How does Ramesses “the Great” stack up to his predecessors? How do scholars and audiences alike receive this grandiose ruler? In this episode we explore tales of Ramesses, told in antiquity, and consider his legacy in the modern world.
Music: Keith Zizza and Luke Chaos.
Transcript
Ramesses II, commonly called “The Great” died around August of 1226 BCE. Almost immediately, his legacy began to work its influence on Egyptian society. That fame has never really faded. From antiquity to the modern age, the idea of King “Ramesses” (by various names) has been a symbol of the pharaonic past.
Ramesses & the Trojans
One curious tale concerns the Trojan War. In the Classical era, writers connected Ramesses (or a version of him) with the legendary conflict at Troy. In the First Century CE, for example, Pliny the Elder said that ““Ramesis… was reigning at the time of the capture of Troy…”[1] A few centuries earlier, Herodotos claimed that Egypt had a stronger connection with Troy than history had recognised.[2] In his account of travels in the Nile Valley, Herodotos wrote the following:
“When I enquired of the (Egyptian) priests, they told me this… After carrying off Helen from Sparta, (Paris) sailed away for his own country; (but) violent winds caught him in the Aegean and drove him into the Egyptian sea… He came to Egypt, to the mouth of the Nile… (there, the Nile-Warden) … seized (Paris) and … brought him, with Helen… to (the city of) Memphis…
Herodotos goes on to quote sections of the Iliad and Odyssey which mention Paris (and the Spartan Menelaus) visiting the Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt on their travels.[3] But when it came to the war itself, Herodotos had some interesting tales:
“When I asked the priests if the Greek account of the Trojan business were… true, they gave me the following answer… After the (kidnap) of Helen, a great host of Greeks came to the (Trojan) land on behalf of (her husband) Menelaos… they sent to (Troy) messengers, of whom Menelaos himself was one… (they) demanded the restitution of Helen and the possessions that (Paris) had stolen from Menelaos… but the (Trojans) … declared with oaths… that neither Helen nor the goods claimed were with them; that she and they were in Egypt… But the Greeks thought that the Trojans mocked them, and thus besieged the city until they captured it… It was not until they took the fortress, and found no Helen within… that they gave credence to the Trojans’ initial claim, and thus sent Menelaos himself to (Egypt)…”[4]
That must have been frustrating. Though I enjoy the implication that the Greeks never thought to send a messenger to Egypt, just in case the Trojans spoke true. Perhaps none of the high-status leaders (the ones who might earn an audience with pharaoh) wanted to leave the warzone and chance of glory in battle. Either way, it’s kind of ironic. Imagine spending years at war, only to find that your princess was in another castle.
Herodotos describes the aftermath briefly:
“Menelaus then came to Egypt and went up the river to Memphis; there… he was very hospitably entertained and received Helen unharmed together with all his possessions. Yet, though so well treated, Menelaus did the Egyptians a wrong. For when he would have sailed away he was stayed by stress of weather; and this hindrance continuing for long, he devised and did a forbidden deed, taking two children of the land and sacrificing them. When it was known that he had so done, the people hated and pursued him, and he fled away with his ships to Libya; and whither he thence betook himself the Egyptians could not say…”[5]
The episode seems like a callback to Agamemnon, sacrificing Iphigenia. But Herodotos recounts it as a local legend.
The idea that Menelaus visited Egypt appears in the Odyssey as well.[6] But Herodotus gives the Spartan a reason to visit the Nile.[7]
Finally, the “Father of History” has a few thoughts on the whole “Helen and the Trojans in Egypt” idea. A surprisingly critical one:
“So much was told me by the (Egyptian) priests… For my own part, I believe their story about Helen. I reason it thus: had Helen been in (Troy) then, with or without the desire of (Paris) she should have been given back to the Greeks. For surely (King) Priam was not so mad, nor those nearest to him, as to… risk their own persons, their children, and their city, (merely) that (Paris) might have Helen to wife. Even if… they held that opinion in the early days… when so many Trojans were slain in fighting… in this turn of events, even if Helen had been Priam’s own wife, I can’t help but think… that we would have restored her to the Greeks, if by doing so he could escape from the present [8]
I like this account. For one thing, we get Herodotos “critiquing” the Iliad story itself. He picks apart (perceived) plot holes and tries to reconcile that with new information. The result is that, in Herodotos’ imagination, the Trojan War itself became far more tragic. Like blinkered stallions charging over a ravine, the Greeks ignored all protestations and blindly destroyed the city. Which version is better? We’ll let the Muses decide.
