Ramses the Great: How a pharaoh built his legacy

This article is from World Archaeology issue 137

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When the 19th-century poet Percy Shelley put pen to paper to write ‘Ozymandias’, he used the image of a shattered colossal statue to evoke the inevitability of decay, and the power of time to humble even the grandest of rulers. Famously, Shelley has an inscription on the statue pedestal declare ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:/Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’ The following words declare tellingly that ‘Nothing beside remains’. It is possible, though, that Shelley picked the wrong ruler with which to make his point. Both the essence of the inscription and the name ‘Ozymandias’ came from the work of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus. The name itself was a corruption of a real one: User-Ma’at-Re. This means ‘Powerful one of the justice of Re’, which was one of the five royal names used by the Egyptian pharaoh that we know as Ramses II or Ramses the Great (sometimes also spelled ‘Ramesses’).

The colossal statue that inspired Shelley came from the Ramesseum – a monumental mortuary temple for the king that was built near Luxor – but it was far from being the only grandiose architectural project to bear the name and likeness of Ramses II. Instead, the pharaoh displayed a fondness for initiating his own great works, and also making his mark on those of his predecessors. The Great Sphinx in Giza, for example, was already ancient by the time of Ramses II, but still received a statue of the king set between its paws, and a stela naming him. When it comes to his own architectural projects, the Great Temple at Abu Simbel must rank as one of the most renowned today. This extraordinary edifice was carved into a cliff face and boasts a façade 33m high, which is dominated by four seated statues of the king that are each 20m tall. This willingness to make bold architectural statements means that there can be few if any rulers who remain so visible within their former dominion over 3,000 years after their death. The result, as the Egyptologist Zahi Hawass puts it, is that Ramses II – ‘a character like no other’ – has become ‘a unique symbol of the greatness of pharaonic Egypt.’

Great expectations

This point is powerfully made by a travelling exhibition entitled Ramses and the Pharaohs’ Gold, which is currently on show at NEON, Battersea Power Station, in London (see ‘Further information’ box below). This has assembled an extraordinary array of artefacts that shed light on the life and times of the pharaoh, alongside a selection of truly stunning objects associated with both earlier and later royal dynasties. As well as showcasing the skills of ancient Egyptian artisans, the exhibition successfully teases out something of the character of the king. It reveals that Ramses not only had a talent for self-promotion, but was also unafraid to buck convention. Part of this willingness to do things his own way may have flowed from his confidence in his own divinity. Most Egyptian kings were touched by godliness in the form of their role as the earthly manifestation of Horus. Alongside acting as the representative of the falcon god, Ramses II also viewed himself as divine in his own right. In the Great Temple of Abu Simbel – which was named ‘The House of Ramses, Beloved of Amun’ – the king is portrayed as the equal of other great Egyptian gods. There are surviving images, too, of individuals venerating statues of the king, including some of Ramses II making offerings to himself. When it came to making a lasting mark, Ramses II also had extraordinarily good fortune in terms of both the circumstances of his reign and the scope these presented.

Ramses was the third pharaoh in what is known at the 19th Dynasty of Egyptian kings. He was still in his 20s when he was crowned in c.1279 BC. This marked the beginning of a reign that would stretch for almost 67 years, ending c.1213 BC when the king passed away in his 90s. By then, there would have been few in Egypt who could remember being ruled by any other person. Ramses shared his name with the first pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty, while the following 20th Dynasty would bring another nine rulers of that name, emphasising the resonance it came to carry. Both the 19th and 20th Dynasties, together with the preceding 18th Dynasty, form what is known as the New Kingdom era. This was a literal golden age for Egypt, when its empire stretched into the Levant, and control of much of Nubia allowed its precious metal deposits to be tapped. The pharaohs had an effective central government at their disposal as well, while growing wealth stimulated a remarkable flourishing of arts and architecture. Inevitably, Egypt’s expansion brought it into conflict with foreign foes, and art from the era offers cowed caricatures of a range of enemies. Ramses II had personal experience of the realities of conflict from an early age. By the time he was 10, he could count ‘The Great Leader of the Fighting Forces’ among his titles. At the age of 12, he was present during a campaign in the western Nile Delta, while as a 17 year old the future king was waging war against the Hittites.

External enemies were not the only source of instability during the New Kingdom period. A famous episode during the 18th Dynasty brought a sudden and shocking departure from the status quo, when the pharaoh Amenhotep IV renamed himself Akhenaten, in honour of the sun disc – known as Aten – and decreed veneration of it to be the only legitimate form of worship. This rupture in the religious sphere was accompanied by the construction of a new capital city at Amarna. After Akhenaten died in the 17th year of his reign, a succession of rulers followed, including Tutankhamun. Although Amarna was abandoned and the wider pantheon of Egyptian gods reinstated, the process of returning to stability after the Akhenaten episode continued for decades. Along the way, Tutankhamun was followed by one of his high officials, Ay, who ruled for about four years, and then Horemheb, who had been head of the army under Tutankhamun. Horemheb was destined to be the last king of the 18th Dynasty and adopted his vizier, an individual known as Paramessu, as his successor. It was Paramessu who became Ramses I when he ascended to the throne in c.1292 BC. He was the father of the next pharaoh, Seti I, and the grandfather of Ramses II.

