Chapter 1: What is the significance of Ramesses II in Egyptian history?
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I'm currently here, about 30 kilometers from the border with Sudan, and I'm staring at four colossal statues of Ramesses II, of Ramesses the Great. Very much him showing this image that he was divine, that he was a great builder, and that he was the man in charge of this land, of the area of what was known as Lower Nubia. It's his story that we're covering today, his rise to prominence.
What do we know? Well, to talk through it all, I was delighted to interview the one and only Dr. Campbell Price from Manchester Museum. Let's go. It's 3,315 years ago and a young Egyptian prince walks through a towering monument.
He is at the prestigious ancient city of Thebes in Upper Egypt, the capital of famous pharaonic predecessors like Thutmose III and Hatshepsut, and the home of a renowned temple complex dedicated to Egypt's chief god, Amun. Its name? Ipetsut. Karnak. The young prince walks through the newest great building being constructed at the sanctuary, commissioned by his father, the current pharaoh.
The interior is a dense forest of columns, more than a hundred in total, each over 15 metres in height, closely spaced and supporting a large roof above, with slits high up in the walls to let in beams of sunlight. This great hall was to be a centre of ceremonies and rituals for Amun, where only the pharaoh, his family and his closest entourage could enter.
This newest sacred space for Amun is not yet complete. Decorations still need to be added. Reliefs of pharaohs, gods and offerings still need to be carved into the walls and columns. Paint still needs to be applied. But the work is underway. As the prince walks through the hall, the sounds of workmen grow louder. He exits the northern entrance and sees a great cluster of builders.
They are gathered around the exterior wall, busy carving reliefs into it.
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Chapter 2: How did dynastic turmoil influence the rise of Ramesses II?
The prince recognises the scene instantly. There in the wall is his victorious father, larger than any other figure, riding a chariot. There are countless captives bound in front of him, a river filled with crocodiles and a city under siege.
The scene records his father's most recent military venture up into Syria and the Great Bastion of Kadesh, a city hotly contested between the Egyptians and their northern rivals, the Hittites. The campaign had proven a success. The prince's father had returned to Egypt in a stronger position, consolidating his family's new hold over the throne.
Seti was his name, Pharaoh Seti I. And his young son, then overseeing his father's achievements, being immortalized in stone, was none other than Rameses, soon to be Pharaoh Rameses II, Rameses the Great. In this episode, we are going to cover this early story of Ramesses.
How his family, including both his father Seti and his father before him, became pharaohs of Egypt after a period of turmoil for this Bronze Age superpower, laying the foundations for Ramesses and his extraordinary reign. A reign that included great battles, buildings and so much more. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of the rise of Ramesses with our guest, Dr. Campbell Price.
Campbell, it is such a pleasure to have you back on the show. Hello, Tristan. It's nice to be back. And we've done episodes in the past up at your work home, Manchester Museum, and now you're down in our lovely studio in London. Indeed. And to talk about the rise of Ramesses II, first of all, and his dynasty, the 19th dynasty.
Yes, I mean, Ramesses II is a well-known household name, but it's interesting to consider how he became the great and why people later thought he was so great.
I mean, a 66-year reign, isn't that correct?
Yeah.
Around that time. And normally, if someone says Ramesses II or Ramesses the Great, you might think this is the pinnacle of ancient Egypt. This is when it's at the top of its military might, its wealth, its art and architecture. Is that a fair assessment?
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Chapter 3: What role did Seti I play in shaping Ramesses II's future?
So yeah, we're talking about the 1200s BCE, but, you know, 1300s, 1400s, you're really getting the, for want of a better term, the imperial conquest.
And paint us a bit more of a picture, briefly, before we delve into the details. A quick picture of Ramesses the man, what we should get an idea of, how we should picture him before we delve into the origins of his rule and of his family.
Well, as you already said, he is exceptional because he rules for 66 years. With one exception, he's probably the longest reigning Egyptian pharaoh. So given it was a dangerous job being the king of any ancient power, you must have some personal charisma and command to not be attacked, you know, rebelled against or been bumped off by your family. So I think he knows his grandfather.
He follows in a fairly new dynasty, a kind of Arabist dynasty. Group of military people. And he has 100 children. Wow. Okay, you save that. We'll save that till his later reign. But as a boy, he must know he's destined for greatness. That's not simply a back projection from when he becomes king as some... other pharaohs imagine as if they'd been selected from the egg. They conquered in the egg.
That is something that's said of other kings. Ramesses II, as a prince, really does seem to be groomed for greatness. And when he gets the chance, when his father eventually dies, he really goes for it on quite a scale.
This is a man who's royalty throughout his life. You know, he's not the man who wins a coup or anything like that.
No, exactly. Yes, exactly. So he's, to himself, he's blue-blooded, but the family... They're fairly new kids on the block, given the previous dynasty. The 18th dynasty is a long stretch of very interesting characters.