Anyway…
Herodoto’s chronology is slightly weird. Pliny the Elder stated plainly that “Ramesis” reigned during the Trojan War. At the very least, that places his version of events in the 19th or 20th Dynasties, between 1300—1100 BCE. Herodotos is a bit more convoluted. He talks of Paris and Helen coming to Egypt in the reign of a King called “Proteus.” The author is quite clear this is the Greek version of his name. But we’d search in vain for an Egyptian monarch who might correlate with “Proteus.” The best clue we get is that Herodotos calls the successor of this King Rhampsinitus.[9] Hypothetically, that would make Proteus a version of Sety I… maybe. But Herodotos’ chronology is weird. In his account, the next kings after Ramesses were Cheops (Khufu) and Chephren (Khafra), builders of great pyramids.[10] Seems like something got muddled up, there. Still, if we try to line up Pliny the Elder with Herodotos, perhaps “Proteus” is Sety I and “Rhampsinitus” is Ramesses, with the Trojan war occurring in this time.
It’s a fun story. Is there any validity to it? Well, historically, Ramesses himself might have been aware of “Trojans.” In his long poem about the Battle of Kadesh, the King listed the enemy peoples whom he faced on the battlefield. These included a group called called drdny, which might be the “Dardanians,” part of the Trojan kingdom.[11]
That’s tentative, though. At the time, the region of Troy was known as “Wilusa,” and they had extensive dealings with the Hittites. And as we’ll see shortly in our tale, warriors of the Aegean and Western Anatolia were a major threat to Egypt in this era. It is plausible that people we might call “Trojans” were part of the coalition that marched to Kadesh. But there’s no archaeological record to examine there. We simply can’t say for sure.
Tacitus
Now, something a bit more grounded. In the early 2nd Century CE, the Roman historian Tacitus remembered “Rhamses” the conqueror.[12] In Book II of the Annales, Tacituswrote the following:
“(In) ancient Thebes, on piles of masonry, Egyptian letters still remained, embracing the tale of old magnificence, and one of the senior priests… related that ‘once, the city contained seven hundred thousand men, of military age, and with that army King Rhamses, after conquering Libya and Ethiopia, the Medes and the Persians, the Bactrians and the Scythians, and the lands where the Syrians and Armenians and neighbouring Cappadocians dwell, had ruled over all that lies between the (Black) Sea … and the Lycian (Eastern Mediterranean)…” The tribute-lists of the subject nations were still legible (on the walls): the weight of silver and gold, the number of weapons and horses, the temple-gifts of ivory and spices, together with the quantities of grain and other necessaries of life to be paid by the separate countries; revenues no less imposing than those which are now exacted by the might of Parthia or by Roman power.”
Tacitus’ description, particularly of the monuments, does line up with Ramesses’ art. A traveller of his time could visit Karnak, Luxor Temple, and the Ramesseum, and see images of the pharaoh in battle. They could also gaze upon huge murals showing towns sacked, prisoners paraded before the King, and piles of plunder and tribute. Such a visitor might also visit the temple at Medinet Habu, where Ramesses III had commissioned similar art. Thirteen hundred years after the great kings, a foreigner might find “Ramses” the conqueror at every turn.
I’m sure pharaoh would have loved that legacy.
Ramesses & the Thief
Going back to Herodotos, we get a more legendary vision of Ramesses. A somewhat salacious one. Herodotos claims that pharaoh had “great wealth of silver, so great that none of the later-born kings could surpass or even match it.”[13] To protect his treasure, the King commanded a mason to build a secret chamber within his palace. The builder did so, and none knew of the pharaoh’s storehouse. Alas, when he reached the end of his life, the builder told his sons of the treasure room and how to open it secretly. Of course, the sons put that knowledge to work and broke into the palace by night. They found the silver room and stole as much as they could. The next day, Ramesses saw what had happened and ordered his servants to set traps within the treasure chamber. Next night, the thieves returned…
“The thieves came as they had done before, and one of them crept in … at once he was caught and held in the trap. Seeing his evil plight, he … called to his brother, “Creep in quickly…and cut off my head, lest I be seen and recognised and so bring you too to ruin.” The brother consented and did this, thinking the counsel good. Then he (sealed the chamber and) went home, carrying his brother’s head.
