moved the 3,200-year-old statue of him from
   Ramesess Square to save it from exhaust fumes that were causing the
   83-ton statue to deteriorate. The statue was originally taken from a
   temple in Memphis. The new site will be located near the future
   Grand_Egyptian_Museum.

Mummy

   He was buried in the Valley of the Kings, in KV7, but his mummy was
   later moved to the mummy cache at Deir el-Bahri, where it was found in
   1881. In 1885 it was placed in Cairo's Egyptian Museum, where it
   remains as of 2006.

   Ramesses' mummy features a hooked nose and strong jaw, and is of above
   average height for an ancient Egyptian, standing some five feet, seven
   inches. In his last years, he suffered from arthritis, tooth cavities
   and poor circulation. His successor was ultimately to be his thirteenth
   son; Merneptah.

   In 1974, Cairo Museum Egyptologists noticed that the mummy's condition
   was rapidly deteriorating. They decided to fly Rameses II's mummy to
   Paris for examination. Ramses II was issued an Egyptian passport that
   listed his occupation as "King (deceased)."

   In Paris, Ramses' mummy was diagnosed and treated for a fungal
   infection. During the examination, scientific analysis revealed battle
   wounds and old fractures, as well as the pharaoh's arthritis and poor
   circulation. After Ramesses' mummy had been returned to Egypt, it was
   visited by the late President Anwar Sadat and his wife.
   Mummy of Ramesses II.
   Enlarge
   Mummy of Ramesses II.
   President Sadat visiting Ramesses II's mummy.
   Enlarge
   President Sadat visiting Ramesses II's mummy.

Tomb KV5

   In 1995, Professor Kent Weeks, head of the Theban Mapping Project
   rediscovered Tomb KV5. It has proven to be the largest tomb in the
   Valley of the Kings which originally contained the mummified remains of
   some of this king's estimated 52 sons. Approximately 150 corridors and
   tomb chambers have been located in this tomb as of 2006 and the tomb
   may contain as many as 200 corridors and chambers. It is believed that
   at least 4 of Ramesses' sons including Meryatum, Sety,
   Amun-her-khepeshef (Ramesses' first born son) and "the King's Principal
   Son of His Body, the Generalissimo Ramesses, justified" (ie: deceased)
   were buried there from inscriptions, ostracas or canopic jars
   discovered in the tomb. Joyce Tyldesley writes that thus far

          "no intact burials have been discovered and there have been
          little substantial funeral debris: thousands of potsherds,
          faience shabti figures, beads, amulets, fragments of Canopic
          jars, of wooden coffins...but no intact sarcophagi, mummies or
          mummy cases, suggesting that much of the tomb may have been
          unused. Those burials which were made in KV5 were thoroughly
          looted in antiquity, leaving little or no remains."

Pharaoh of Exodus?

   At least as early as Eusebius of Caesarea, Ramesses II was identified
   with the pharaoh of whom the Biblical figure Moses demanded his people
   be released from slavery.

   This identification has been occasionally disputed but the evidence for
   another solution is inconclusive:
     * Ramesses II was not drowned in the Sea and the biblical account
       makes no specific claim that the pharaoh was with his army when
       they were "swept ... into the sea." In fact, Jewish tradition
       appears to indicate that Pharaoh was the only Egyptian to survive
       the Red Sea, and later became the King of Nineveh in the Book of
       Jonah.

     * There is nothing in the archaeological records from the time of his
       reign to confirm the existence of the Plagues of Egypt. This is not
       surprising since few pharaohs wished to record natural disasters or
       military defeats (as documented in the Biblical narratives) in the
       same manner that their rivals documented these events. In addition,
       no reference to any setbacks were made in royal Egyptian textual
       records or within the large number of informal Egyptian texts still
       in existence. For instance, after the serious Egyptian setback at
       the Battle of Kadesh, Hittites archives uncovered in Boghazkoy, the
       capital of Hatti, reveal that "a humiliated Ramesses [was] forced
       to retreat from Kadesh in ignominious defeat" and abandon the
       border provinces of Amurru and Upi to the control of his Hittite
       rival without the benefit of a formal truce. Benteshina, the ruler
       of Amurru who had been Ramesses' ally at Kadesh was deposed and
       swiftly marched off to Boghazkoy to face an uncertain fate while
       the Hittite hold over Kadesh was reinforced. By contrast, in
       Ramesses II's version of events, the Pharaoh fictitiously
       states--just a day after his narrow escape from death in
       battle--that "the cowardly Hittite king sent a letter to the
       Egyptian camp pleading for peace. Negotiators were summoned and a
       truce was agreed, although Ramesses, still claiming an Egyptian
       victory...refused to sign a formal treaty. Ramesses returned home
       to enjoy his personal triumph, which was to be retold many times in
       prose, as an epic poem and in relief carving[s]." No inconvenient
       references to Ramesses' loss of Amurru or Upi are preserved in the
       Egyptian records.