Well, the 18th dynasty, that is where we need to begin. So we're going back more than a century before Ramesses' reign. And the 18th dynasty, it is full of these incredible large-than-life figures, isn't it?
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Chapter 4: What were the key achievements of Seti I during his reign?
Tutankhamun, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Akhenaten. I mean, paint us a picture of the 18th dynasty, quick.
Oh, well, that's very difficult. Okay, so you get some heavy hitters early on. So you have essentially the War of Liberation against the Hyksos, these northerners who have ruled Egypt and who need to be expelled. And that happens, that really heralds the beginning of the 18th dynasty, about 1500 and something.
BCE and that's Achmosy Achmosy we're now calling him the second he used to be called Achmosy the first but because we've discovered an earlier Achmosy we're calling him Achmosy the second then he initiates
a line of not necessarily blood relations because we get Amenhotep I, who's a son of Ahmose, but then we get Thutmose I. So he's a real warrior king and he not only repels foreign invasions, he doesn't just expel people like Ahmose I, but he actively seeks to expand that field of influence, that sphere of influence of Egypt. And I think it's that that sets the precedent
for Rameses to look back on.
The whole dynasty, it's a time of kind of wealthy art and architecture, amazing structures like the obelisks, warrior kings, but also powerful queens as well like at Shepset. So as you mentioned right at the start, this actually feels like the real zenith of ancient Egypt rather than the 19th dynasty that follows.
Yeah, I think that's fair. In kind of rough terms, if we're thinking about success as artistic quality, and that's very subjective of course,
criterion and how much actual gold there is in the treasury so Thutmose III is an important character he's sometimes called the Napoleon of ancient Egypt expansionist he is working in concert with his aunt his stepmother Hatshepsut the female pharaoh who rules for 20 odd years by his side much is made of the potential rivalry the kind of the cookie cutter impression of the wicked stepmother forget it
The relationship is much more complicated than that. But setting the precedent for Ramses II... Thutmose III leaves things in pretty good condition. His son Amenhotep II, yeah, pretty good. By the reign of Amenhotep III, you do get the impression that he's just sat down, just enjoying being luxurious because his forefathers have done it for him. He is not really going out doing battle.
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Chapter 5: How did Ramesses II's early reign compare to his father's?
But there is a sense in which, and it may be typical, we don't have the other side of the dialogue, but there is a sense that the Egyptian king Akhenaten is maybe not doing as much as he could to maintain Egyptian imperial possessions. And that is important because there does seem to be a lull an Egyptian foreign influence in the Levant.
And it is that, ultimately, that the dynasty of Ramses II seeks to re-establish.
Exactly. So this almost steady decline of the 18th dynasty following Thutmose III, isn't it, that we're going to explore. And you mentioned source material there, like you had those letters in cuneiform. Do we have quite a rich array of source material for learning about the 18th dynasty and the latter half of the 18th dynasty as we get to the to the rise ultimately of the House of Remeses.
Well, we're so dependent on official proclamations, which are given a flavour, shall we say, if we're being positivist, that give some kind of flavour, but they don't recount the detail anything like the way a historian would want today. But you're right that those cuneiform tablets, the Amarna letters, offer a really fascinating insight because these are
one-on-one discussions this is the queen of egypt writes or the king of egypt writes to their opposite number so you you get a sense of the geopolitics of the time but it's shrouded in decorum what is appropriate to say in certain contexts and we only really have one side of the of the discussion
So if we have, let's say, Egypt at its height under Thutmose III ruling an empire at that time, I mean, how big an empire should we be thinking of? And I want to ask that question first of all, because if we then fast forward to, let's say, the reign of Akhenaten, so we can get a real sense of how that empire is already transforming by that pharaoh by the time of Akhenaten and Hotep IV.
Yeah. So purely in terms of geographical extent, and again, I emphasize, I wouldn't think of it as an empire like the Roman Empire or the British Empire, but it's an area of influence. Egypt itself, it should always be stressed, is the perfect country. So Egypt, bordered naturally by the Mediterranean, by the deserts, by the cataracts to the south of Aswan, is ideal.
Egypt doesn't need to expand. It's already perfect, set by the gods. But to the north, in the reign of Thutmose III, there's areas of influence up to the Euphrates. So it's a big stretch of up into what is now modern Syria and Iraq, to the south, deep into what is now Sudan. To the west, of course, there's Libya. And we'll come back to Libya because Ramesses really makes a point of that as well.
And so these are the kind of the natural extents of... ancient Egyptian exploitation. So they want stuff. They're not interested really in everyone believing in the Egyptian way of life. Yes, there are elite key people that pay homage to the king and send tribute, but they want stuff.
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Chapter 6: What challenges did Ramesses II face at the Battle of Kadesh?