Brutal. The next morning, Ramesses opened his treasure room and found the headless corpse. With no way of identifying the body, he ordered it hung from the palace walls. The guards would watch for anyone mourning the dead, and then they’d have their culprits.
The thief was more cunning than that, though. By trickery, he got the guards at the wall drunk, and when they were sleeping he cut the body down and stole away. So, the King turned to his daughter. In another of Herodotos’ salacious tales, Ramesses commanded a princess to accept anyone into her bedchamber and, if they told her their darkest secret, she would have sex with them. The thief came, enticed by the offer. But first, he cut the arm off a corpse and concealed it within his cloak. Entering the chamber, the thief met the princess. As commanded, she compelled him to reveal what he had, and when he did so the princess tried to grab him. But instead she took hold of the dead man’s arm, pulling it forth from his garments. The thief escaped, and Ramesses raged.
Finally, pharaoh threw up his hands and issued a public proclamation: if the thief came forward and revealed how he had stolen the treasures, he would receive amnesty. The thief did so, and Ramesses rewarded his honesty with a gift: the princess to be his wife.
Herodotos reports the tale with little comment. He seems sceptical, though, because he concludes these accounts by saying “These Egyptian stories are for the use of whosoever believes such tales: for myself, it is my rule throughout this history that I record whatever is told me as I have heard it.”[14]
Ramesses’ Legacy: Greatness and Goodness
Once scholars began to accurately translate hieroglyphs, the pharaoh returned to the historical spotlight. Ever since, this king remains synonymous with ancient Egypt. Ask a person on the street to name a pharaoh, they’ll probably say “Ramesses.” Maybe Tutankhamun, thanks to the “overnight celebrity” caused by his tomb. But even he is better known to the public as “King Tut,” a golden mask on a postcard rather than a true “personality.”
No matter the era, Ramesses remains the archetypal pharaoh. He just hits different.
However, visions of Ramesses as a man and ruler fluctuate, wildly, with the times. In the early 1800s, scholars were amazed by his monuments and saw in him a vision of splendour. Champollion, for example, described Ramesses as the “illustrious conqueror… the bravest of warriors and the best of princes… It is under the rule of Ramses the Great… that Egypt rose to the pinnacle of its political power and internal splendour.”[15] Pharaoh would have loved that interpretation. But by the mid-19th Century, attitudes changed. In Europe, the spirit of revolution and liberalism brought a new hostility to the King’s memory. Shelley described Ramesses as the Ozymandias with his “sneer of cold command,” and his monuments the wreck of a forgotten empire. The German scholar Christian von Bunsen called the pharaoh “an unbridled despot, who took advantage of a reign of almost unparalleled length… to torment his own subjects and strangers to the utmost of his power, and to employ them as instruments of his passion for war and building.”[16] Bunsen’s view was strongly influenced by his impression that Ramesses was the pharaoh of Biblical history, specifically the oppression of Israelites and the enemy of Moses. That vision has coloured countless interpretations since. In novels and cinema, popular imagination overwhelmingly views Ramesses through the lens of “Exodus” tales. We’ll come back to that whole story in the future (after the reign of Merneptah). But you get the point. Starting in the 19th Century, and informed by Biblical perspectives, historians and storytellers alike have cast Ramesses in the “tyrannical” mould.
