Featured Pharaohs Rameses the Great Birth Name Rameses II ) Epithet Meryamun ) – “Re has fashioned him, Beloved of Amun” Throne Name Usermaatre “The Soul of Re, Beloved of the Gods” Ruled: 1279 – 1212 BC Rameses II, more popularly known as “Rameses the Great”, ascended the throne aged 25, and reigned for 67 years. To judge Rameses’ actions by modern standards is misleading. Rameses’ duty as king and god on earth was to ensure that Egypt prospered. He took this duty as seriously as any pharaoh ever to rule. Generally, this meant ensuring Egypt’s borders were secure, that her people were safe and motivated, and that his succession was ensured. Specifically, he built more monuments, and fathered more children than any other pharaoh of ancient Egypt. He had many wives but the love of his life was Nefertari, to whom he dedicated a temple at Abu Simbel and for whom he built an exquisitely beautiful tomb in the Valley of the Queens. His reputation as a warrior king grew principally out of his account of the battle of Kadesh against the Hittites, whose empire centered on modern Turkey. The Hittite empire rivalled the Egyptians’ in power. At Kadesh, Rameses’ unquestionable bravery saved the Egyptians from certain defeat, and established him as a hero as well as the rightful leader of the Egyptians. However, as he was unable to make a decisive conquest of the Hittites, he took the extraordinary step of signing a peace treaty. This is the oldest – the first in history – that we have. Although no ancient Egyptian record has been found, Rameses is generally accepted by experts to have been the pharaoh of the Exodus – the king who banished Moses and the Hebrews, for whom the Red Sea parted. Merenptah Birth Name Merenptah ) – “Beloved of Ptah, Joyous is Truth” Epithet Hetephermaat ) Throne Name Baenre-merynetjeru “The Soul of Re, Beloved of the Gods” Ruled: 1212-1202 BC Merenptah was the 13th son of Rameses the Great, but the oldest to outlive his father. He is thought to have been at least 65 years old when he ascended the throne. His vast Victory stele, which was discovered by Flinders Petrie in 1896 in Merenptah’s mortuary temple in Luxor, now stands in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It is famed for containing the single reference to Israel in Egyptian texts. It states: “Israel is devastated, her seed is no more, Palestine has become a widow for Egypt.” This statement led scholars to believe that Merenptah was the pharaoh of the Exodus, swallowed up by the Red Sea, until his mummy was discovered in 1898. Unlike all the other mummies in the film Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs, Merenptah’s mummy was not found in DB320 with the “royal cache”, but in another smaller cache of royal mummies. During his short reign, Merenptah’s armies crushed rebellions from the Libyans in the west, the Syrians in the north, and the Nubians – in what is now Sudan – in the south. His enduring monument is his tomb, which is in significantly better condition than his father’s. The latter is deeper, and so worse affected by water damage. Seti I Birth Name Seti I )“He of the god Seth, Beloved of Ptah” Epithet Meryenptah ) Throne name Menmaatre “Eternal is the Justice of Re” Ruled: 1291-1278 Two years after General Rameses established himself and the 19th dynasty on Egypt’s throne he died, and his son General Seti took over. Like his father, he was determined to end the instability introduced by the Amarna kings of the late 18th Dynasty – Akenaten and his son Tutankhamun. Therefore during his brief thirteen year rule Seti I undertook an aggressive foreign policy beyond Egypt’s borders, and an expansive building programme within them. His principal campaigns were against what were, or what were to become, the usual suspects: the Syrians in the north, the Hittites at Kadesh, and the Libyans to the west. These wars were brutally terminated, with the massacre of many prisoners in the name of the Egyptian gods. But Seti’s principal legacy is the extraordinary flowering of the arts during his reign, which was never matched again in all Egypt’s remaining history. Rather than creating inscriptions and images in relief, his craftsmen exclusively carved in the subtle and time- consuming bas-relief. He commenced the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, made famous by the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, representing a papyrus marsh, an icon in the Egyptian creation myth. He also built an exquisite temple at Abydos, and his tomb is not only the largest in the Valley of the Kings, but colloquially termed by experts the “Sistine Chapel” of Egypt. His mummy was in the royal cache found