A family man

The young Ramses II could hardly have been more fortunate when it came to having powerful relatives, and the opportunities that they brought. Seti I styled his reign a ‘rebirth’ for Egypt, and set numerous ambitious architectural projects in motion. He also made Ramses II his deputy, ensuring that the young prince gained a sound appreciation of how Egypt was governed. For his part, Ramses II seems to have played the role of the dutiful son. Seti I was around 50 when he died, after a reign of c.11 years, leaving a number of his works unfinished. An inscription from Abydos documents the efforts that Ramses II took to complete these. One fine example concerns his contribution to the magnificent hypostyle hall in the vast complex of temples at Karnak, near Luxor. Ramses II was clearly fond of his mother, Tuya, as well. She appears on the façade of the Great Temple at Abu Simbel – though at a rather smaller scale than the seated colossi of the king – and had a chapel dedicated to her in the Ramesseum, too.

Ramses II married further wives – some of whom were also his daughters – and fathered over 100 children. 

Tuya appears in the exhibition in the form of a fine black granite statue. This was unearthed by Flinders Petrie in 1883 at the site of Tanis in the Nile Delta. It shows Tuya seated and wearing a graceful pleated gown, a vulture headdress, and an elaborate wig. Surviving traces of elements belonging to a different figure, though, reveal that this rendering of the queen was achieved by recarving a much earlier statue dating back to the time of the Middle Kingdom (c.1975-1650 BC). Ramses II also seems to have benefited from such opportunistic recycling of earlier sculpture. Visitors to the exhibition are greeted by an elegant fragment of a colossal statue in pink granite showing the head of the king, wearing the lofty crown of Upper Egypt. Here, too, the original piece appears to have been sculpted during the Middle Kingdom, and presumably represents a ruler whose features fell victim to the determination of Ramses II to stamp Egypt in his own image.

Another key figure in the life of Ramses II was Nefertari, one of the wives that he married while he was a prince. It has been claimed that Ramses II ‘did more to honour her than any other king of Egypt did for his queen’. Like his mother, Nefertari appeared in diminutive size alongside the colossi of Ramses II in the façade of the Great Temple at Abu Simbel. It is a different story at the adjacent Small Temple, though, which was once again carved directly into the red sandstone of a cliff face. In this case, the façade is dominated by six towering figures, four of Ramses II, and two of Nefertari. There, she is shown to the same scale as Ramses, in the guise of the living manifestation of Hathor, goddess of fertility. Images of Nefertari appear repeatedly within the Small Temple, too, while the sanctuary shows Ramses making an offering to both himself and his wife. Following her death, Nefertari was interred in what is widely considered to be one of the finest tombs in the Valley of the Queens.

After he became king, Ramses II married further wives – some of whom were also his daughters – and is credited with fathering over 100 children. One of them, Khaemwaset, is often feted as ‘the first Egyptologist’. His mother was Isetnofret, the king’s second wife, while the boy was Ramses’ fourth son. Khaemwaset developed a passion for Egypt’s heritage and took a keen interest in the fate of numerous earlier monuments. Inscriptions show that he was particularly active in the Saqqara necropolis. There, his good works included restoration work on the Step Pyramid of Djoser, dating to the 3rd Dynasty, while tombs established as early as the 1st Dynasty at Abydos received his attention too. He also found a statue of the son of the builder of the Great Pyramid in a shaft at Giza. Over 3,000 years later, a statue of Khaemwaset was discovered in turn, buried among the wealth of sculptures known as the Karnak Cachette, found in 1903. It shows the prince holding a shrine to the god Ptah-Tatenen, and wearing a round wig with a lock of hair curling on his right shoulder, attributes of a high priest of Ptah.

Khaemwaset’s antiquarian tendencies were not just the mark of a character looking for a purpose after essentially becoming a spare in the royal line of succession. Instead, Khaemwaset was elevated to the role of crown prince in year 50 of his father’s reign, putting him on track to be pharaoh, had Ramses II not outlived him. Instead, it would be Merenptah, the 13th son of Ramses II, who ultimately went on to succeed his father. Although Merenptah was already in his 50s when he became king, this age was no barrier to him being presented in the guise of a youthful pharaoh on a statue that was found in his mortuary temple.

