Ramses the Great

If you've been reading this blog long enough, you no doubt know my passion (I prefer that to "obsession", which perhaps too adverse) for Ramses II (below, atop his chariot), or also known as Ramses the Great.  I had been flipping through my copy of Chronicle of the Pharaohs (yup, I'm a history nerd), and was inspired to write about my favorite pharaoh

Ramses II definitely merits his popular title as Ramses the Great.  During his long 67 year reign (about the entire first year of which was a co-regency, but still...), having ascended the throne of Egypt at age 25, everything was done on a grand scale.

"No other pharaoh constructed so many temples or erected so many colossal statues and obelisks."

Ha, ha... I found it humorous that they chose the "erected" to describe building the obelisks.  That's another weird history thing, but I'm not going to talk about that...

So anyway, not only did he assemble the most monuments (I've already talked a lot about those in other posts, like Abu Simbel and Karnak pictured below), but he also had the most kids out of all the pharaohs.  By the end of his life, he could boast of over 100 kids!  He took many members of his own family as brides, which wasn't uncommon back then.  One wife was his younger sister, and three others were his own daughters.  And while we're talking about family, it might also be mentioned that it was once rumored the Moses of the Israelites was actually the brother of Ramses the Great, however that's a very debatable point, and isn't thought to be fact by most historians today.

During the first part of his rule, the Hittites on the Egyptian frontier weren't exactly friendly.  During a revolt in only the fourth year of his reign, Ramses summoned to him the greatest army that Egypt had ever seen composed of 20,000 men in four basic divisions of 5,000 each, named respectively after the gods Amun, Re, Ptah, and Seth.

Ramses moved up the Gaza Strip and approached Kadesh where he came across two Hittite spies who confessed that the army was 100 miles north of that point.  Continuing along the march, he came across two more spies who spoke, under torture, that the first two spies had been planted there to confuse the pharaoh, and that the army was actually just on the other side of Kadesh waiting to ambush them.

The Hittite king had assembled an army even greater than that of the Egyptian in two sections of about 18,000 and 19,000.  Not to mention 2,500 charioteers, who broke through the Egyptian lines - scattering the people all over.  Ramses himself was left, and almost killed, but the charismatic king was able to rally a force to resist the attack.  He was saved by his elite guard who had taken a different route from the main army, which forced Muwatallis to fight on two fronts, and eventually to retreat.

The following day was a stalemate, and Muwatallis proposed peace, which Ramses accepted.

Accounts flew of Ramses' personal bravery.  The texts on stelae at the Ramessium elaborates on Ramses riding a chariot and plowing through the Hittite army who would flee at the site of his blood-wrath.  School boys training to be scribes used to copy the words from the Ramessium for practice in writing.

Over the course of his rule, Ramses went on many other Syrian campaigns (5 actually), each time realizing that he couldn't hold the north, just as Muwatallis couldn't hold the south.  The two kings agreed on this, and to seal the deal they exchanged gifts, and Muwtatallis sent Ramses one of his younger daughters to join his harem.  Seven years later, he'd also send his eldest daughter to join her sister.  Ha, ha... we could solve all of our problems if the president would just send one of the Bush girls over to Iraq.  Kidding!  =)

Oh, and there's a little bit of a mystery surrounding the Exodus and the Egyptians.  Throughout all of Egypt'e extensive records, there's not a whiff of anything relating to the "Children of Israel" working as slaves and then escaping.  There's a single record on a victory stela marking a battle fought with the Hebrews.  One theory is that the Egyptians considered the run away slaves immaterial, but according to the Bible when the Jews ran, Ramses sent a huge army in response.  The entire army was subsequently destroyed when the Sea of Reeds collapsed in on the Egyptians after the Hebrews had escaped.  You'd think that would be recorded if it was "huge".

One pretty extremist, but not without credit, reason is that it never happened.  There is no evidence of a person named "Moses" as leader of the Hebrews outside of the Bible and Koran.  The lack of information regarding the escape is a little unsettling too.

Another theory I read on the complete opposite hand of the last one is that the Egyptians were too arrogant too record it.  They didn't want the loss to blemish the record of the glorious Ramses the Great.  It would be a little embarrassing to lose hold of a bunch of slaves after you crushed and made peace with an empire as great as the Hittites.

It's also plausible that we haven't look deep enough into Egyptian history to find the records.  We can't know everything.  There's no doubt there are somethings we haven't discovered yet.  The records may be just lost for the time being.

Ramses on his chariot -

Abu Simbel -

Pictures of Karnak - (Guess which god is in that one just below!)

Tags: Life, History, Bible, Religion, Books