Sources: 1. Stuart, R.W. 'Royalty for Commoners', line 425A.  Born ca. 12 72
BCE, died ca. 1225
Prince Khaemwaset of Egypt aceeded 1230 BCE, made heir by his father. H is
birth name, Kha-em-waset, means "Appearing in Thebes."  He was famo us as a
"magician," and is often referred to today as the first archaeolog ist thanks
to his interest in ancient monuments (!) and their restorati on (the 5th
Dynasty pyramid of Unas at Saqqara bears his inscription hi gh up on the south
face)

King of Egypt , in Intermediate period. 1737-1727 BCE.

Died 1388 BCE
He was the Pharoah of Egypt from about 1398 to 1388 BCE, the 8th rul er of the
18th Dynasty
Sources:
1.  Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds .)
"The Cambridge Ancient History" 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #1, pp. 320-321.
2.  Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pp.89.

The Pharaoh Tuthmosis IV, who ruled during Egypt famous 18th Dynasty, is p
robably most famous for his "Dream Stele, that can still today be found be
tween the paws of the great Sphinx at Giza. Dreams were important in ancie nt
Egypt and were considered to be divine predictions of the future.  In T
uthmosis IV's "Dream Stele", he tells us that, while out on a hunting tri p,
he fell asleep in the shadow of the Sphinx (or apparently, the shad ow of the
Sphinx's head, for the monument was apparently buried in sa nd at the time). 
In the young prince's sleep, Re-Harakhte, the sun god em bodied in the Sphinx,
came to him in a dream and promised that if he wou ld clear away the sand that
engulfed the monument, Tuthmosis would beco me king of Egypt.

Tuthmosis IV's Dream Stele, In part, the stele reads:
"Now the statue of the very great Khepri (the Great Sphix) restin in th is
place, great of fame, sacred of respect, the shade of Ra resting on hi m.
Memphis and every city on its two sides came to him, their arms in ador ation
to his face, bearing great offerings for his ka.  One of these da ys it
happened that price Tuthmosis came travelling at the time of midda y.  He
rested in the shadow of the great god.  (Sleep and) dream (took pos session of
me) at the moment the sun was at zenith.  Then he found the maj esty of this
noble god speaking from his own mouth like a father spea ks to his son, and
saying, 'Look at me, observe me, my son Tuthmosi s.  I am your father,
Horemakhet-Khepri-Ra-Atum.  I shall give to you t he kingship (upon the land
before the living)...(Behold, my condition is l ike one in illness), all (my
limbs being ruined).  The sand of the deser t, upon which I used to be, (now)
confronts me; and it is in order to cau se that you do what is in my heart
that I have waited."

Obviously, the prince carried out these instructions, and thus became t he
eighth ruler of the 18th Dynasty.

Tuthmosis IV's name means, "Born of the God Thoth".  His throne name was M
en-kheperu-re, meaning "Everlasting are the Manifestations of Re".  We c an
also find references to him under the names of Thuthmose IV, Thutmos is IV,
and Djehutymes IV.  He ruled Egypt between 1419 and 1386 BC. He w as
apparently the son of Amenhotep II by his wife, Tiaa, but Egyptologis ts
speculate whether, because of the wording of the "Dream Stele", his cla im on
the Egyptian throne was legitimate. In fact, other evidence suppor ts this
contention.  His father, Amenhotep II, never recognized Tuthmos is as a
co-regent, or announced any intent for Thutmosis to succeed him.

We know that Tuthmosis IV was probably married to Mutemwiya, who produc ed his
heir to the throne, Amenhotep III, though he never acknowledged h er as either
a major or minor queen.  It is possible, though now doubt ed by some, that she
was the daughter of he Mitannian king, Artatama, w ho sent his daughter to the
Egyptian court as part of a diplomatic exchang e. Other of his wives included
Merytra, who we believe later changed her n ame to Tiaa (same as his mother's
name) and a non-royal wife, Nefertir y. He probably also married one of his
sisters named Iaret.

