Dr. Campbell Price

where his body, it seems, is so well preserved, he's assumed to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

So we do have the actual body of Ramses.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He goes a bit mouldy in the 1970s and is sent to Paris for defungal treatment.

so having the face of this man so it's not just the statues of course the statues don't look anything like he would have done when he was alive and people have tried to extrapolate from his mummified body what he might have looked like we'll never really know just to be clear that's another hobby horse of mine but having the body and especially when it was unwrapped in the 1880s was shocking and surprising and thrilling

So in popular culture, you know, that's one of the most popular postcards you could buy.

In the late 1800s was the mummified face of Ramesses II.

So he gains a totally unexpected popularity.

You know, the cover of an Iron Maiden album is inspired by Abu Simbel.

You know, things like that.

He speaks to...

He speaks to modernity in our experience of tyrants and autocrats and dictators because I don't imagine Ramses II presided over a democracy.

So there's something about his character we still are kind of seduced by, even though he was probably pretty autocratic.

He built so many statues.

He had so many battles.

He had so many children.

You know, we can't help but have this grudging respect.

And his name is everywhere on so many of the great monuments, whether it's the pyramids or Karnak or Abu Simbel.

If there's one name to learn, one cartouche to learn, it's Ramesses II, Usermatra, Setepenra.

If you learn those hieroglyphs, you will see them all over Egypt.