REVIEW BY SG
Ramesses II is known as ‘the Great’, yet there are far fewer volumes dedicated to his reign than to earlier New Kingdom kings, such as Akhenaten and, of course, Tutankhamun. So this is a timely publication – ‘a readable, up-to-date survey of Ramesses II’, with particular emphasis on his relations with the powerful Hittite empire, aimed at scholars and general readers alike, and packed with colour illustrations, notes, and an extensive bibliography.
There seem to be particularly polarised opinions about this ‘ultimate pharaoh’: he’s the great builder and victorious military commander, whose reign was a golden age; or he was ‘a vainglorious and tiresome pooh-bah who accomplished little of substance beyond excessive self-promotion’. The author aims to present ‘a more balanced and nuanced perspective’, although the book’s title – with no question mark at the end – does hint at his final conclusions.
Analysing ancestry and ancient agriculture