at Deir el Bahri. It is more delicately preserved than any other pharaoh and suggests to many who see it that he is not dead, but merely sleeping. Tuthmosis I Birth name Tuthmosis I Greek – “Born of the god Thoth” Throne name Akheperkare “Great is the Soul of Re” Ruled: 1524 – 1518 General Tuthmosis succeeded his father-in-law, Amenhotep I, because the throne in Egypt was passed through the female line: his wife Princess Ahmose was Amenhotep’s sister. He was in his late forties when he came to the throne. There is considerable debate about when and for how long he ruled. The most accepted dates by experts are those quoted here, suggesting that he ruled only briefly – for about five years. However, in that time his great military victories in the south in Nubia, and in the Euphrates in the north, created new limits for Egypt’s borders. He built temples and established a permanent presence in Nubia under his delegate, the Viceroy of Kush. This made for easy governance of the province for later pharaohs. During Tuthmosis’ reign he massively expanded the Temple of Karnak with a building project dedicated to the cult of Amun. This massive repositioning sowed the seeds for a major showdown between the ever more powerful priests and the king a century later, when Pharaoh Akenaten decided that the only way he could regain control of the state from the Church, was to replace Amun and all the gods with a single deity, the Aten. Tuthmosis I is the first king we are certain was been buried in the Valley of the Kings. Tuthmosis II Birth name Tuthmosis II Greek – “Born of the god Thoth” Throne name Akheperenre “Great is the Form of Re” Ruled: 1518 – 1504 Tuthmosis II was married to his half-sister Hatshepsut, and so inherited the throne from his father. He was a sickly man, leaving little legacy from his fourteen year reign, and dying at around the age of thirty. His generals undertook successful campaigns in Syria and Nubia, but unlike his father or his son, he did not lead his armies into battle. Presumably he was not in sufficiently good health to do so. There is considerable doubt about many aspects of Tuthmosis II’s reign, from the length of it, to the extent to which Hatshepsut affected the building programme with which he is credited. Many of her buildings have had his name superimposed on them by her successors, in an attempt to eradicate her reign and name from history. Tuthmosis II was found in the Deir El Bahri Royal Cache of mummies by Emil Brugsch in 1881 – or the Abd el Rassoul brothers, some years earlier, depending on your point of view. Like all the Tuthmosids, he had a marked overbite, and was not a tall man: his mummy is just 5’ 6” in length. Tuthmosis II’s greatest and most lasting contribution to Egypt was to father Tuthmosis III, ancient Egypt’s greatest warrior king, who created the largest empire in her history. Hatshepsut Birth Name Hatshepsut “Foremost of Noble Ladies” Throne Name Maatkare “Truth is the Soul of Re” Ruled: 1498 – 1483 When her husband Tuthmosis II died, Hatshepsut became co- regent with her step-son Tuthmosis III, and within two years, she had stepped out from the shadows behind the throne. With the support of Egypt’s most powerful civil servants and courtiers, she became pharaoh and commenced an extraordinary building programme and foreign affairs policy. Later kings tried to airbrush her from history – she had successfully challenged the male succession of the throne of Egypt with a reign that was stable and prosperous. Her reign evaporated from the lists of kings, and her cartouche was chiselled from her monuments. Experts are far from unanimous in their take on the events or motives for actions during her reign: normally they must only contend with time’s decay of records. In Hatshepsut’s case there is also the wilful destruction of those records by her successors. Her stepson Tuthmosis III is generally blamed for this, but new evidence suggests he may have been framed. What experts agree is that she built the stunning mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri, directly west across the river from the Temple of Karnak. On this temple are inscribed Hatshepsut’s personal creation myth, as the daughter, and chosen one, of the supreme deity Amun. What is unsure is why her reign would have seen such a great expedition to the far off land of Punt – probably modern Somalia – also recorded on the walls of her temple. Some speculate that this was to keep the army and its generals busy, and prevent foment of a coup. Hatshepsut’s mummy has never been found, though some of the canopic jars discovered in DB320 are believed to be hers, and to contain some of her vital organs.