Tuthmosis IV is not the best documented of Egyptian pharaohs.  We actual ly
know very little about him in comparison to others of this dynasty.  Li ttle
military action appears to have occurred during his reign, although o ur
knowledge may be marred by the lack of texts.  We do know that there w as a
Nubian campaign in Year 8 of his rule, and that apparently there we re also
campaigns in Syria.  However, even though the king is referr ed to twice as
the "conqueror of Syria", these may have actually been litt le more then
policing actions, rather than full scale battles.

Little is also known of his building work.  Tuthmosis IV did finish a gia nt
obelisk that was originally quarried at Aswan under Tuthmosis III, h is
grandfather. At 32 meters (105 feet) it was the tallest Egyptian obeli sk that
we know of, and was uniquely intended to stand as a single obeli sk at the
Temple of Karnak.  Most of the obelisks were usually erect ed in pairs.
However, Tuthmosis III originally intended for the re to be a pair of these
Obelisks.  Its counterpart developed a fault duri ng the quarry process, and
remains today joined to the bed-rock at Aswa n. Today, the finished obelisk
stands outside St. John Leteran in Rome, ra ther then in Egypt.

He also began work work at most of Egypt's major temple sites and four sit es
in Nubia, but almost all of this was simply adding to existing monument s.
Most of his work was adding to the temples of his father and grandfathe r, and
perhaps suggesting new sites and monuments to his son.

We know of his minor building projects in the following locations:

The Delta at Alexandria
Seriakus
Heliopolis (possibly)
Giza
Abusir
Saqqara
Memphis
Crocodilopos in the Fayoum
Hermopolis
Amarna
Abydos (a chapel)
Dendera
Medamud
Karnak
Luxor
The West Bank at Luxor (his tomb and mortuary temple)
Armant
Tod
Elkab
Edfu
Elephantine
Konosso
In Nubia at the following locations:

Faras
Buhen
Amada (where he decorated the peristyle court)
Tabo
Gebel Barkal (a foundation deposit)
He also provided some decorations in the Hathor temple at the Serabit el-K
hadim turquoise mines in the Sinai.

His best attested building project we have available today is his own tom b,
KV 43, located in the Valley of the Kings and discovered by Howard Cart er.
However, his mummy was missing from his  tomb, having been found fi ve years
earlier in a cache of mummies located in the tomb of Amenhotep I I.  Perhaps
better known are the fine private tombs built by his nobl es on the West Bank
at Luxor (ancient Thebes) in an area commonly referr ed to as the Tombs of the
Nobles.  These include such notable tombs as th at of Nakht (TT 52) and Menna
(TT 69).

References:
Chronicle of the Pharaohs (The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dyn
asties of Ancient Egypt) Clayton, Peter A. 1994 Thames and Hudson Ltd IS BN
0-500-05074-0
Complete Valley of the Kings, The (Tombs and Treasures of Egypt's Greate st
Pharaohs) Reeves, Nicholas; Wilkinson, Richard H. 1966 Thames and Huds on Ltd
IBSN 0-500-05080-5
Monarchs of the Nile Dodson, Aidan 1995 Rubicon Press ISBN 0-948695-20-x
Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian 2000 Oxford University Pre ss
ISBN 0-19-815034-2
Who Were the Phraohs? (A history of their names with a list of cartouche s)
Quirke, Stephen 1990 Dover Publications ISBN 0-486-26586-2

She is most certainly the daughter of vizier Senebhanef and the heredita ry
princess Sebekhotep

Both wives listed are the same person. An error in the program will not al low
them to be listed as such.

She is most certainly the daughter of vizier Senebhanef and the heredita ry
princess Sebekhotep

Both wives listed are the same person. An error in the program will not al low
them to be listed as such.

