Pod Insights The Ancients Ramesses the Great: Death of a Dynasty About this episode “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” Ramesses II reigned as Egypt's unchallenged champion for more than sixty years. But within decades the dynasty of Egypt’s greatest pharaoh had fallen apart.
Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Campbell Price to chart how the reign of Ramesses the Great descended into slow collapse. From monumental building projects that once proclaimed eternal power to the advent of instability to the looming threat of the Sea Peoples, discover how Egypt’s New Kingdom began to fracture under the weight of its own success. This is the dramatic final chapter in the story of the House of Ramesses.
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The Legend of Osiris: King of the Dead
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Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds
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0:00 Tristan Hughes? Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. 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/subscribe.
0:32 Speaker 01 Blood donation is now more inclusive. More LGBTQ+ individuals are able to donate blood with the American Red Cross due to FDA guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation. The Red Cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood. There's a place for everyone in the mission of the Red Cross, including you. The Red Cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply. Join us and help save lives. To learn more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org/LGBTQ. That's redcrossblood.org/LGBTQ.
1:32 Tristan Hughes? 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.'
2:23 Tristan Hughes? 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, Ramses. Pharaoh Ramses II. Ramses the Great. In last week's episode, we explored how Ramses's dynasty, the Ramsids, came to rule Egypt after a period of turmoil and decline.
3:07 Tristan Hughes? How first Ramses's grandad, and then his father Seti I, set about consolidating their power, paving the way for young Ramses to inherit an Egypt ready to show its might once more. We ended by looking into Ramses's 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 wall 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
3:49 Tristan Hughes? new troubles, including from the sea peoples. This is the continued story of the Ramsid dynasty, with our guest, Dr. Campbell Price. Campbell, welcome back to the show.
4:04 Speaker 02 Hello Tristan, hello again.
4:05 Tristan Hughes? It feels like a long time. It hasn't been.
4:07 Speaker 02 It has.
4:09 Tristan Hughes? We did, of course, last time, we chatted about the rise of Ramses and looking at his background and how his grandad and his dad consolidate the position and then he rises to the fore. And Kadesh, the Battle of Kadesh, five years in, is 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.
4:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think we've covered the prelude to greatness. You know, being on the shoulders of giants, because I think Ramses the second owes a lot to his father and to his grandfather. But Kadesh is undoubtedly a turning point because, as you said, he's, he's, 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 Ramses the second is talking about Kadesh, the fact that he writes that,
5:21 Speaker 02 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 gods' house. So by writing anything in hieroglyphs, which are known as the words of the gods, you make it so.
5:54 Tristan Hughes? Oh, okay. So it wasn't as if he thought he was deceiving the gods by spinning it.
5:59 Speaker 02 No, I don't think you can deceive a god.
6:01 Tristan Hughes? Right.
6:02 Speaker 02 Because of God's omniscient and.
6:04 Tristan Hughes? So in his eyes, he's rewriting history and making that truth. He's seen Kadesh to be more of a, a success than it really was.
6:11 Speaker 02 And I think he genuinely believed it. You know, he believed that, yeah, as you said before, he snatched a victory from the jaws of real defeat.
6:21 Tristan Hughes? Well, he, he snatched a draw from the jaws of an absolute catastrophe.
6:25 Speaker 02 In his own head, that draw is something to be proud of. So I think that sets in motion a series of.
6:36 Speaker 02 Revisitations of the the theme of victory over these vassal states in the Levant. So he goes back because remember his reign is 66 years when he's young and you know, he's got the fire in him, he's going to go back several times as we know he does.
6:52 Tristan Hughes? I love this idea that Ramesses, over time, he just keeps telling himself that it's actually really good for him. And then he ultimately leads himself to believe it.
6:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:59 Tristan Hughes? Now's the time. But of course, so you have that pivotal moment with Kadesh early on in his reign.
7:05 Speaker 02 Yes.
7:06 Tristan Hughes? Key moment in his expansionism or attempted expansionism.
7:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:10 Tristan Hughes? External conflicts. He returns. He does more external fighting, more wars abroad following that.
7:18 Speaker 02 Yes. So he keeps going back to those vassal states into what is now modern Syria. So that's where Kadesh is. And there are clearly, yeah, he's fighting against the the Hittites and there are various changes in leadership. So there does come a point in the twenties, regnal years 20 and up, where maybe he's a little bit older and maybe he's thinking, I don't want to keep going back. And that is when you get a more decisive treaty and you get a sense that other states in the ancient Levant are more used to compromise,
8:00 Speaker 02 whereas the Egyptians want all or nothing. Maybe that's just the nature of what's recorded or maybe that's actually the the social reality, the political reality in other parts of the world. But in Egypt, they accept a peace treaty, which is sealed by a marriage, a diplomatic marriage. And this is fascinating because we do have an insight into the exchanges between the royal courts. And so you have Ramesses the second, who is a very wealthy individual who's commissioning all these temples and statues and is really, you know, is one of the great rulers of the ancient world, pleading with, not pleading, but kind
8:43 Speaker 02 of pleading pleading poverty and saying he wants the dowry of the incoming bride to be more than what is being offered. And so it seems that the bride's mother, the queen mother essentially. Is doing the hard, is pushing the hard bargaining. So we shouldn't just imagine these conflicts are played out in the battlefield. Yes, they are, and there are repeated attempts to, to secure Kadesh. But latterly, maybe when the fight, the fire leaves Ramses, bet, he is more content to seal things with a diplomatic marriage. And that is a one-sided thing, because the king of Egypt would never give a daughter of his own. An Egyptian princess
9:28 Speaker 02 is never sent to a non Egyptian court, but it is acceptable for a non Egyptian princess with a hefty dowry to come to Egypt. And that is considered a victory.
