User-maat-re, “Strong in Truth is Re,” was the throne name of the Egyptian Pharaoh we know as Ramses the Great. In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem, User-maat-re has become “Ozymandias” and is called “King of Kings.” Ramses II is called “The Great” for good reason. He did everything on a grand scale.
Ramses the Great is a huge figure in nearly every way. He was tall compared to other pharaohs at five feet, eight inches or more. He lived into his 90s, longer than any other pharaoh, and reigned for 67 years, also longer than other kings. Ramses II had numerous wives and concubines and fathered more than 90 children--perhaps as many as 150. Again, this is more than any other pharaoh before or since.
Boy Wonder
When he was only a teenager, Ramses II was already commander-in-chief of his father Seti I’s army. He soon became co-ruler of Egypt, and when his father died he became Pharaoh--while still in his twenties. This Egyptian king spent the early part of his reign as the third king of the 19th Dynasty battling the Hittites and other neighbouring peoples to regain land that earlier pharaohs had lost. At the Battle of Kadesh, he is supposed to have charged his chariot at the Hittites all alone. He held them off until reinforcements could arrive. Before the battle even began, Ramses had arranged for it to be thoroughly recorded--in poetry, prose and illustrated wall reliefs with captions. Whether the story of his solitary charge is true or not, Ramses II did make a treaty with the Hittites by the 21st year of his reign, after which there was peace in Egypt.
God-King
By the 19th Dynasty, during the 13th and 12th centuries BC, there was a revival of the ancient belief that the pharaohs were gods on Earth. Both Seti I and Ramses II restored and built temples, palaces, tombs and other monuments, many of them enormous in size, to encourage that belief. Ramses II oversaw many of his father’s building projects and completed them after Seti’s death. And Ramses had his own projects, many of them featuring huge statues of himself. He outdid the other pharaohs in the number of monuments he built, just as he outdid them in length of life and reign and number of children. Ramses II also removed the names of previous kings from their statues, substituting his own name with the result that he also had his name carved on more things than any other pharaoh.
One of the reasons Ramses II was able to complete so many projects may have been that he had his artisans use sunken relief for their art, rather than the more usual raised relief. Sunken relief is carved into the surface, rather than having the surface carved away around the relief. It is easier and faster, and probably enabled the artisans to work more efficiently.
In keeping with his reputation as a great ruler, Ramses II had lavish tombs built for himself and his dependents near Thebes, in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. Many of Ramses’ children died before he did, and his sons were carefully entombed. There was so much tomb-building going on, and so many rich details added to these burial places during the time of Ramses and other kings of the same period that there was an entire community of artisans just for their preparation.
At Abu Simbel, far south up the Nile River, Ramses had a colossal mortuary temple built for himself. In front of this temple were four 67-foot tall statues of Ramses. Nearby, he had a mortuary temple built for his principal wife Nefertari. These were in addition to tombs and other temples.
3000-Year-Old Mummy
When Ramses II died, he was mummified as all pharaohs were. The embalmers most likely spent the traditional 70 days preparing his corpse for the afterlife. Though tomb robbers disturbed Ramses’ eternal rest, his mummy still exists today, about 3000 years after it was entombed. The mummy has probably deteriorated more in the last century or two than in all the thousands of years before, and scientists at the Egyptian museum had to take Ramses’ mummy and many others off display while they found a way to preserve and protect them.
Even long after his death, Ramses the Great remains associated with enormous projects. In the 1950s plans were made to build the Aswan Dam on the Nile River so its flow could be better controlled for irrigation. The building of the dam would mean that at least ten temples of various ages and styles would be flooded by Lake Nasser. Among them were the mortuary temples of Ramses II and his wife Nefertari. Rather than let the construction project endanger these monuments, UNESCO organized 48 countries on a massive project to save them. All of the threatened temples were disassembled and moved above the reach of what would be the new water level. The temples of Ramses and Nefertari had to be cut up into 1035 blocks of stone that weighed twenty to thirty tons each. These blocks were then hoisted one by one up the mountain they had be built against, and reassembled where they can be visited to this day.
Read more about Egyptian tombs in Lost and Found in the Valley of the Kings and Egypt's Buried Treasure.
Sources
Bunson, Margaret. Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1991.
Gore, Rick. “Ramses the Great,” National Geographic 179.4 (April 1991): 2-31.
Gougaud, Henri and Colette Gouvion. Egypt Observed. (1980) New York: Gallery Books, 1986.
James, T.G.H. An Introduction to Ancient Egypt. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.
Mertz, Barbara. Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt. Rev. ed. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co, 1978.
Time-Life Books. What Life Was Like on the Banks of the Nile: Egypt 3050-30 BC. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life, 1997.
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