The 13th son of Ramesses, by Queen Istnofret. He was a conscientious rule r, if
less dazzling than his father. In addition to the almost mandatory t emple
building, he was particularly involved with foreign relations. His g enerosity
of spirit was evidenced by his supplying grain to the Hittite s, once Egypt's
enemy, during a time of famine. Born 1265 BCE, died 1202.

ca. 1212 BCE, acted first as regent in his father's stead, and then succee ded
him, probably in his sixties at the time. ca. 1225 made heir of his fa ther on
the death of his brother Khaemwaset. His throne name, Ba-en-re Mer y-netjeru,
means "The Soul of Re, Beloved of the Gods."
1207 BCE, he defeated infiltrating Libyans with a rapid mobilization a nd a
heavy pre-emptive strike leaving the Libyans totally vanquished, a nd then
turning on the Nubians who had risen to support the Libyans a nd in turn
defeating them. His birth name and epithet, Mer-ne-ptah Hetephe r-maat, means
"Beloved of Ptah, Joyous is Truth."

Sources: 1. Stuart, R.W. 'Royalty for Commoners', line 425. ; 2. Edward s,
I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds.) 'The Camb ridge
Ancient History' 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #2A, pp.225-232.
2. Mark Millmore http://www.eyelid.co.uk/k-q5.htm

Additional Information
In his last years, Rameses II had allowed the whole of the west side of t he
Delta to fall into the hands of foreigners, and on the east side the na tive
Egyptians were being rapidly ousted by foreign settlers. His extravag ant
building projects had damaged the economy of the country and the peop le were
impoverished. Now, through neglect, Egypt was in danger of losi ng the whole
Delta, first to foreign immigrants and then by armed invasion .

This is the situation Rameses' son, Merenptah, inherited. He spent the fir st
few years of his reign making preparations for the struggle which he kn ew to
be inevitable. For the first time in over 400 years, since the Hyks os
shepherd kings had seized the delta at the end of the middle kingdom, E gypt
was in danger of being overrun.

The Libyan chief, Meryawy, had decided to attack and conquer the Del ta he was
convinced of an easy victory believing the Egyptians to have gro wn soft. So
confident was he that he brought his wife and children and a ll his
possessions with him.

The night before the decisive battle Merenptah had a prophetic dream, "H is
Majesty saw in a dream as if a statue of the god Ptah stood before h is
Majesty. He said, while holding out a sword to him, 'Take it and bani sh fear
from thee'."

Merenptah had stationed archers in strategic positions, and they poured th eir
arrows into the invading armies. "The bow -men of his Majesty spent s ix hours
of destruction among them, then they were delivered to the sword. "

Then when the enemy showed signs of breaking, Merenptah let loose his char
ioteers among them. He had promised his people that he would bring the ene my
"like netted fish on their bellies", and he fulfilled his promise. H is
Triumph-Song shows that he regarded the defeat of the Libyans not so mu ch as
a great victory but rather as a deliverance.

"To Egypt has come great joy. The people speak of the victories which Ki ng
Merenptah has won against the Tahenu:
How beloved is he, our victorious Ruler!
How magnified is he among the gods!
How fortunate is he, the commanding Lord!
Sit down happily and talk, or walk far out on the roads, for now the re is no
fear in the hearts of the people.
The fortresses are abandoned, the wells are reopened; the messengers loit er
under the battlements, cool from the sun; the soldiers lie asleep, ev en the
border-scouts go in the fields as they list.
The herds of the field need no herdsmen when crossing the fullness of t he
stream.
No more is there the raising of a shout in the night, 'Stop! Someone is co
ming! Someone is coming speaking a foreign language!'
Everyone comes and goes with singing, and no longer is heard the sighing l
ament of men.
The towns are settled anew, and the husband man eats of the harvest th at he
himself sowed.
God has turned again towards Egypt, for King Merenptah was born, destin ed to
be her protector."

The defeat of the Libyans saved Egypt from utter ruin but her economic a nd
political decline continued at a steady pace. The only other reco rd of this
time is of a grain shipment to the Hittites to relieve a fami ne so it seems
the treaty between the two peoples continued to hold firm.