9:40 Tristan Hughes? But that is interesting, the fact that that's maybe some 15 years after the Battle of Kadesh. There was still a long period of time when Ramses is going back up to Syria, the area around Kadesh, again and again, to try and get that elusive total victory over the Hittites, that all or nothing feeling, that nothing idea. But ultimately, as he gets a bit older, maybe he's a bit tired of going up to Kadesh again. And again, he ultimately decides to get some sort of compromise. And the Hittites just like, yeah, we kind of want to compromise too now.
10:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, let's just call it a draw and we'll be mutually beneficial. I think what actually happens in terms of on the ground, you know, we're talking about relatively small areas of, of, of land. There must be a kind of, the Egyptians think they secure some assurance of loyalty, and then they leave, and then sides are switched. And it's like this Punch and Judy show. And then eventually, as you say, yeah, when Ramses is a bit older, he's content to, to, to have the peace treaty.
10:41 Tristan Hughes? Because is it almost like, when you think of it on the larger scale of things, if the Egyptians lose Kadesh to the Hittites, it's not the end of the world. It's hundreds of miles away from Egypt and the heart of ancient Egypt. But because Kadesh has been in the control of Egyptians back in the 18th dynasty or whatever, is it, it's symbolic important. It's almost like, dare I say, like Stalingrad was for the USSR in, you know, World War Two, not one step back. That's, do you think that's part of the reason that might have driven Ramses to keep going back?
11:09 Speaker 02 Yes, I think that there is some of that internal motivation. And again, practically speaking, you know, if, if you walk into Karnak, and you can read hieroglyphic inscriptions, you know, Ramses the second would be reminded of Thutmose the third. It would be there.
11:25 Tristan Hughes? He's the zenith of the preceding eighteenth dynasty.
11:27 Speaker 02 And he is, you know, he is the, has set the bar for expansionism of pushing to its limit, that area of influence, as we were saying before, not necessarily an empire, but an area of real influence and a buffer zone against these bigger, nastier powers that in any case are some distance away. But on that point, actually, about the whole reign of Ramses the Second, there is a, there is a practical element to this in that in the reign of Thutmose III, he was setting off from the capital city at Memphis, which is essentially modern Cairo. But with the reign of Ramses the Second, maybe a little
12:11 Speaker 02 before then, there is a shift, a strategic shift to move this incredible royal city. And if we define the capital city as the place the king spends most time in, the principal palace, that is per Ramses.
12:27 Tristan Hughes? Okay.
12:28 Speaker 02 So that is on the northeast edge of the Nile Delta. So strategically, it is closest to launch an expedition into the Levant. It is also provided, I know I have friends who've excavated that site, it's provided with huge stables to get the horses and to have your infantry barracked there. So you have a kind of, a sense of a standing army. And we know from monumental sources, tied interestingly closely to the cult of Ramses the Second as a god. So at the same time as the military preparation is being ramped up, so is the idea of Ramses being a god. So you're fighting for a god, not
13:11 Speaker 02 just the king. There's, there's lots of evidence of the worship of statues of Ramses the Second, and all the worshippers are members of the military.
13:21 Tristan Hughes? Gosh.
13:21 Speaker 02 So you, you really get that sense of. Okay, there is ambition, maybe anxiety is another word, that that you have this city, which is essentially an island that you couldn't attack. If if if there was an attack from, you know, the Hittites, you would see the people invading force some distance away. And also you have a kind of standing army waiting. So there is also this feeling of that, Peramses being like a border frontier town. So if the worst were to happen, Egypt would be prepared. So these skirmishes and the who owns who or who is loyal to who may seem trivial, but
14:04 Speaker 02 the bigger political geopolitical military question is with these rising empires, if something really catastrophic happens and God forbid there was an invasion, because this has happened to the Egyptians before and will happen many times in the future, the Egyptians need to be prepared. So on the eastern front, you have, I mean, Peramses is the is the one, but we know Ramesses is also building on the western front towards Libya. And so the westernmost, like 200 kilometers west of the westernmost branch of the Nile at the time, is a site called Zoyat Amalrakam. It's a site I've worked at myself as a student. Very impressive.
14:47 Speaker 02 We know about the the the garrison commander.
14:50 Tristan Hughes? Was that Professor Stephen Snipes?
14:52 Speaker 02 Indeed.
14:53 Tristan Hughes? His excavation.
14:54 Speaker 02 Yes, Stephen Snipes Liverpool University excavations uncovered really interesting evidence of kind of local interactions, like the local population interacting with the fortress, but also prepared in case there was a major influx of Libyans from the west. And they were right to be suspicious because that's what happens in the reign of Ramses' son.
15:19 Tristan Hughes? Which is so interesting, that kind of foresight there. But of course, you've also got. Egypt at that time, yes, we won't say an empire, but the control of Egypt does go all the way quite far up river than now, into Sudan.
15:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, deep into Sudan.
15:32 Tristan Hughes? Into Nubia. And you've got Buhen Fortress or places like that. You've got big fortresses in the south as well.
15:36 Speaker 02 Yeah. I mean, these have been established probably since the Old Kingdom, but big fortresses built in the Middle Kingdom. And then we know, yeah, Timur was the first, Timur was the third, really pushed the boundaries there. So I think it's, it's fair to say there's, there's more general success in beating up Nubians than there is controlling these people in the Levant. But it doesn't really matter to the ancient Egyptians. Anyone who's not an ancient Egyptian is to be pitied or despised and to be crushed under the pharaoh's sandals. So that is how they are depicted in art and that is how they are presented to the gods and that is how the universe works.
16:17 Tristan Hughes? Paramus' position, and we mentioned Paramus' in our previous chat, and how its founding seems to be actually associated with Ramesses II's grandfather, the first Ramesses.
16:26 Speaker 02 The name, yeah. The House of Ramesses, it's a good, it's an apt metaphor for not just the physical residence of a whole line of kings, but also for the house, the actual dynasty that continues, of course, for many generations.
16:43 Tristan Hughes? And his capital in that position, looking towards Syria and the Levant, shows that that really seems to be his top foreign policy priority for the first couple of decades of his reign, until he gets the peace treaty.
16:55 Speaker 02 Yes. And the peace treaty maybe marks something of a pause and then he really focuses on building. But he's been building for some time. It's interesting with Ramesses II, unlike his father Seti the First, I mean, there is a, yeah, subjectively speaking, there is a, objectively perhaps speaking as well, there is a decline in the quality of artwork.
17:19 Speaker 02 Although Ramesside art, the art of Ramses the Second still is, is very beautiful. It's maybe not quite as finely executed as that of his father. But you get the impression as the rain progresses, even though he's got a lot of building under his belt, he wants to bash it out quicker and more of it. And the quality even seems to decline further. It's just more, more, more, more, more. Keep these people occupied.
17:45 Tristan Hughes? Well, we're going to explore all of that in these various different monumental works. But quickly on the peace treaty itself.
17:50 Speaker 02 Yes.
17:50 Tristan Hughes? So one of the oldest known peace treaties in the world.
17:54 Speaker 02 Existence, possibly the oldest.
17:56 Tristan Hughes? Possibly.
17:57 Speaker 02 Challenge me, I don't, don't know of a good example to challenge it.
18:01 Tristan Hughes? Possibly the oldest peace treaty we know of in the world. Do we have the wording surviving?
18:06 Speaker 02 Yes. This is telling because the Egyptians are proud of this. And it's not, 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 diplomatic marriage. There's a lot of toing and froing about the content of dowries. But the princess comes in and becomes a wife of Ramses the Second. And it's interesting that this must have quite a cultural impact, the coming of this lady into the royal court. So that there is the first marriage and then there is a second marriage a few years later.
18:47 Speaker 02 But even, gosh, a thousand years later, into the Ptolemaic period, there is a fascinating document that's now in Paris called the Bentresh Stele, which describes the sending of a statue of an Egyptian god into the Levant to cure a relative of, of one of the, 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
19:32 Speaker 02 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.
19:44 Tristan Hughes? But is it, are they also signals of the new friendship between the powers? Is it where, you know, this peaceful, almost like with the, you know, post-Cold War with it, the, you know, you've got the cosmonauts and the astronauts together on the space station, like.
19:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's, that's a nice analogy. Yeah. So, so the, 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 there is that sense of what we would recognize as a modern treaty.
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21:48 Speaker 04 As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Betwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history. Kings, queens, mistresses, servants and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, twice a week, every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the
22:33 Speaker 04 award-winning network, History Hit.
22:51 Tristan Hughes? Because you've also got the Hittite version of it surviving that they've discovered in Hattusa.
22:54 Speaker 02 Yes, yeah, yeah, that's right.
22:56 Tristan Hughes? 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 as physical evidence of diplomacy more than a thousand years ago.
23:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, impressive.
23:13 Tristan Hughes? But let's move on from that. So let's go on to his monumental building work in Egypt itself, which he's been doing already.
23:22 Speaker 02 Yes.
23:22 Tristan Hughes? You know, following in the footsteps of his dad, completing stuff. But once this peace treaty is signed, do we get a sense that almost he flicks the switch to focus almost completely on the great building works in Egypt?
23:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, it must be something also to do with physicality. So approaching his 30th year on the throne. So he maybe is approaching 50 by this point. Years of age, he's maybe less inclined to be going out into battle. He can still send sons and he's got plenty of sons, up to 50 sons, but will also come back to the sons. But in the ancient world, if you have been on the throne for 30 years, you are a pretty big deal. But that also marks for the ancient Egyptians, a very significant milestone. The so-called Heb Said, which is what we might call a jubilee today, but is a kind of a,
24:14 Speaker 02 an affirmation of the king's power and a confirmation or a conferral of divinity. So the king is always a bit divine, but Ramses the second really goes further. And it does seem to be inspired by this point in time where there's a de-emphasizing of military activity and a greater emphasis on religious iconography and belief. So he really says, Ramses the second says, he's not just part divine. He is a full god, shoulder to shoulder with other gods. And he is represented on temple walls, in statues and has his own extraordinary statue cult,
24:59 Speaker 02 where people, including the military personnel at Pheramtes, are using images, huge colossal statue images of the king as means of answering their prayers.
