Ramses II


Ramses II Usermaatre Setepenre, son of king Sethi I, was one of
the longest reigning pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. He reigned 67 years
(roughly from 1290-1224 BC), in the beginning as coregent with his father,
and lived for more than 80 years, which was very rare in those days.
During his life he made quite a reputation as a builder and a warrior,
but also as a ladies man. He had 5 or 6 main wives, foremost of all being
Nefertari, but is known to have had more than 100 children with all of
his wives. Already in Ancient Egypt people seems to have made fun
of this fact, since the contemporary and famous Turin Papyrus features
erotic scenes involving a pharaoh --probably Ramses II-- and several women.


Ramses II is, however, best known for all the buildings he had constructed
in his name across the country. Especially the monumental temples of Karnak
(near Luxor) and Abu Simbel (in the south of the country in so-called Nubia),
and his mortuary temple The Ramesseum (on the West Bank near Luxor)
give evidence of his love for grandeur. In all of his monuments he had
his name cartouche and texts engraved so deep that no successor would be
able to remove it.

Ramses' energetic building activities more or less led to a degrading of
Egyptian art as far as the engraving of texts and images on temple walls
was concerned, for he demanded the monuments to be erected with greater
speed than usual. Otherwise carefully engraved texts and images with many
beautiful details were now made more superficially, a practice which was
unfortunately continued by his successors.

Most famous of his military engagements is the Battle of Kadesh against
the Hittites (from Western Asia), with whom the Egyptians had been struggling
for many years. He seems to have escaped defeat by pure luck, as his
main force -- the pharaoh himself commanding -- was ambushed by the Hittites,
and was only saved just in time by reinforcements while retreating. Both sides
claimed the victory in this battle, but it seems more likely to have ended
in a status quo. Ramses II recorded 'his' victory on several monuments,
showing him slaying the Hittites in person.
The problems between Egyptians and Hittites were finally settled several
years later when Ramses married a Hittite princess.

After he died, Ramses was buried in the famous royal necropolis of the
Valley of the Kings, located in the hills on the west bank of the
Nile opposite modern town of Luxor. However, the mummy of Ramses II was
not found on location in his tomb, but was discovered in 1881 among many
other royal mummies in the so-called Royal Cache in Deir el-Bahri on the
Theban west-bank. According to a hieroglyphic text found on the mummy
it was removed from the actual royal tomb for safety reasons by Egyptian
priests in the 10th year of the reign of king Pinodjem (around 1070 B.C.)
after robbers violated the burial. Though the text stated it was placed
together with the body of his father, Seti, in the tomb of Amenhotep I,
it was apparently later moved again to its final resting place in the royal
cache. The mummy is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.