The rest of the dynasty is torn by political struggles for the throne. The se
pharaohs were all weaklings and their disputes only served to plunge t he
country into civil disorder.

"The land of Egypt was overthrown. Every man was his own guide, they h ad no
superiors. The land was in chiefships and princedoms, each killed t he other
among noble and mean."

Died 1348 BCE
He was the Pharoah of Egypt (XVIII Dynasty) from about 1388 to 1348 BCE.
Sources:
1. Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 425.
2. Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds .)
"The Cambridge Ancient History" 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #1, pps. 321-322 & 338 -346.

We believe that Amenhotep III ruled for almost 40 years during the 18th Dy
nasty of Egypt's history that represented one of its most prosperous and s
table periods. We must grant to Amenhotep III's grandfather, Tuthmosis II I,
who is sometimes referred to as the Napoleon of ancient Egypt, the foun dation
of this success by dominating through military action Egypt's Syria n, Nubian
and Libyan neighbors. Because of that, little or no military act ions were
called for during his grandson's reign. The small police actio ns in Nubia
that did take place were directed by his son and viceroy of Ku sh, Merymose
(or perhaps an earlier viceroy) .

Amenhotep (or heqawaset) was this kings birth name, meaning "Amun is Pleas ed,
Ruler of Thebes. His throne name was Nub-maat-re, which means "Lo rd of Truth
is Re. Amenhotep III's birth is splendidly depicted in a seri es of reliefs
inside a room on the east side of the temple of Luxor. Bui lt by Amenhotep
III, the room was dedicated to Amun. However, it portra ys the creator god,
Khnum of Elephantine (at modern Aswan) with his ram he ad, fashioning the
child and his ka on a potter's wheel under the supervis ion of the goddess
Isis. The god Amun is then  led to Amenhotep III's moth er by Thoth, god of
wisdom, after which Amun is shown in the presence of t he goddesses Hathor and
Mut while they nurse the future king.

His father was Tuthmosis IV by one of that king's chief queens, Mutemwiy a.
She may have, though mostly in doubt now, been the daughter of the Mita nnian
king, Artatama. That queen was indeed probably sent to Egypt for t he purposes
of a diplomatic marriage.

It is more than likely that Amenhotep III succeeded to the throne of Egy pt as
a child, sometime between the ages of two and twelve years of age. T here is a
statue of the treasurer Sobekhotep holding a prince Amenhotep-me r-khepseh
that was most likely executed shortly before Tuthmosis IV's deat h, as well as
a painting in the tomb of the royal nurse, Hekarnehhe (TT6 4) portraying the
prince as a young boy, though not a small child. This, a nd the fact that his
mother is not so very prominently visible, along wi th other factors, suggests
that he was more likely between six and twel ve years of age at the time of
his father's death.

It is unlikely that his mother, Mutemwiya, served as a regent for the you ng
king, and whoever may have been in charge at the beginning of his rei gn seems
to have remained in the background.

Amenhotep III's own chief queen, who he married in year two of his reig n, was
not of royal blood, but came from a very substantial family.  She w as Tiy,
the daughter of Yuya and his wife, Tuya, who owned vast holdin gs in the
Delta. Yuya was also a powerful military leader. Their tomb, num bered KV46 in
the Valley of the Kings, is well known. His brother-in-l aw by this marriage,
Anen, would during his reign also rise to great pow er as Chancellor of Lower
Egypt, Second Prophet of Amun, sem-priest of Hel iopolis, and Divine Father.
It is possible that the king's early regency w as carried out by his wife's
family.

However, it would seem that Amenhotep collected a large harem of ladies ov er
the years, including several from diplomatic marriages, including Giluk hepa,
a princess of Naharin, as well as two of his daughters (Isis a nd in year 30
of his reign, Sitamun or Satamun, who bore the title "gre at royal wife"
simultaneously with her mother). We can document at least s ix of his children
consisting of two sons and four daughters (other daught ers including
Henuttaneb and Nebetiah). However, his probable oldest so n, Tuthmosis who was
a sem-priest, died early leaving the future heretic k ing, Amenhotep IV,
otherwise known as Akhenaten, as the crown prince.