25:12 Tristan Hughes? Shall we do a case study of this? Shall we focus on Abu Simbel?
25:16 Speaker 02 Why not?
25:17 Tristan Hughes? He has a great monumental example of this. So give us a flavour, what first and foremost is Abu Simbel and where are we talking about?
25:25 Speaker 02 So we're talking about the southernmost point, really, in the modern borders of Egypt, on the shores of what is now Lake Nassau, so into ancient Nubia. So many miles south of the traditional Egyptian border, Aswan.
25:39 Tristan Hughes? Aswan, yeah.
25:40 Speaker 02 So a reductive reading is to say that this is a way of intimidating the Nubians. Look, there are these colossal statues, four colossal statues of the king on one temple. There's a great rock cut temple with these four striking images, seated images of the king.
25:59 Speaker 02 But there's another temple dedicated to his wife, Queen Nefertari, the chief queen, whom he seems to have loved very much, and she is equated with the goddess Hathor. So they are saying his and hers, the king is a god, the queen is a god. People should come and worship us because we are deserving of worship like full gods. And this is really an important point. It's something I've written about that we've got to understand. These avatars, these divine avatars of Ramses, there's a whole series of them. They all have different names. They can be materialized through statues and you can worship the statue and hopefully get your prayers answered.
26:43 Speaker 02 But in the innermost part of that Abu Simbel great temple, the Holy of Holies, there is seat of the great gods, Pta, Reharchi, Amun, and sat quite literally shoulder to shoulder with him is Ramses the second. And it's really an emphatic point of I am a full god and I can, I have this equivalence to the great gods. Now, interesting to me is in the decorative scheme, as the interior of this structure was being completed, the decoration, which is probably the twenties of the reign, right?
27:25 Tristan Hughes? So we're getting He's already seen himself as divine before he reaches that big jubilee milestone. Interesting.
27:30 Speaker 02 Yes. And it seems to be a developing idea because there are clear scenes. I know you've been to the temple and it's worth looking out on the walls. If you go, there are clearly scenes where there were gods. Amun, the great god of Karnak, Thebes, his wife, the goddess Mut, and the figure of Ramses has been inserted as an afterthought. So it's not part of the original scheme. So someone has had the thought.
27:59 Speaker 02 Actually, we'll put the king here. So that, I mean, it's rare you can say, you can see a developing theology. But that is something where the idea of Ramses God has not been originally planned, but developed with the building.
28:16 Tristan Hughes? Because you also see in that first room as you enter Abu Simbel, don't you? You see, it's him in his chariots, or he's very much him also as a military figure as well. So it's not just promoting him as divine, you know, that is a key part of it. And those colossal statues of him seated, if he stood up, he would tower above the temple itself.
28:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:36 Tristan Hughes? But it's still harkening back to him also as a successful military figure. And, you know, the head of this royal family as well, I guess.
28:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, he must be proud of the military, albeit we might consider it a draw now. But it's kind of a challenge, and we know other earlier kings did this, a challenge to his successors to maintain his boundaries and maintain his sphere of influence, if we want to call it that. And because he lived so long, we know this in various instances throughout history. If you spend a long time on the throne, it is more difficult for the eventual successor, especially if, like Ramesses, you have 50 sons. And sure, many of them died. He was eventually succeeded by his 13th son, Menemba Ta.
29:28 Speaker 02 But there are other sons, I mean, the fourth son is especially interesting to me, Prince Khaimwaset. He is credited by some with being the first Egyptologist. Because he is the one who goes around labeling the pyramids. So he's the high priest of the god Pta at Memphis, so near modern Cairo. And in that role, he is very aware of the sacred landscape, which is, you know, littered with massive pyramids. But to a son of Ramses the Second to go out into the desert and to see, not that far into the desert, still visible from the floodplain, but to see
30:10 Speaker 02 a monument that's so vast, so impressive, so pristine, without any hieroglyphs on it, telling you who the king is, this seems crazy, the son of a megalomaniac like Ramses the Second. So he goes all along and inscribes very deep elaborate inscriptions, what have been called by one great Scottish Egyptologist, Kenneth Kitchen, as the largest museum label in the world, telling future generations, this is the Pyramid of Khufu, this is the Pyramid of Unas, this is the Pyramid of Joser. And I, Prince Khayyamwaset, have restored the name of this
30:51 Speaker 02 king because it was not found on the surface of his monument, and I'm the son of the great King Ramses the Second. So Ramses the Second gets his name put on all of these ancient monuments.
31:01 Tristan Hughes? So it's not just in the hyperstyle hall at Karnak, it's not just the great Templar Abu Simbel, it's also on the pyramids.
31:08 Speaker 02 On the pyramids.
31:09 Tristan Hughes? That you have Ramses's name as well.
31:11 Speaker 02 Yes.
31:12 Tristan Hughes? And do we get a sense with, you know, his many children, his many sons, do we have any sense if he had any favourites?