They want materials. They want gold. They want access to metals, to exotic products, to people. There's exploitation of people, of course. There are enslaved people in all of this. but maybe not quite of the character that maybe we've been led to think in scriptural sources.
And so that's at its height. I mean, so how does it decline by the time we get to Akhenaten? A few decades, is it quite a few decades later, isn't it?
Yeah, so if we think, so Thutmose is in the 1400s, Akhenaten is the mid-1300s, so 60, 70, 80 years later. there is a lot of ping-ponging goes on between... So if you're a kind of small state in the south of modern Syria, say,
and you've got the Egyptians who claim control or some kind of nominal control of your land and want you to send tribute, that's fine if they come and they have a military sortie and they beat you up. But then when the Egyptians withdraw back to their capital Memphis, this will be important later, then they're quite far away from the south of Syria.
Memphis is almost the northern capital as well, isn't it? Yeah, that's the apex of the delta, where the delta meets the valley in Egypt. But then if you've got the Hittites, who are the north of Syria, you've got peoples to what is now modern Turkey, you've got the Assyrians,
more towards the west, when they come and threaten you, you'll immediately change loyalty to the person, the big bad wolf that's closer to you. So the Egyptians always had a problem about exerting influence from so far away and maybe that led to a shift in the notional capital which was affected by the 19th dynasty.
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Chapter 7: How did Ramesses II spin the narrative of his military campaigns?
Yes, there's definitely a sense of the expansion and the kind of awakening of other powers. But you're right to say that by the reign of Amenhotep III... so again, 1300s, there is this sense of the international court. So yeah, internationalism, it's a sign of kind of cosmopolitan life at court for the wealthy.
But while people are enjoying, you know, the latest imported pottery and very fine designs and jewellery, other military things might be slipping. And that is in proportion to the ambition of other powers. Okay, so what follows Akhenaten?
It doesn't end well for Akhenaten, does it?
Yeah, you could say that, I suppose. We don't know what exactly happens. Akhenaten's very experimental. The experiment backfires, and they have to undo all the revolutionary... Sorry, very briefly, this experimental stuff.
I know, this is another episode in the same ride, isn't it?
Well, right, so Akhenaten decides there are no gods but the sun god, a special form of the sun god, and he is the unique interlocutor with the sun god, the Aten. So that's why he changes his name from Amenhotep, the god Amun, is satisfied, to Akhenaten, effective for the Aten.
And then for, gosh, 15, 16, 17 years, he and his immediate successors, to a degree we're not quite sure of, espouse the worship of the Aten and they close all the other temples. So quite apart from it just being a religious revolution, it is an economic challenge. Because imagine you're the high priest of the god Amun and the king says, nope, we're closing the temple of Karnak.
Okay, then. This is almost a bit of economic self-destruction at the same time.
Yeah, I mean, people have compared it to Henry VIII and monasteries and trying to wrest power from these religious institutions into the hands of the king, which I think there's a good argument that that's what Akhenaten's trying to do. But it creates all kinds of issues. Anyway, Akhenaten says he himself is going back
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Chapter 8: What legacy did Ramesses II leave behind after his reign?
and is ignoring other things where traditionally the king in ancient Egypt moved around. It was a peripatetic court, as in other traditions. The king moves around to keep an eye on people, to make sure that they're loyal. Who knows what else is happening in Egypt at this time, but the court is focused in Middle Egypt. So you could see that the letters are arriving.
saying to Akhenaten, we could do with your help. If you want to maintain your presence in this part of the Levant, then please send help. And he doesn't seem to send help. He doesn't.
So alarm bells are ringing, feels a bit of a tumultuous time inside Egypt and beyond for Egyptian influence. So what follows him? I mean, how do we get to these last big figures in the 18th dynasty? And I guess this gradual decline that follows.
Well, the biggest name in terms of, you know, historical cache is, of course, Tutankhamen. Tutankhamen, okay. So Tutankhamen, by most accounts, is the son of Akhenaten, right? And he comes to the throne, we can be as sure as we can be sure, at nine or ten years old. Oh dear, wow.
He's a little boy, and he is being controlled by kind of revisionist politicians, for want of a better term, who want to backtrack on the revolution. And so all of this is put in the words of the boy king. I have restored the temples. And where the gods abandoned and ignored Egypt, I have propitiated them and put things back to how they were.
Of course, a 10-year-old boy is not getting in a chariot, really. Maybe towards the end of his life, in his later teenage years, there is evidence that Tutankhamun does engage in some kind of military activity.
But there must be powers, and we know there are powers, military powers that are not blood relations of the royal family who are thinking, right, we need to get some action going here to reclaim or at least to maintain some of these, again, areas of influence. I don't think it's trying to defend the empire, because I think the empire, such as it was, had already frayed.
It is about trying to push those trade alliances... Yeah, areas of influence.
Like military advisors at court kind of thing or actual active commanders in the field?
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