The King's Early Years
In essence, we may split Amenhotep III's reign into two parts, with his ea
rliest years given much to sportsmanship with a few minor military activit
ies. While as usual, an expedition into Nubia in year five of his reign w as
given grandiose attention on some reliefs, it probably amounted to noth ing
more than a low key police action. However, it may have pushed as f or as
south of the fifth cataract. It was recorded on inscriptions near As wan and
at Konosso in Nubia. There is also a stele in the British Museum r ecording a
Nubian campaign, but it is unclear whether it references this f irst action,
or one later in his reign.

There was also a Nubian rebellion reported at Ibhet, crushed by his son. W
hile Amenhotep III was almost certainly not directly involved in this conf
lict, he records having slaughtered many within the space of a single hou r.
We learn from inscriptions that this campaign resulted in the captu re of 150
Nubian men, 250 women, 175 children, 110 archers and 55 servant s, added to
the 312 right hands of the slain.

Perhaps to underscore the Kushite subjection to Egypt, he had built at Sol eb,
almost directly across the Nile from the Nubian capital at Kerma, a fo rtress
known as Khaemmaat, along with a temple.

The Prosperity and International Relationships
However, by year 25 of Amenhotep III's reign, military problems seem to ha ve
been settled, and we find a long period of great building works and hi gh art. 
It was also a period of lavish luxury at the royal court. The wea lth needed
to accomplish all of this did not come from conquests, but rath er from
foreign trade and an abundant supply of gold, mostly from the min es in the
Wadi Hammamat and further south in Nubia.

Amenhotep III was unquestionably involved with international diplomatic ef
forts, which led to increased foreign trade. During his reign, we find a m
arked increase in Egyptian materials found on the Greek mainland. We al so
find many Egyptian place names, including Mycenae, Phaistos and Knoss os first
appearing in Egyptian inscriptions We also find letters written b etween
Amenhotep III and his peers in Babylon, Mitanni and Arzawa preserv ed in
cuneiform writing on clay tablets. From a stele in his mortuary temp le, we
further learn that he sent at least one expedition to punt.

It is rather clear that the nobility prospered during the reign of Amenhot ep
III. However, the plight of common Egyptians is less sure, and we ha ve little
evidence to suggest that they shared in Egypt's prosperity. Ye t, Amenhotep
III and his granary official Khaemhet boasted of the great cr ops of grain
harvested in the kings 30th (jubilee) year. And while such ev idence is hardly
unbiased, the king was remembered even 1,000 years lat er as a fertility god,
associated with agricultural success.

Building Projects
Though a number of Amenhotep III's building projects no longer exist, we f ind
at Karnak almost a complete makeover of the temple, including his effo rts to
embellish the already monumental temple to Amun, as well as his t he East
Temple for the sun god and his own festival building. His impa ct in the
Karnak temple was thematic, leaving the impression of a warri or king whose
victories honored both himself and the God Amun, and he chan ged the face of
this temple almost completely. He had his workers dismant le the peristyle
court in front of the Fourth Pylon, as well as the shrin es associated with
it, using them as fill for a new Pylon, the Third, on t he east-west axis.
This created a new entrance to the temple, and he had t wo rows of columns
with open papyrus capitals erected down the center of t he newly formed
forecourt. At the south end of Karnak, he began constructi on on the Tenth
Pylon, with a slightly different orientation then th at of the Seventh and
Eighth, in order for it to lead to a new entrance f or the percent of the
goddess Mut. He may have even started a new temple f or her. To balance the
south temple complex, he built a new shrine to t he goddess Ma'at, the
daughter of the sun-god, to the north of central Kar nak.

At Luxor he built a new temple to the same god, including the still standi ng
colonnaded court. That effort is considered a masterpiece of elegance a nd
design and particular credit must be  given to his mater architect, Ame nhotep
son of Hapu.

