Chapter 1: What led to the rise of Ramesses II as a powerful pharaoh?
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You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. I met a traveller from an antique land who said, "'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone, sand in the desert.
Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor well those passions read which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things. The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed, and on the pedestal these words appear.' My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
No thing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck. Boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. That was the poem Ozymandias, published by the English poet Percy Shelley in 1818.
It was inspired by the impending arrival in London of a colossal ancient Egyptian statue, the head of a pharaoh who had lived 3,000 years earlier and whose fascinating story was only then just being rediscovered. The Greeks called this figure Ozymandias, but we know him today by his actual name, Rameses. Pharaoh Rameses II, Rameses the Great.
In last week's episode, we explored how Ramesses' dynasty, the Ramessids, came to rule Egypt after a period of turmoil and decline. How first Ramesses' grandad, and then his father, Seti I, set about consolidating their power, paving the way for young Ramesses to inherit an Egypt ready to show its might once more.
We ended by looking into Ramesses' earliest years on the throne, epitomized by his famous clash against the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh. A battle that he would go on to immortalize in great hall of reliefs across his kingdom. Now we're continuing the story. What do we know about the rest of his reign? How did he want to be remembered?
We'll also cover what happened after this Titan's death, how his successors soon faced new troubles, including from the Sea Peoples. This is the continued story of the Ramessid dynasty, with our guest, Dr. Campbell Price. Campbell, welcome back to the show. Hello, Tristan. Hello again. It feels like a long time. It hasn't been. It hasn't.
We did, of course, last time we chatted about the rise of Ramesses and looking at his background and how his granddad and his dad consolidate the position and then he rises to the fore.
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Chapter 2: How did the Battle of Kadesh shape Ramesses II's legacy?
Well, we're going to explore all of that in these various different monumental works. But quickly on the peace treaty itself. Yes. One of the oldest known peace treaties in the world.
Possibly the oldest. Possibly. Challenge me. I don't know of a good example to challenge it.
Possibly the oldest peace treaty we know of in the world. Do we have the wording surviving?
Yes. This is tailing because the Egyptians are proud of this. And a peace treaty is not a type of text, it's not a genre of monumental inscription that was common to the ancient Egyptians to make a treaty with other people. But in this case, it is sealed by a diplomatic marriage. There's a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about the content of dowries.
But the princess comes in and becomes a wife of Ramses II. And it's interesting that this must have quite a cultural impact, the coming of this lady into the royal court. So there is the first marriage and then there is a second marriage a few years later. But even, gosh, a thousand years later into the Ptolemaic period,
There is a fascinating document, it's now in Paris, called the Bentresch Stela, which describes the sending of a statue of an Egyptian god into the Levant to cure a relative of one of the vassal kingdoms. And that seems to be a genuine reflection on the great esteem with which Egyptian doctors are viewed. So it's not just a military thing of, I'll beat you up or we'll have a peace treaty.
If there's a peace treaty, the Egyptian pharaoh might send one of his effective physicians or might send a healing statue of a god. And so there are real, to ancient people, real palpable benefits, which we might think of as being quite superstitious.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Ramesses II face from the Sea Peoples?
But are they also signals of the new friendship between the powers, as it were? Yes. Almost like with the post-Cold War, you've got the cosmonauts and the astronauts together on the space station.
yeah that's that's a nice analogy yeah so so the courts are yeah clearly in communication and they do send gifts between the two of them and that's some kind of assurance and indeed this peace treaty text makes clear that they will you know mutually assure the succession of each kingdom
and help against a third party attacker so that there is that sense of what we would recognize as a modern treaty what started the civil war what ended the conflict in vietnam who was paul revere and did the vikings ever reach america
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Because you've also got the Hittite version of it surviving that they've discovered in Hattusa, I think.
Yes, yeah, yeah, that's right.
And I think they got a copy in the UN or something like that, the oldest peace treaties in the world. So yeah, it's all very interesting, you know, the symbolic importance of it, the legacy of it down to the day is physical evidence of diplomacy more than a thousand years ago.
Yeah, impressive.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the poem Ozymandias in relation to Ramesses II?