As far as I can tell, Champollion was the first scholar to explicitly call Ramesses “the Great.” But his fame probably reached new heights in 1877, when Egyptologist Amelia Edwards published her book A Thousand Miles Up the Nile. Edwards described Ramesses in glowing terms: “The central figure of Egyptian history has always been, probably always will be, Rameses the Second. He holds this place partly by right, partly by accident. He was born to greatness; he achieved greatness; and he had borrowed greatness thrust upon him…[17] The interest that one takes in Rameses II begins at Memphis and goes on increasing all the way up the river. It is a purely living, a purely personal interest… Other Pharaohs but languidly affect the imagination… But with the second Rameses we are on terms of respectful intimacy… His features are as familiar to us as those of Henry VIII or Louis XIV.”[18]
Edwards based that description on the King’s monuments and the written record. But while her introduction was appropriately grandiose, Edwards understood the essential challenge. For all his splendid works, Ramesses the human is gone: “Such are, very briefly, the leading facts of… this famous Pharaoh. Exhaustively treated, they would expand into a volume. Even then, however, one would ask, and ask in vain, what manner of man he was. Every attempt to evolve (Ramesses’) personal character … is… a mere exercise of fancy.”[19]
That’s a problem that afflicts all Egyptological storytelling. The nature of ancient record-keeping, and the religious attitudes that viewed monarchs as gods, obscure the realities of human personalities.
Following Edwards, generations of Egyptologists avoided the issue of “greatness” and focussed on his cultural legacy. In 1912, James Henry Breasted kept it simple, saying: “Probably no Pharaoh ever left a more profound impression upon his age. A quarter of a century later began a line of ten kings bearing his name… for a hundred and fifty years… it was impossible to be a Pharaoh without being a Ramesses.”[20]
Similarly, in 1982, Kenneth Kitchen likened Ramesses to more recent era-definers: “…the 66-year reign of Ramesses II … was… in a way, analogous to the reign of Queen Victoria … reign that marked an epoch, known for its great events and … monumental style… and the name (be it ‘Ramessid’ or ‘Victorian’) stamped indelibly upon a nation’s history…”[21]
In the 21st Century, perceptions of Ramesses shift wildly in location and audience. In Egypt itself, the King has reclaimed his position as the dominant symbol of pharaonic history. It is his statue that welcomes visitors to the new Grand Egyptian Museum. His face, temples, and art grace multiple banknotes (one of the few pharaohs to appear on the currency). But as in Ramesses’ own time, these images are a publicly constructed one.[22] For some, Ramesses might be the Pharaoh of religious tradition; for others, a symbol of a glorious past that might be reclaimed;[23] and for some, he may be a vision of authoritarianism best left to ancient history.
Today, western society has a “love-hate” relationship with Ramesses. His monuments are some of the most commonly featured in documentaries, rivalled only by the Giza pyramids and the mask of Tutankhamun. Every filmmaker has made the trek to Abu Simbel to capture the enormous statues and grand halls. Ramesses is a fixture on the travelling exhibition circuit and consistently draws large crowds. However, popular imagination also recoils from such grandiosity. Especially when we look to our own society. With “strong-men” and wannabe dictators popping up everywhere, some of Ramesses’ bombast feels a little too familiar. Words like “egomaniac” and “propagandist” get thrown around all too easily. Toby Wilkinson, for example, argued “It is surely Ramesses’ achievements as a self-propagandist, given concrete form through an astonishing architectural legacy, that justify his claim to greatness…”[24] Elizabeth Blyth, in her history of Karnak Temple, said of Ramesses “…his self-publicity knew no bounds, and his name and image, even today, are carried in seemingly endless profusion on temple walls, obelisks and colossi throughout Egypt…”[25] Joyce Tyldesley, meanwhile, saw his grandiosity as a carefully crafted (and entirely traditional) policy: “Ramesses knew what made a great pharaoh. He… would be a brave warrior, a mighty builder, an educated scribe and an effective priest… From the very beginning of his reign Ramesses set about proving that he conformed to the ideal of Egyptian kingship. In fact, he determined to prove that he was the greatest of all Egypt’s kings. In this ambition he was by no means unusual.”[26]
Finally, Peter Brand gives a vision of Ramesses that is both laudatory and reflective. As the most recent (and thorough) examination of the period, I’ll let Prof. Brand’s words close out the scene. “Ramesses II was Egypt’s most magnificent, iconic pharaoh. His reign, monumental in every way, served as a model for future Egyptian rulers. Indeed, the very name “Ramesses” would become synonymous with “Pharaoh,” just as “Caesar” meant “Emperor” in Rome…”[27] However, concluding his work, Brand noted: “Even for most Egyptologists, Ramesses II typically inspires deep admiration or visceral distaste. Yet, his negative and positive qualities are not mutually exclusive. He was a complex figure concealing himself behind a … façade of the ideal pharaoh. For good or ill, Ramesses II is a mirror we hold up to our memories and fantasies of ancient Egypt.”[28]
How Does Ramesses Rank?