He also built a monumental mortuary temple on the West Bank at Thebes (mod ern
Luxor) that is the single largest royal temple known to us from ancie nt
Egypt. Unfortunately, it was built much too close to the flood plain a nd was
in ruins by the 19th Dynasty, when material was quarried from it f or new
building projects. While some of the ground plan of the temple m ay be made
out, the only material remains are the Colossi of Memnon. The se statues were
misnamed by the Greeks, but actually depict Amenhotep II I. The southern of
the statues also depicts the two most important wom en in the king's life, his
mother Mutemwiya and his wife, Queen Tiy. Howev er, it should be noted that
within the grounds of the temple, more fragmen ts of colossal statuary have
been found than in any other known sacred pre cinct. In the fields behind the
statues, also stands a great, repaired ste le that was once in the sanctuary
of his temple, around which are locat ed fragments of sculptures.

The West Bank was also the site of Amenhotep III's huge palace, called Mal
kata. Fragments of this building remain, unlike most other royal residence s.
From this scant evidence, it would seem that the walls were plastered a nd
painted with lively scenes from nature. Next to the palace complex he a lso
built a great harbor.

Further south on the west bank at Kom el-Samak, Amenhotep III also bui lt a
jubilee pavilion of painted mud brick and at Sumenu, some twenty kilo meters
south of Thebes the king built a temple dedicated to the cult of t he
crocodile god, Sobek.

Along with these building projects, we also know that he developed and exp
anded cults at a number of other locations including Amada (for Amun and R
a-Horakhty), Hebenu and Hermopolis, where we find two colossus statu es of
baboons and an altar. There were other building projects in Egypt pr oper at
Memphis, where blocks of brown quartzite remain from the king's gr eat temple
called "Nebmaatra United with Ptah", Elephantine (now destroye d) and a
completed chapel at Elkab. Building elements at Bubastis, Athribi s, Letopolis
and Heliopolis also attest to the king's interest in the east ern Delta. He
also built temples are shrines in Nubia at Quban, Wadi es-Se bua, Sedinga,
Soleb and Tabo Island. There were also building elemen ts or stele in his name
at Aniba, Buhen, Mirgissa, Kawa and Gebel Barkal.

Artistry of the Period
Artistically, many of the royal portraits of the king in sculptor are tru ly
masterpieces of any historical age. After the Colossi of Memnon, the la rgest
of these is the limestone statue of the king and queen with three sm all
standing princesses discovered at Medinet Habu. However, many other st atues
give the king a look of reflection, and bringing to life emotional e mphasis.
We find grand statues of black granite depicting a seated Amenhot ep wearing
the nemes headdress, unearthed by Belzoni from behind the Colos si of Memnon
and from Tanis in the Delta. Others statues and some relie fs and paintings
depict the king wearing the more helmet like khepresh, so metimes referred to
as the Blue, or War Crown.

Even in recent years, some statuary of Amenhotep III continues to be disco
vered, such as an incredible six foot (1.83 meter) high pink quartzite sta tue
of the king standing on a sledge and wearing the Double Crown of Egyp t. It
was discovered in the courtyard of Amenhotep III colonnade of the Lu xor
temple in 1989.  This particular statue was unearthed completely intac t, with
the only damage resulting from a careful removal of the name Am un during the
reign of his son. This statue was probably executed la te in his reign,
regardless of the fact that is shows a youthful king.

So good were many of his statues that they were later usurped by kings, so
metimes by them simply overwriting his cartouche with their own. At oth er
times, such as in the case of the huge  red granite head found by Belzo ni and
initially identified as representing Tuthmosis III, his statues we re more
extensively reworked (this example by Ramesses II).