And it's one of the first, if not the first, that has the outer pylon gateway made of stone. Previous temples had them made of mud brick and they simply haven't survived. But now I know that there's colleagues in Egypt are working on the restoration of the pylon so it should be more visitable and more visible.
in future, it really was an impressive structure and it was the direct inspiration for one of Ramses' successors, Ramses III. So basically his temple, what's now called Medinet Habu, is not a carbon copy but an homage to the mansion of millions of years of Ramses II called the Ramesseum today.
And was that where Ramses wanted to be buried?
No, this is an important point. It's willfully consciously at a distance from the tomb and that's from the valley of the kings the valley of the kings is the cemetery that's where the the royal sepulchers are which is you know over a kilometer away but the the temple is for people to visit to leave offerings and to celebrate the eternal Cult of the king, the union of the king with various gods.
And that will be where, many, many, many centuries later, Belzoni will find that colossal statue, the head of which is in the British Museum today.
Indeed! The younger Memnon, yes. That inspired a piece of poetry. We'll get to you in a bit later, yes, absolutely.
Well, okay. Sixty-six years on. I don't know much about the end of Ramesses's reign and the state of Egypt at that time. Is there almost a decline in his power, or is Egypt declining as he's getting older? Do we know anything about that?
It's difficult to have a reliable index of, you know, GDP for ancient Egypt, or the equivalent, but... Suffice it to say, I mean, he would have been the only king almost everyone had ever known. So I think when he did eventually shuffle off this mortal coil, there would have been a lot of head scratching about how to actually do a pharaoh's funeral.
But you can tell that there are problems set up in store for his eventual successor, Mehmet Ata. And he seems to have made a pretty good goal. We have a kind of uptick then in evidence of foreign interactions and foreign policy because he has to deal with active political
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Chapter 5: How did Ramesses II's reign impact Egypt's foreign policy?
And maybe, well, exactly, he wasn't preparing to be the king throughout his whole life. He had older brothers. He clearly wants to... record his own active engagement with these foreign powers. So there are sources like the so-called Israel Stele. So this is a reused monument of an earlier king of Amenhotep III, where the back of it is inscribed with various campaigns.
And there are lots of these things, actually, relatively speaking. And it's the first historic mention of the people of Israel. Israel as a people, isn't it? As a people. So historically, very, very interesting. But also Mehmet Agha goes around. Again, you get the sense, maybe reading a little bit between the lines, that he thinks he doesn't have long because he's quite old already.
And he does rule for almost 10 years. So, you know, he does okay. And he puts his name on wherever there is an empty space because he doesn't have the time to commission new monuments. He just whaps his name on, whether it's statues of older kings, whether it's columns. We have an example in Manchester Museum where it's an old or middle kingdom column of granite.
Ramesses II has his name and image worshipping a god on it. And then Meron Patar has had his name added as well. So there's this sense of, you know, yeah, fighting against time. But I think the real success of Men in Bataan, it's a shame he's not better known, is that he actively manages to campaign quite actively against powers from the East and the West and the South.
With time, the dynasty, there's lots of internal struggles for a few generations. But then by the time of Ramesses III, you get active incursions You get the Sea Peoples, this kind of motley crew of people from the Mediterranean. You get the Libyans actively coming over and being quite threatening. And all of this seems to be held at bay by Mehret Batar. So he maybe gets...
undeservedly short shrift because he's overshadowed by his father and people often say Ramesses III is the last great king of ancient Egypt but Meron Ptah must have had a pretty involved training in his youth
So maybe he's in his 60s, not actively going out fighting, but he's able to, I guess, reflect on his experience of being the son of Ramses II and strategize to head off problems which become serious problems in the decades after his reign.
So those military problems that he faces during his only a decade or so on the throne, it's quite interesting how you have, you know, Ramses II ruling for so long, then almost as soon as he dies, you have Libyans, the emergence of the Sea Peoples, you have the Nubians revolting as well, and Meron Ptah almost is one, he has to deal with it. Do we think there's potentially a feeling that
Enemies were circling. They see the death of a pharaoh. They see Meremptar come to the throne quite elderly. They feel that there's an opportunity here.
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