31:19 Speaker 02 Oh, I would, oh, difficult to say, based on the evidences that survives. Prince Khayyamwaset is interesting because he helps organise his father's Hebsid Jubilee festivals. And so you, he is often shown in association with the father. So in a cynical way, it's a great way for Khayyamwaset, who maybe thinks his dad's going to live forever, and best to make the most of his lot. Now, it's not a million miles away from the Prince of Wales, thinking, as Charles, Prince of Wales did, I've got to make the most of this because it's
31:59 Speaker 02 what I'm going to be doing for most of my life. But whether Khayyamwaset expected to be the next pharaoh is difficult to say. As I said, I mean, obviously if someone dies, that that removes them from the line of succession. But I think there had to be very careful.
32:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, careful planning for a smooth transition of power. And I think the best evidence that Ramses liked one of his sons was that he would designate him as the heir. So eventually the heir Meremptah must have been favoured.
32:34 Tristan Hughes? Absolutely, because go back to Abishimba once again, just because I haven't been there recently. When you get close to the colossal statues of Ramses, you also see smaller depictions of a few of his wives and a few of his children believed as well.
32:45 Speaker 02 So yeah.
32:46 Tristan Hughes? Some of it's the ones that, I know you're not supposed to have favourites, but it's almost like he did, there are a few that he picked to place alongside him on this temple to himself.
32:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think those must be, as far as we know, the ones that are inscribed or identified by inscription, they are the more senior ones.
33:04 Tristan Hughes? Interesting.
33:05 Speaker 02 And you wonder, because he lived so long, whether some of those had already died. So this was a way of commemorating them. He had a special tomb, a vast tomb built in the Valley of the Kings, KV5, for the children, for the sons. But then it's also a thing about the psychology of Ramses the second, because he lives a long life. He's on the throne six, six years. So assuming he comes to the throne, say at 24, he's 90 by the time he dies.
33:40 Tristan Hughes? Good going.
33:41 Speaker 02 Very good going for an ancient ruler, albeit he had the best doctors and lived a life of great luxury. But you could imagine, you know, as you see your children die, your wives die, your grandchildren die. Maybe Ramses thought, I am a god, I'm not going to die.
34:01 Tristan Hughes? I must also ask, obviously that thing, the beating heart of Egypt is the Nile. And every year you have the annual floods, don't you, which determines the, you know, how the great, well, how successful the agricultural yield will be the next year. And like if the flooding is too low, then it could lead to famine. Do we get a sense, I mean, is there any surviving archaeology that hints that there were times in Ramses's reign where they had a lot of trouble?
34:27 Speaker 02 Oh, good question.
34:29 Tristan Hughes? And stuff like that, or was it, was he just in a very good century where everything worked his way in that regard?
34:35 Speaker 02 Nah, good question. I mean, we do have Nile flood heights, levels from, from different kings' reigns. I don't think anything was particularly catastrophically low or high. Of course, if it's too much, it's, it's a bad thing as well. It spells bad news. But I think, looked at another way, you're right. It could be that he was just doing well. Whereas later kings like Ramses III, we know, just happened to get a bad run, ruled under some more economically straightened times.
35:13 Tristan Hughes? Well, I could ask so many more questions about Ramses, but I know we've got to move on. So let's go to nearing the end of Ramses's reign. So he's got all of those children. He's outlived many of them by this time as well. Many of his wives are dead as well. By this time, Nefertari certainly out of the picture.
35:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, Nefertari, to whom he dedicated that smaller template Abu Sembel, seems to be the first senior wife. That's, that's, that's clear. But then there is a second senior wife, Isit Nofret, who's the mother of Kaumwasa and also of Merem Peta.
35:42 Tristan Hughes? Right.
35:42 Speaker 02 So she's important, probably buried somewhere at Saqqara. And yes, eventually, her son, the 13th son, Merem Peta becomes king.
35:53 Tristan Hughes? And he was, so sorry, I must also mention the Ramasiam, because we haven't really touched on the details.
35:56 Speaker 02 Yes.
35:57 Tristan Hughes? And this is, it's named after himself, but what is it?
35:59 Speaker 02 Well, we nowadays call it the Ramasiam. That's, that's how it's called if you visit Egypt today. For, yeah, more recent times, it was called the Memnonium, because it was associated with Memnon, which is actually. A name given to the Closi.
36:17 Tristan Hughes? The Closi of Memnon, right.
36:18 Speaker 02 Which are associated with Amenhotep III. But in ancient times, it was known as a mansion of millions of years. So this is a little hobby horse of mine. I don't like referring to these as funerary temples or mortuary temples, because this over emphasizes death. It's not about death. It's not about, you know, mourning the king. It's about the king becoming united with the gods. And so Ramesses the Second's temple really is vast. 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.
36:59 Speaker 02 But now, I know that the colleagues in Egypt are working on the restoration of the 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 Ramesses' successors, Ramesses III. So basically, his temple, what's now called Medinat Tabu, is not a carbon copy, but an homage to the mansion of millions of years of Ramesses II, called the Ramessium today.
37:29 Tristan Hughes? And was that where Ramesses wanted to be buried?
37:32 Speaker 02 No, this is, this is an important point. It's willfully, consciously at a distance from the tomb.
37:40 Tristan Hughes? And that's from the Valley of the Kings?