We also find many other fine statues, paintings and reliefs executed duri ng
the life of Amenhotep III. Two well known portraits of his principle qu een
include a small ebony head now in Berlin, and a small faced and crown ed head
found by Petrie at the temple of Serabit el-Khadim in the Sina i. A cartouche
on the front of the crown allowed precise identificati on as that of Tiy. We
also find Tiy appearing with the king on temple wal ls at Soleb and west
Thebes. However, there are also fine reliefs of h er in some of the courtier
tombs, such as TT47 belonging to Userhet and TT 192 of Khereuf.

There was also a proliferation of private statues, as well as many fine pr
ivate tombs with excellent artwork (such as TT55, the Tomb of Ramose) duri ng
the reign of Amenhotep III, including a number representing Amenhotep s on of
Hapu, his well known architect, but also of other nobles and dignita ries.
Other notable items include the set of rose granite lions original ly placed
before the temple at Soleb in Nubia, but later moved to the Temp le at Gebel
Barkal.

Religion and the King's Deification
It is likely that Amenhotep III was deified during his own lifetime, and t hat
the worship of the sun god, Aten, by his son may have directly or indi rectly
also involved the worship of his father. Amenhotep III was somewh at insistent
that he be identified with this sun god during his lifetim e. From the time of
his first jubilee in his 30 years of reign, we find sc enes where he is
depicted taking the role of Ra riding in his solar boa t. Of course, the king
was expected to merge with the sun after his deat h, but in Amenhotep III's
case, we find that he named his palace complex " the gleaming Aten", and used
stamp seals for commodities that may be rea d, "Nebmaatra (one of his names)
is the gleaming Aten".  He consistently i dentified himself with the national
deities rather than his royal predeces sors, even representing himself as the
substitute for major gods in  a f ew instances. We even find during his reign
the solorization of many we ll known gods, including Nekhbet, Amun, Thoth and
Horus-khenty-khety.

Yet, no stele or statues we know for certain were dedicated to Amenhotep I II
as a major deity during his lifetime. It is notable that the deificati on of
Ramesses II only 100 years later carried with it a significant numb er of
monuments identifying him as a deity during his lifetime.

Nevertheless, it has been argued that his son, best known as Akhenaten, m ay
have worshipped his father as Aten. There are many arguments against th is,
but it is clear that at least to some degree, it is true. After all, t he
deceased king was identified with the Aten upon his death. But wheth er he was
worshipped as such during his lifetime may ultimately depe nd on whether or
not Akhenaten ruled as a co-regent before his father's de ath. If they did
rule together, than objects venerating Amenhotep III duri ng Akhenaten's reign
could be seen as worship of a living deity, though n ot necessarily as the
Aten. Regardless, this is all a mater of hot deba te within Egyptology
circles, thought the answers today seem no clearer.

The End of the Reign
From clay dockets at his Malkata palace, we believe Amenhotep III may ha ve
died in about the 39th year of his rule, perhaps when he was only 45 ye ars
old. His wife, Tiy, apparently outlived him by as many as twelve year s. She
is shown, along with her youngest daughter, Beket-Aten, in a reli ef on an
Amarna Tomb that may be dated to between year nine and twel ve of Akhetaten's
reign. From a group of well known documents called the A marna Letters, we
find inquires about her health that lead us to believe t hat she may have
lived in her son's capital for a time prior to her deat h.  Regardless, upon
her death, she may have first been buried at Amarna b ut was then returned to
Thebes where she was buried along with her husba nd in tomb WV22 in the Valley
of the Kings. However, it is also possible t hat she may have been buried in
tomb KV55, where objects bearing her na me have also been discovered. Neither
the king or his queen were discover ed in that tomb, but it is very possible
Queen Tiy may be the "Elder Woma n) from the cache of mummies found by Loret
in KV35, the tomb of Amenhot ep II. For many years, it was also though that
Amenhotep III's body was al so a part of that cache, but fairly recent
analysis indicates that the bo dy thought to be his may instead by that of his
son, or possibly even A y, one of the last kings of the 18th Dynasty.

