Ramesses the Great: Death of a Dynasty
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What led to the rise of Ramesses II as a powerful pharaoh?
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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.
And Kadesh, the Basav Kadesh, five years in, it's almost a humiliation for him, but he's able to transform it, you know, as a base for then him becoming, in our eyes at least, later on one of the most well-known, arguably successful pharaohs of all.
Yeah, I think we've covered the prelude to greatness, you know, being on the shoulders of giants, because I think Ramesses II owes a lot to his father and to his grandfather. But Kadesh is undoubtedly a turning point because, as you said, he's going back and trying to win some grudge matches. doesn't succeed in real terms doesn't succeed with an outright victory but is able to spin the story and again i'm very skeptical of using a modern term like propaganda so when you see the walls of temples where rameses ii is talking about Kadesh, the fact that he writes that, not he himself, but he commissions that to be carved on the temple wall makes it so. It seems strange to a modern point of view, but that is in some ways maybe anticipating a victory that he thinks maybe he will have in actuality in the future.
But that doesn't really matter. The gods know the truth. And he's carved it on the wall of the god's house. So by writing anything in hieroglyphs, which are known as the words of the gods, You make it so.
Oh, okay. So it wasn't as if he thought he was deceiving the gods by spinning it.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What led to the rise of Ramesses II as a powerful pharaoh?
0:00–16:57
2
How did the Battle of Kadesh shape Ramesses II's legacy?
16:57–18:57
3
What challenges did Ramesses II face from the Sea Peoples?
18:57–34:46
4
What is the significance of the poem Ozymandias in relation to Ramesses II?
34:46–39:26
5
How did Ramesses II's reign impact Egypt's foreign policy?
39:26–58:55