A lasting impression

The scale of the contribution that Ramses II made to the great buildings of Egypt is simply astonishing. Zahi Hawass wonders whether he perhaps constructed and modified more monuments than ‘any other ruler in history’. Including Abu Simbel, Ramses II built seven temples in Nubia, and initiated numerous construction projects in Egypt, too. The corpus of his works is one that continues to grow as new discoveries are made. In recent years, for example, the construction of a supermarket on the site of the ancient city of Heliopolis brought to light the remains of a chapel of Ramses II. Other works include impressive additions to existing temples, such as the pylons he raised at the temple of Thoth in Ashmunein and the temple dedicated to a version of Amun at Luxor. Imposing architecture is also a feature of the Ramesseum, with the ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus nominating the seated colossus associated with Ozymandias as ‘the greatest in all Egypt’. Rameses II established a new capital as well, at Piramesse in the Nile Delta. Described in an ancient text as lying ‘between Syria and Egypt’ and being well equipped with provisions, it was a handy location from which to send goods or armies into the Levant. It also, though, proved vulnerable to the ambitions of later Egyptian kings. Indeed, scholars once thought that Tanis could be the site of Piramesse, because so much of its masonry was moved there for reuse by subsequent royal dynasties.

The king’s handiwork often extended to images of himself. A fine example in the exhibition is a sphinx with the head of Ramses II, which is making an offering of holy water, and once stood in the temple of Amun Re at Karnak. The king’s more familiar human body features in a sizable portion of a limestone colossus that was found in Ashmunein during the 1930s. Here, the king is adorned in his kingly regalia, and has a dagger tucked into his belt, while his hands grasp cylinders known as a mekes, which acted as a container for papyrus scrolls. The piece still conveys a palpable sense of power and permanence. It has been estimated that the largest such statues of the king weighed 1,000 tons. One colossus, which survives over 12m in length from the king’s head to his knees, still lies where it was found in Memphis. Rather than try to move it, a museum was simply built around it.

That Ramses II clearly understood the power of architecture to sell an idea is apparent from the accounts of the most famous military clash that occurred during his reign: the Battle of Kadesh. This was fought against the Hittites in c.1274 BC, during the fifth year of Ramses’ reign. The king’s objective was the town of Kadesh on the Orontes river in Syria. Before the main Egyptian force could reach the settlement, though, it was ambushed by a Hittite force. At first, an Egyptian defeat appeared inevitable, with Ramses and his men fighting bravely, despite facing seemingly insurmountable odds. The scales shifted dramatically, though, when a fresh Egyptian division arrived and joined the fray. Now the Hittites found themselves on the defensive, with many of their soldiers drowned in the river as they attempted to escape. Ramses II declared a great victory, stating ‘I found the enemy chariots scattering before my horses. I slaughtered them at my will. Behold, I am victorious. Me alone’, and had descriptions of the battle inscribed on the walls of numerous temples. The Hittites, by contrast, viewed the outcome as at worst a draw. It is certainly conspicuous that Ramses did not make any great territorial gains in the aftermath of the battle. Instead, its chief legacy was what has been described as the world’s first peace treaty, between the Egyptians and Hittites, which was completed in Year 21 of Ramses’ reign.

Although the longevity of Ramses II meant that there was plenty of time to prepare his tomb in the Valley of the Kings, this perhaps ranks as a rare architectural disappointment. Not only was it cut into poor-quality stone, but it also lay in an area prone to flooding, leaving it outshone by many of the other pharaoh’s tombs today. Perhaps being able to see its original contents would have made up for this. Certainly, one of the most elegant objects in the exhibition is the cedar-wood coffin that the remains of Ramses II were ultimately found in. This was discovered among a cache of royal mummies in 1881. The coffin itself was seemingly made during the 18th Dynasty, before being repurposed for Ramses II. It bears an image of a pharaoh in the form of Osiris, king of the underworld, and is also adorned with several texts that document the movements of the coffin and Ramses II after his initial burial. These reveal that his remains were placed in his father’s tomb during the 20th Dynasty, before being relocated again in the 21st Dynasty, and then ultimately joining the cache found in 1881.

Despite the emptying of the tomb of Ramses II in antiquity, the exhibition provides a sense of what could have been present, by presenting some of the sumptuous artefacts buried with pharaohs of the 21st and 22nd Dynasties at Tanis. The quality of some of these artefacts is simply breathtaking. It seems fitting, too, that the objects associated with these rulers should be deployed to round out the story of Ramses II, given that so much of his architecture was recycled to embellish their royal centre at Tanis. Even so, a pharaoh who was only too willing to add his name to the achievements of earlier rulers, is now relying on the treasures of later dynasties to illustrate his own lost riches. Perhaps Shelley had a point after all.

Further information:
• The exhibition Ramses and the Pharaohs’ Gold is currently booking into the summer at NEON in London. For further information, including ticket prices, see https://ramsestheexhibition.co.uk/london/.
• Further details about the artefacts and Ramses II are available in the accompanying book: Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs by Zahi Hawass (ISBN 978-8894647853).