37:41 Speaker 02 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.
37:58 Tristan Hughes? 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.
38:05 Speaker 02 Indeed, the, the younger Memnon, yes. That's inspired a piece of poetry we'll.
38:11 Tristan Hughes? We'll get to in a bit later, yes, absolutely. Well, okay. Sixty six years on, I do know much about the end of Ramesses's reign and the state of Egypt at that time. Is it, is there almost a decline in his power or is Egypt declining as he's getting older? Do we know anything about it?
38:28 Speaker 02 It's difficult to have a reliable index of, 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.
38:42 Tristan Hughes? Hmm.
38:43 Speaker 02 So I think, you know, 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, Merem Pata, and he seems to have made a pretty good goal. We have a kind of uptick then in, in evidence of, of, of foreign interactions and foreign policy because he has to deal with active, yeah, pressing issues from the West, from the Libyans, issues in the, in the North, in the Levant, and then back down South, the Nubians.
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40:57 Tristan Hughes? So Merem Pitar, let's focus on these threats that he faces because his is not a name anywhere as recognizable as Ramses the second. So talk us through, we should shine a light on this figure like we did with Ramses the first and Seti. Merem Pitar, what do we know about the struggles that he faces?
41:15 Speaker 02 Well, we've got quite a bit of historical information, almost like he makes an effort to put a stamp on history. And again, older king coming to the throne, he maybe is, is in his sixties, if not 70 when he comes to the throne. So there's a sort of a Charles the third thing.
41:36 Tristan Hughes? He's the 13th son also of Ramses.
41:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:39 Tristan Hughes? Seventy, wow.
41:40 Speaker 02 And maybe, well, exactly, he wasn't preparing to be the king for, 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, of Amenhotep the third, where the back of it is inscribed with various, you know, campaigns. And there are lots of these things, actually, relatively speaking. And it's the first historic mention of the people of Israel.
42:18 Tristan Hughes? Israel as a people, isn't it?
42:20 Speaker 02 As a people, so historically very, very interesting.
42:25 Speaker 02 But also, Meribata goes around, again, you 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's 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, Ramses II has his name and image worshipping a god on it, and then Meribata has had his name added as well. So there's this sense
43:09 Speaker 02 of, you know, yeah, fighting against time. But I think the real success of Meribata, and 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 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 Ramses 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 Meribata. So he
43:53 Speaker 02 maybe gets undeservedly short shrift, because he's overshadowed by his father. And people often say Ramses III is the last great king of ancient Egypt. But Meribata must have had a pretty, you know, 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.
44:29 Tristan Hughes? So those military problems that he faces during his only a decade or so on the throne, it's quite interesting how you have, Ramsey's the second 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 Merem Bata almost is one, he has to deal with it. Do we think that's potentially a feeling that enemies were circling, they see the death of a pharaoh, they see Merem Bata come to the throne quite elderly, they feel that there's an opportunity here?
44:59 Speaker 02 Yes, absolutely. And I think there was always that looking for an opportunity when religiously, theologically, it's a very vulnerable time for the country between the change of monarch. I mean, there is something, without forcing modern parallels on it, there was something about the death of Elizabeth II where people were really kind of shaken by it. And you feel like it's a kind of a cosmic, whether you're a great monarchist or not, there is some kind of cosmic shift. And for the ancient Egyptians, that really was a cosmic shift. So you would take the chance, if you're going to make trouble for the Egyptian state, you will wait until, yeah, one of these kind of transitional moments.
45:43 Tristan Hughes? This almost feels a bit like Edward VII after Queen Victoria or something like that.
45:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:48 Tristan Hughes? But he doesn't reign too long.
45:50 Speaker 02 Yes.
45:50 Tristan Hughes? But you don't associate the complete crumbling of a dynasty, I guess, with him following. I mean, I'm not an expert on that, but that's why I was saying.
45:58 Speaker 02 No, I think the parallel is justified, yeah.
46:02 Tristan Hughes? And so you get Merem Bata for a decade or so, and he is successful in beating off the sea peoples, the first emergence of the sea peoples on the sea.
46:10 Speaker 02 Yes. I mean, we don't have many records from his own mansion of millions of years because it's not terribly well preserved, but there are other bits of historical accounts that really make it clear that the sea peoples and other non Egyptian threats are serious. And so maybe we know in the case of Zawayatamul Rakam, on the north coast, the Mediterranean coast.
46:35 Tristan Hughes? That's the fort, isn't it?
46:36 Speaker 02 That's the fortress in the northwest, that, you know, things are happening, you know, there is a. Tangible threat from the people to the west. And eventually, you know, with time, a few, a couple of hundred years later, there will be Libyan kings of Egypt. So it will go so far as to be, you know, a Libyan pharaoh in the throne. But Meremtah is the accepted ruler. But of course, there are all these other princelings about. And that creates rivals for the throne.
47:10 Tristan Hughes? Yes.
47:11 Speaker 02 For sure.
47:12 Tristan Hughes? So Meremtah dies after some 10 years or so. What happens following that? Does it all go to pieces quite quickly after he dies? Must be around 80 years old by that time.
47:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, I, I think there is a sense in which things do fall apart. Historically speaking, pretty quickly. The 19th dynasty only has a couple of decades left to go. There are a series of short-lived kings. This is the end of the 19th dynasty. And then you get to a young king called Sipta, who has a female regent called Tawazret. And she is really the end, she's a female pharaoh, end of the, the line. She rules quite effectively, it seems, for a few years. But then there's this shadowy figure, this high-ranking courtier called Bai,
48:02 Speaker 02 who is like a 19th dynasty equivalent of the much-loved, in my case, character of Senenmut, the right-hand man to hatch up certain dynasty 18. So Tawazret is, is ruling the last of the House of Ramses. And then you get this new guy, a guy called Sethnacht. And he comes on the scene and usurps Tawazret's tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Still one of the most interesting tombs in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. So the dynasty shifts then, and there's new blood comes in. And we begin Dynasty 20 with Sethnacht. And then his successor, Ramses III.
48:43 Tristan Hughes? Do you think Tawazret's reign as pharaoh was always destined to end that way? Because just how they viewed a woman as a pharaoh?
48:51 Speaker 02 This is tricky. This is really tricky and it's something I've thought about a bit. She does get mentioned in an official list of kings.
48:59 Tristan Hughes? Okay.
48:59 Speaker 02 A document that's written in a canon, so it's acceptable that there is this, this woman in a sense. And so she rules fairly successfully for a few years. She builds things and, you know, there are foundation deposits attesting to her building works. But she only rules for a handful of years and then is succeeded by someone called Seth Nachth. And he is a new guy. So that is, the time of the 19th dynasty is up by that point and it's a new bloodline. But the fact that there is this, this character, this chancellor Bai, who, and it's a very rare case. We have evidence of him being put to death. So there is a mention of execution of this guy.
49:45 Speaker 02 Which backstabbing must have gone on. We know about it with the Ptolemies. But it must have gone on throughout pharaonic history. But this is a very rare insight into a very, what must have been not uncommon, but it's unusual it's recorded. And then she is succeeded by this man, this new guy, Seth Nachth. And he has a successor who's Ramses the third. So all of this happens from the death of Miramatah to the, the succession of Ramses the third in a few decades.
50:17 Tristan Hughes? So within, yes, like three or four decades after the death of Ramses the second.
50:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:23 Tristan Hughes? His dynasty has come crashing down.
50:25 Speaker 02 Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he might have planned and indeed his father and grandfather planned and initiated this great sweep of history and thought their successors would keep going into the future. But in real terms, in terms of blood relations, pure blood relations, the dynasty fizzles out and dies. When Seth Nachth and eventually Ramses the third come along, they offer the appearance of stability, which is fine. But the economic and social changes within Egypt are real. As are the foreign threats, the non Egyptian, the outside threats.
51:04 Speaker 02 As we were discussing before, the geopolitics, even between Set of the first and Ramses the second, which isn't a long time. There's lots of shifts there. Fast forward.
51:16 Speaker 02 To the reign of Ramses the Third. And I mean, he claims various victories in his well-recorded accounts in his mansion of millions of years. But this really heralds the end of the new kingdom and the rise of, yeah, other powers in the ancient world.
51:35 Tristan Hughes? It is too interesting, Campbell, how, you know, it's still a long time, I guess, in the grand scheme of things, between Ramses the Second and then Ramses the Third, which you say is another of those kind of big name figures.
51:45 Speaker 02 Hmm.
51:46 Tristan Hughes? The strength of Ramses the Second.
51:48 Speaker 02 Hmm.
51:49 Tristan Hughes? Is it more just a personal image that, you know, dies out soon after his death? And actually, he doesn't really leave anything that can endure for a long, long time. He doesn't build anything with an idea that it's he plans for it to endure for hundreds of years. Is it very much, it's just an image of his strength during his reign and then that just disappears and the solidity that he thought he'd created evaporates, rather than him actually wanting to create something stable for, well, maybe in his eyes, millennia?
52:22 Speaker 02 I think with the legacy of Ramses the Second, in part, I mean, his own reign is a lot about spin. And he focuses a lot on his own personality and divine personality when he's alive. This is something again to emphasize. The cult of the king through these statues, these cult colossi, as I term them, only are really supercharged with the divine power during his lifetime. They kind of fade into the background after his death. So to be fair to the successors of Ramses the Second, they have to deal with other challenges, which Ramses the Second didn't have to deal with. There's another practical thing, though,
53:05 Speaker 02 the great city that he embellished per Ramses suffers because the branch of the Nile it's on silts up. So it's not functional.
53:15 Tristan Hughes? So his unforeseen, you know, future events that kind of really hinder his legacy, rather than him not actually paying attention to it.
53:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, yes, I think, I think that's fair. To be fair to Ramses the Second, who must have been quite a dynamic guy to give him his fair due. I think, yeah, his successors had to deal with with things which, yeah, totally unforeseen on his part.
53:39 Tristan Hughes? It does make the question. Is Ramses the Second, is he really the great? Or is he just the absolute master of spin?
53:48 Speaker 02 I mean, he's the greatest in the sense that he had most time to tell us he was great.
53:52 Tristan Hughes? Yeah, he's the loudest ruler in Egypt.