Now that we’ve reached his end, how does Ramesses II stack up with what came before? Well, as always, it’s complicated.
There’s no denying that Ramesses (and his government) made significant, almost unparalleled, contributions to the sorts of things we associate with ancient Egypt. As far as monuments go, this reign easily ranks among the greatest. Really, in terms of sheer scale, it comes down to Ramesses or Sneferu (builder of three pyramids). And even then, the question of “who was better” becomes a matter of taste.
When you look to the art, Ramesses loses out in quality (his father Sety was the absolute pinnacle of artistic output). But he holds his own. In Ramesses’ reign, artisans produced masterpieces like the tomb of Nefertari, probably the most photographed sepulchre in the entire country. And whatever Ramesses misses in details, he absolutely wins in scale. Visit any temple in Egypt (at least the ones that existed in his lifetime) and you’ll find some contribution by Ramesses and his agents. As far as the gods were concerned, he was probably the most devoted son they ever had.
Now, let’s acknowledge one thing in terms of art. Like most pharaohs before, Ramesses did have a habit of usurping earlier works and adding his own name.[29] For as many statues produced in his workshops, there are probably an equal number repurposed from previous reigns.[30] The King is often lambasted for this.[31] But honestly, I think he gets an unfair rap. For one thing, the ancients simply didn’t think about their art in the same terms as us.[32] When they demolished something, or reused a statue, it was often practical more than “disrespectful.” For another, you’d be hard pressed to find a monarch who didn’t reuse something old to make something new. Take the Great Pyramid of Khufu, for example. Less than two hundred years after he died, rulers took masonry from his temples to make new structures.[33] Stone was expensive; and not every ruler enjoyed long-term adoration. If someone got forgotten, or their art languished in obscurity, later generations would happily reuse it. Ramesses is more visible, because he reigned so long and, most importantly, because later generations kept what he had made, to incorporate in their own constructions.[34] As a result, the signs of Ramesses’ “borrowing” are often uniquely well-preserved.[35] In the modern era, we may criticise such laissez faire reuse, but that’s our culture; our learned instinct to conserve heritage. It’s not how the ancients looked at it.
Beyond monuments, what about society? In foreign policy, I think Ramesses is easily top-tier. Thutmose III wins fame for his methodical campaigns and daring victories like Megiddo. Thutmose I went further afield than any pharaoh before. Ramesses did not match those achievements. But he showed a knack for consolidation and diplomacy that is lacking for earlier rulers. If nothing else, Ramesses excelled as a peace-maker. He concluded the long, grinding conflict with Hatti, ending a conflict that had flared, on and off, for a hundred years. Ramesses (and his agents) absolutely deserve recognition for those decisions.
Domestically, there’s also plenty of reason to view Ramesses’ reign as a significant era. This one is partly down to preservation, and the luck of the draw, but the early 19th Dynasty is unusually well-documented in writing, art, and records of daily life. In fact, it’s probably the best-documented, in all ancient Egyptian history. Archaeologists have uncovered thousands of ostraca, papyri, tomb chapels, and houses from this hundred-year period. We’ve scratched the surface of that in recent episodes, with glimpses at family and village life. But as our story unfolds over the next few generations, we’ll have many opportunities to dive into this material. From the squabbles of lawsuits; to the woes of elderly widows with ungrateful children; to conspiracies and corruption in local affairs; divine punishments, divine favour; love, loss, joy, depression… the 19th Dynasty is a great time for stories of the people.
So, in the historical terms, Ramesses does rank really high. Hardly a controversial opinion, but sometimes a celebrated ruler is justifiably celebrated. We can always quibble the details; what was Ramesses personally responsible for, what was merely the product of environment, economy, social and political contexts? Keeping that in mind, there is nonetheless something special about this era. A golden age? Maybe. Certainly, a remarkably productive and informative one.
