The king had an immense family by his numerous wives, among whom he especially honoured Nefertari. He dedicated a temple to her at Abū Simbel, in Nubia, and built a magnificent tomb for her in the Valley of the Queens.
NefertariWall painting of Queen Nefertari from her tomb in the Valley of the Queens, Thebes, Egypt, 13th century bce.Roger Wood—Corbis
For the first time in more than a millennium, princes were prominently represented on the monuments. Ramses II’s fourth surviving son, Khaemwese, was famous as high priest of Ptah at Memphis. He restored many monuments in the Memphite area, including pyramids and pyramid temples of the Old Kingdom, and had buildings constructed near the Sarapeum at Ṣaqqārah. He was celebrated into Roman times as a sage and magician and became the hero of a cycle of stories.
temple of Abu SimbelEntrance to the temple of Abu Simbel, near Aswān, Egypt, 13th century bce.© Marie Giannola
Merneptah
Ramses II’s 13th son, Merneptah (ruled 1213–04 bce), was his successor. Several of Merneptah’s inscriptions, of unusual literary style, treat an invasion of the western delta in his fifth year by Libyans, supported by groups of Sea Peoples who had traveled from Anatolia to Libya in search of new homes. The Egyptians defeated this confederation and settled captives in military camps to serve as Egyptian mercenaries.
One of the inscriptions concludes with a poem of victory (written about another battle), famous for its words “Israel is desolated and has no seed.” This is the earliest documented mention of Israel; it is generally assumed that the exodus of the Jews from Egypt took place under Ramses II.
Merneptah was able to hold most of Egypt’s possessions, although early in his reign he had to reassert Egyptian suzerainty in Palestine, destroying Gezer in the process. Peaceful relations with the Hittites and respect for the treaty of Ramses II are indicated by Merneptah’s dispatch of grain to them during a famine and by Egyptian military aid in the protection of Hittite possessions in Syria. Last years of the 19th dynasty
Upon the death of Merneptah, competing factions within the royal family contended for the succession. Merneptah’s son Seti II (ruled 1204–1198 bce) had to face a usurper, Amenmeses, who rebelled in Nubia and was accepted in Upper Egypt. His successor, Siptah, was installed on the throne by a Syrian royal butler, Bay, who had become chancellor of Egypt. Siptah was succeeded by Seti II’s widow Tausert, who ruled as king from 1193 to 1190 bce, counting her regnal years from the death of Seti II, whose name she restored over that of Siptah. A description in a later papyrus of the end of the dynasty alludes to a Syrian usurper, probably Bay, who subjected the land to harsh taxation and treated the gods as mortals with no offerings in their temples. The early 20th dynasty: Setnakht and Ramses III
Order was restored by a man of obscure origin, Setnakht (ruled 1190–87 bce), the founder of the 20th dynasty, who appropriated Tausert’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. An inscription of Setnakht recounts his struggle to pacify the land, which ended in the second of his three regnal years.
Setnakht’s son Ramses III (ruled 1187–56 bce) was the last great king of the New Kingdom. There are problems in evaluating his achievements because he emulated Ramses II and copied numerous scenes and texts of Ramses II in his mortuary temple at Madīnat Habu, one of the best-preserved temples of the empire period. Thus, the historicity of certain Nubian and Syrian wars depicted as his accomplishments is subject to doubt. He did, however, fight battles that were more decisive than any fought by Ramses II. In his fifth year Ramses III defeated a large-scale Libyan invasion of the delta in a battle in which thousands of the enemy perished.
A greater menace lay to the north, where a confederation of Sea Peoples was progressing by land and sea toward Egypt. This alliance of obscure tribes traveled south in the aftermath of the destruction of the Hittite empire. In his eighth regnal year Ramses III engaged them successfully on two frontiers—a land battle in Palestine and a naval engagement in one of the mouths of the delta. Because of these two victories, Egypt did not undergo the political turmoil or experience the rapid technical advance of the early Iron Age in the Near East. Forced away from the borders of Egypt, the Sea Peoples sailed farther westward, and some of their groups may have given their names to the Sicilians, Sardinians, and Etruscans. The Philistine and Tjekker peoples, who had come by land, were established in the southern Palestinian coastal district in an area where the overland trade route to Syria was threatened by attacks by nomads. Initially settled to protect Egyptian interests, these groups later became independent of Egypt. Ramses III used some of these peoples as mercenaries, even in battle against their own kinfolk. In his 11th year he successfully repulsed another great Libyan invasion by the Meshwesh tribes. Meshwesh prisoners of war, branded with the king’s name, were settled in military camps in Egypt, and in later centuries their descendants became politically important because of their ethnic cohesiveness and their military role.
The economic resources of Egypt were in decline at that time. Under Ramses III the estate of Amon received only one-fifth as much gold as in Thutmose III’s time. Even at the great temple of Madīnat Habu, the quality of the masonry betrays a decline. Toward the end of his reign, administrative inefficiency and the deteriorating economic situation resulted in the government’s failure to deliver grain rations on time to necropolis workers, whose dissatisfaction was expressed in demonstrations and in the first recorded strikes in history. Such demonstrations continued sporadically throughout the dynasty. A different sort of internal trouble originated in the royal harem, where a minor queen plotted unsuccessfully to murder Ramses III so that her son might become king. Involved in the plot were palace and harem personnel, government officials, and army officers. A special court of 12 judges was formed to try the accused, who received the death sentence.
Many literary works date to the Ramesside period. Earlier works in Middle Egyptian were copied in schools and in good papyrus copies, and new texts were composed in Late Egyptian. Notable among the latter are stories, several with mythological or allegorical content, that look to folk models rather than to the elaborate written literary types of the Middle Kingdom. Ramses IV
Ramses III was succeeded by his son Ramses IV (ruled 1156–50 bce). In an act of piety that also reinforced his legitimacy, Ramses IV saw to the compilation of a long papyrus in which the deceased Ramses III confirmed the temple holdings throughout Egypt; Ramses III had provided the largest benefactions to the Theban temples, in terms of donations of both land and personnel. Most of these probably endorsed earlier donations, to which each king added his own gifts. Of the annual income to temples, 86 percent of the silver and 62 percent of the grain was awarded to Amon. The document demonstrates the economic power of the Theban temples, for the tremendous landholdings of Amon’s estate throughout Egypt involved the labour of a considerable portion of the population; but the ratio of temple to state income is not known, and the two were not administratively separate. In addition, the temple of Amon, which figures prominently in the papyrus, included within its estates the king’s own mortuary temple, for Ramses III was himself deified as a form of Amon-Re, known as Imbued with Eternity. The later Ramesside kings