53:53 Speaker 02 He's the loudest. Yeah, I mean, if Hatshepsut had been a man and had ruled for 60 years, we would have no doubt about her, his greatness. And I mean, it's true, though, we do have evidence of, you know, the cult of Ramses the Second persisting in places like Abydos. You know, there is evidence of the worship of Ramses the Second in certain places. And then his body, of course, survives. He's buried in the Valley of the Kings. The body is moved to the Royal Mummy cache in Deir el-Bakri, DB 320. And then when that's discovered officially in 1881,
54:35 Speaker 02 that starts a whole new weird afterlife for Ramses the Second, where his body, it seems, is so well preserved, he's assumed to be the pharaoh of the Exodus.
54:47 Tristan Hughes? So we do have the actual body of Ramses the Second?
54:49 Speaker 02 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, there are, that's one of the most popular postcards you could buy. In the late 1800s was the mummified face of Ramses the Second.
55:33 Speaker 02 So he, 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 the Second presided over a democracy.
55:57 Speaker 02 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.
56:12 Tristan Hughes? And his name is everywhere on so many of the great monuments, whether it's the pyramids or Karnak or Abu Simbel.
56:17 Speaker 02 If there's one name to learn, one cartouche to learn, it's Ramses the second, Usurmatra, Setepenra. If you learn those hieroglyphs, you will see them all over Egypt.
56:26 Tristan Hughes? Well, that was the one, the first, if not the first, that Champollion figured out.
56:30 Speaker 02 Indeed. So because it was so, when he went there, I think he was amazed just at how common it was.
56:36 Tristan Hughes? Well, I'm glad you mentioned the 19th century because I have a copy here of the famous Percy Shelley poem, Ozymandias. And Ozymandias, he's a Greek rendering for the name Ramses. A poem that highlights the inevitable decline of rulers and their hubris. So I'll read it out now because I feel I must. "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
57:20 Tristan Hughes? 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.'" Interesting, isn't it?
57:39 Speaker 02 Very poetic.
57:40 Tristan Hughes? Not one for poems, and I've probably butchered the reading of that, I must admit. I didn't do enough English literature growing up. But it's interesting how in Victorian times, they have that idea of Ramses, even back then.
57:51 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I think what really inspired that poem was, was a kind of a frenzy. Surrounding the arrival in London of that colossal sculpture fragment you mentioned before, the so-called Younger Memnon, which is now in the British Museum. So, yeah, in 1816, it was moved by Belzoni and eventually, a couple of years later, it arrived in London. And it wasn't an interest in Ramses II, it was just in the size of the statue. It's interesting, Shelley talks about Ramses, oh, well, Ozymandias, King of Kings, that is one of the names of the colossal statues that I said were worshipped. Ramses, ruler of rulers, Hecate and Hecate. So there's this reverberation of this character,
58:34 Speaker 02 for he must have been an impressive character. Yes, he had the opportunity to build, to battle, to marry, to procreate over 66 years. But there's something about the brokenness of the monuments of him and other kings that does appeal as quite romantic. It's almost like proof, especially for Christian people, that these pagan kings were cut down to size by the true God.
59:02 Tristan Hughes? This idea that no matter how powerful and brilliant he was in his prime, how quickly that legacy can shatter, you know, in the years following. And in the case of Ramses and his successors, it shatters pretty quickly.
59:13 Speaker 02 Indeed.
59:14 Tristan Hughes? Campbell, this has been absolutely fantastic. I mean, there's so much we could talk about with the real reign of Ramses and Merenpatar as well, and what happens all the way down to Tarsret. But it's a fascinating time period. Is there anything else you'd like to mention about Ramses, or how we should view this figure going forwards?
59:31 Speaker 02 I think in some ways, he gets a bad press because it's all wham bam, thank you, Ram. But I think Ramses, I mean, he does have a legacy in that he gives his name to
59:41 Tristan Hughes? So many others.
59:42 Speaker 02 So many others.
59:43 Tristan Hughes? They're looking back to Ramses II.
59:44 Speaker 02 Yes. And I think if you asked a king 500 years later, who was the greatest pharaoh of ancient Egypt, it would be difficult for them to choose between Thutmose III and Ramses II. So that's a crazy
59:58 Tristan Hughes? How many Ramses are there in total?
1:00:00 Speaker 02 So there were 11 kings called Ramses, but later kings, even than Ramses XI, take the throne name Usarmatra. So there is clearly an homage going on there.
1:00:13 Tristan Hughes? Campbell, always a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show.
1:00:17 Speaker 02 Thank you for having me.
1:00:22 Tristan Hughes? Well, there you go. There was Dr Campbell Price continuing the story of the Ramessid Dynasty, the 19th Dynasty, defined, epitomized by the legendary Thero Ramesses, the Second Ramesses the Great. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you so much for listening. Now, if you enjoyed the episode, if you're enjoying the show, please make sure to follow The Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and you will be doing us a big favour. If you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. Finally, don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me.
1:01:07 Tristan Hughes? I'll see you in the next episode.
1:01:14 Speaker 01 Blood donation is now more inclusive. More LGBTQ+ individuals are able to donate blood with the American Red Cross due to FDA guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation. The Red Cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood. There's a place for everyone in the mission of the Red Cross, including you. The Red Cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply. Join us and help save lives. To learn more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org/lgbtq. That's redcrossblood.org/lgbtq.
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