     * The dates now ascribed to Ramesses's reign by most modern scholars
       might not match the dates when Moses was believed to be in Egypt.

   In the 1960's and 1970's, several scholars such as George Mendenhall
   associated the Israelite's arrival in Palestine more closely with the
   Hapiru mentioned in the Amarna letters which date to the reign of
   Amenhotep III and Akhenaten and in the Hittite treaties with Ramesses
   II. Most scholars today, however, view the Hapiru instead as bandits
   who attacked the trade and royal caravans that travelled along the
   coastal roads of Canaan.

   On the other hand, Ramesses' own stele erected in the late 13th century
   BC in the city known to the Bible as Bet-Shan mentions two conquered
   peoples who came to "make obeisance to him" in his city of Rameses but
   mentions neither the building of the city nor, as some have written,
   the Israelites or Hapiru .

   The Bible states that the Israelites toiled in slavery and built "for
   Pharaoh supply cities, Pithom and Ra'amses" in the Egyptian Delta. The
   latter is probably a reference to the city of Pi-Ramesse Aa-nakhtu or
   the "House of Ramesses, Great-of-Victories" (modern day Qantir) which
   had been Seti I's summer retreat. Ramesses II greatly enlarged this
   city both as his principal northern capital and as an important forward
   base for his military campaigns into the Levant and his control over
   Canaan. According to Kenneth Kitchen, Pi-Ramesses was largely abandoned
   from c. 1130 BC onwards; as was often the practice, later rulers
   removed much of the stone from the city to build the temples of their
   new capital: Tanis. Therefore, if the identification of the city is
   correct, it strengthens the case for identifying Ramesses II as the
   Pharaoh who reigned Egypt during Moses' lifetime. The fact that his son
   and successor Merneptah mentions in the so-called Merneptah Stele that
   the Ancient Israelites already lived in Canaan during his reign (indeed
   the Stele makes a point of declaring the supposed utter destruction of
   that people) supports the traditional identification of Rameses II as
   the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

   Speculation that Ramesses II was the Biblical Pharaoh named Shishak who
   attacked Judah and seized war bounty from Jerusalem in Year 5 of
   Rehoboam is untenable because both Ramesses II and his 19th Dynasty
   successors (ie: Merneptah, Seti II, Siptah & Twosret) retained firm
   control over Canaan during their reigns. Neither Israel nor Judah could
   have existed as independent states during this time.

Fiction

     * The life of Ramesses II has also inspired a large number of
       historical novels, including the five volume series, Ramsès, by the
       French writer Christian Jacq. (Translated editions are available
       for non-French readers.)
     * Norman Mailer's novel Ancient Evenings is largely concerned with
       the life of Ramesses II, though from the perspective of Egyptians
       living during the reign of Ramesses IX.
     * Ramesses was the main character in the Anne Rice book The Mummy or
       Ramses the Damned.
     * Ramesses was portrayed by Yul Brynner in the classic film The Ten
       Commandments (1956).
     * In the film " The Prince of Egypt" Ramesses (voiced by Ralph
       Fiennes) is portrayed as Moses' adoptive brother.
     * The song "User-Maat-Re" by death metal band Nile is about Ramesses
       II.
     * Ramesses is the inspiration for Percy Bysshe Shelley's famous poem
       Ozymandias.
     * Ramesses was the inspiration for the character Ozymandias in the
       award-winning graphic novel Watchmen.

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