Crown Prince Ramesses: Pharaoh-in-waiting

When Ramesses I became pharaoh on Horemheb’s death, his grandson and namesake – the future Ramesses II – was suddenly thrust on to the political stage as a royal scion. The princeling, then in late childhood or earliest adolescence, was the eldest son of Ramesses I’s eldest son and heir Sety, who would sit on the Horus Throne as Sety I less than two years after his father ascended it. A few years previously, this Ramesside line had much to recommend itself to the childless King Horemheb, the last ruler of the waning Eighteenth Dynasty. Ramesses I, then called Paramessu, and his son Sety had both reached the highest echelons of Egypt’s military and civilian power structure. Among