Ramses II/Ramses the Great

Ramses II or Ramses the Great is the third pharaoh of the 19th dynasty. Often regarded as Egypt's greatest and most powerful pharaoh. He was one of Egypt's greatest warriors and peacemakers and made Egypt come to the height of her power. He created the model Egypt that anyone before or after could not replicate. According to some Egyptoligists and scholars Ramses II is believed to have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Ramses II was the first king in history to sign a peace treaty with his enemies, the Hittites, ending long years of wars and hostility.

Family

Ramses II was born to the principal wife Queen Tuy of the pharaoh Seti I. At 14 Ramses became Prince Regent by his father Seti I. In his early 20s became pharaoh and ruled Egypt for a total of 67 years by most records. This allowed him to be the second longest-ruling Pharaoh. Although Ramses II had a harem of wives, his favorite wife was Nefertari and it was presumed that he had over one hundred children with all his wives. Ramses II celebrated an unprecedented 14 sed festivals during his reign which was more than any other pharaoh. (The photo on the right is of a statue of Ramses II at Luxor)

Impacts

Ramses the Great built on a scale never before seen throughout Egypt and Nubia. He covered the land from the Delta into Nubia with buildings that no pharaoh had before done. He also founded the capital city of Pi- Ramses in the Delta which had previously served as a summer palace under Seti I. Ramses II built his magnificent moratorium temple the Ramesseum. His building was done on a scale unlike anything before. In Thebes, the ancient temples were transformed with each one of them reflecting honor to Ramses II as a symbol of this divine nature and power. When immortalizing himself into stone Ramses the Great insisted that his carvings were deeply engraved in the stone. This made them not only less susceptible to later alteration but also made them more prominent in the Egyptian sun, reflecting his relationship with the sun god, Ra. Among his other massive monuments is the complex of Abu Simbel which was carved out of sandstone facing east and the expansion of Luxor and Karnak. (The photo on the left is a picture of Abu Simbel)

Ramses II was a prolific ruler that fought to reclaim territory in Nubia and Western Asia. The Hittites and Asia Minor were his main opponents. As Pharaoh, he led a campaign known as the Battle of Kadesh where he tried to keep the newly acquired territory (modern day Syria) but lost the battle to the Hittites. Now seen as a standstill, Ramses II pulled back and Kadesh fell back into the hands of the Hittites. Later however, a treaty was signed, the territory divided, and Ramses II agreed to marry the daughter of the Hittite King. During his reign as Pharaoh, Ramses the Great attacked many of his enemies such as the Libyans, Nubians, and Syria.

Death

While his actual age upon is his in uncertain we do know he was in his 90s. He was buried in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings and his body later moved to a royal cache where it was discovered in 1881. Ramses II's mummy is now on display in the Cairo Museum. His tomb was KV7 in the Valley of the Kings and now remains empty. After years or being looted and weathered, it remains destroyed. Great amounts of effort are in progress with the hope of returning the tomb to a somewhat presentable stage. His mummy was eventually sent to Paris and diagnosed and treated for a fungal infection. During the numerous tests and examinations, battle wounds, old fractures, arthritis, and poor circulation were all revealed. For the last decades of his life, Ramses the Great was essentially crippled with arthritis and walked with a hunched back. A significant hole in the Pharaoh's mandible was detected while "an abscess by his teeth was serious enough to have caused death by infection, although this cannot be determined with certainty." Tests of the roots of Ramses II's hair proved that the original color of the king's hair was once red. In ancient Egypt, people with red hair were associated with the god Seth, the slayer of Osiris.