Personally, I’ll admit that Ramesses surprised me. When I first began this podcast, I was more on the “sceptical” side of things regarding this ruler. But once I started the deep-dive research, I was surprised at how much detail one could find. The diplomatic archive was particularly delightful, and I came away with a new appreciation of his foreign policy. At home, Ramesses is more nuanced than his mega-monuments might suggest. In 2026, I’d probably put him in the top 5 “most interesting pharaohs;” definitely top 10. I don’t rank these rulers in terms of “good” or “liking,” but more in the sense of “how intriguing is their reign and the surviving record?” From that perspective, Ramesses was far more interesting than I once imagined.
[1] Pliny, Natural History, XXXVI:14, 332. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/62704/62704-h/62704-h.htm
[2] Herodotos, Histories, II, 114—120. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Herodotus/2b*.html
[3] Herodotos, Histories, II, 116.
[4] Herodotos, Histories, II, 118.
[5] Herodotos, Histories, II, 119.
[6] Odyssey IV, 351—592. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136%3Abook%3D4%3Acard%3D351
[7] Neville, J. W. (1977). Herodotus on the Trojan War. Greece & Rome, 24(1), 3–12. https://www.jstor.org/stable/642683
[8] https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Herodotus/2b*.html
[9] Herodotos, Histories, II, 116, 121.
[10] Herodotos, Histories, II, 124, 127.
[11] Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Translations, II, 4 and 16.
[12] Tacitus, Annals, II, 60. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Tacitus/Annals/2C*.html. See also Kelly, B. (2010). Tacitus, Germanicus and the Kings of Egypt (tac. Ann. 2.59–61). The Classical Quarterly, 60(1), 221–237. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40984750
[13] Herodotos, Histories, II, 121—122..
[14] Herodotos, Histories, II, 122.
[15] Colla, E. (2007). Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity, 97—98, cf. Champollion, Lettres et journaux écrits pendant le voyage d’Égypte, 433.
[16] Bunsen, C. C. J. von. (1848). Egypt’s place in universal history: An historical investigation in five books (C. H. Cottrell, Trans, Vol. 3, 183—184.
[17] Borrowing from Shakespeare’s The Twelfth Night, 3.4.
[18] Edwards, A. B. (1899). A Thousand Miles up the Nile (2nd edn), 262—263.
[19] Edwards, A Thousand Miles up the Nile (2nd edition), 282.
[20] Breasted, J. H. (1912). A History of Egypt, 462—463.
[21] Kitchen, Pharaoh Triumphant, 224.
[22] Wood, M. (1998). The Use of the Pharaonic Past in Modern Egyptian Nationalism. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 35, 179–196. https://doi.org/10.2307/40000469
[23] Lietzelman, H. (n.d.). Pharaonism: Decolonizing Historical Identity. Prized Writing 2014-2015, 46–51.
[24] Wilkinson, Ramesses the Great, chapter 5.
[25] Blyth, E. (2006). Karnak: Evolution of a Temple, 155.
[26] Tyldesley, J. (2001). Ramesses: Egypt’s Greatest Pharaoh, introduction.
[27] Brand, Ultimate Pharaoh, ix.
[28] Brand, Ultimate Pharaoh, 489.
[29] Sourouzian, H. (2019). Catalogue de la statuaire royale de la XIXe dynastie. Available at IFAO. Online catalogue also available.
[30] Magen, B. (2011). Steinerne Palimpseste: Zur Wiederverwendung von Statuen durch Ramses II. und seine Nachfolger.
[31] Cooney, “The New Kingdom of Egypt Under the Ramesside Dynasty,” 256—257.
[32] Brand, P. (2010). Reuse and Restoration. In W. Wendrich (Ed.), UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2vp6065d.
[33] Youssef, M. (2011). New Scenes of Hunting a Hippopotamus from the Burial Chamber of Unas. In M. Bárta, F. Coppens, & J. Krejčí (Eds.), Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2010 (pp. 820–823).
[34] The city of Tanis, for example, was largely built of Ramessid blocks and statuary taken from Pi-Ramesses.
[35] Brand, Ultimate Pharaoh, 414—416.
Bibliography
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