Additional References:
Chronicle of the Pharaohs (The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dyn
asties of Ancient Egypt) Clayton, Peter A. 1994 Thames and Hudson Ltd IS BN
0-500-05074-0
History of Ancient Egypt, A Grimal, Nicolas 1988 Blackwell None Stated
Monarchs of the Nile Dodson, Aidan 1995 Rubicon Press ISBN 0-948695-20-x
Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian 2000 Oxford University Pre ss
ISBN 0-19-815034-2

Born/Died ca. 710-664 BCE
His full name was "Mrenkheperre" and he was king of Sais and Memph is as an
Assyrian vassal.
Sources:
1.   Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 420.
2.  Bury, J.B., Cook, S.A. and Adcock, F.E. "The Cambridge Ancient Histor y" 
Vol.III, pp.286.

Necho I (sometimes Nekau) (672 BC–664 BC) was the Prince or Governor of the
Egyptian city of Sais. He was the first attested local Saite king of the
Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt who reigned for 8 years, according to Manetho's
Epitome. Egypt was reunified by his son, Psamtik I. Necho I is primarily known
from Assyrian documents but is now also attested in one contemporary Egyptian
document from his reign. He was officially "installed" at Sais by Assurbanipal
around 670 BC, but he already ruled Egypt as a local king prior to this event.
According to historical records, Necho I was killed by an invading Kushite
force in 664 BC under Tantamani for being an ally of Assyria. The Nubian
invasion into the Egyptian Delta was subsequently repelled by the Assyrians
who proceeded to advance south into Upper Egypt and sack Thebes.

Necho I's Year 2 is now attested on a privately held donation stela that was
first published by Olivier Perdu [2] The stela records a large land donation
to the Osirian triad of PerHebyt (modern Behbeit el-Hagar near Sebennytos) by
the "priest of Isis, Mistress of Hebyt, Great Chief...son of Iuput, Akanosh."
The stela is very similar in style, content and epigraphy with the Year 8
donation stela of Shepsesre Tefnakht.

Necho was perhaps the brother of Nekauba--whose status as a king of Sais is
currently unproven. He married Istemabet, and they were the parents of Psamtik
I and his sister

Born/Died ca. 660-595 BCE
His ruling name was "Wehemibre" and he was Pharoah of Egypt at Sais (XX VI
Dynasty) from about 610 to 595 BCE.
Sources:
1.   Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 420.
2.  Bury, J.B., Cook, S.A. and Adcock, F.E. "The Cambridge Ancient Histor y" 
Vol.III, pp.286-287.
3.  Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pp.210.


Additional Data:
Nekau (II), who we know better as Necho, was either the 2nd or 3rd  ki ng of
Egypt's 26th Dynasty, depending on whether we allow the rule of a no minal
king Nekau I at the beginning of the Dynasty. Nekau was his Birth na me, and
Necho is actually his Greek name. His Throne name was Wah-em-ib-r e, which
means "Carrying out the Wish of Re Forever".

He came to the throne, succeeding his father, Psammetichus I in about 6 10
BC., and probably ruled Egypt until about 595 BC. He continued the fore ign
involvement of his father, and Palestine once more became an Egypti an
possession. In fact, much of Egypt's involvement in that area is fou nd in the
Biblical account of the Book of Kings. Initially things went we ll for Nekau
II and we find the Egyptian forces campaigning east of the Eu phrates river
against the Chaldaeans, defeating Josiah of Judah in 609 B C. at Harran. This
allowed the Egyptians to establish themselves on the Eu phrates for a short
while, though apparently the Egyptians did not e nd up controlling that city. 
He then intervened in the kingdom of Isra el and deposed Josiah's son
Jehoahaz, replacing him with his brother Eliak im (Jehoiakim (II Kings 23:
29-35). Afterwards, we are told that Jerusal em paid tribute to Egypt. He also
ruled Syria at least as for as Carchemis h.

But this position was also soon lost, when in 605 BC, the king suffer ed a
catastrophic loss. The son of the Babylonian king, Nabopolassar was s ent to
deal with Syria. This was Nebuchadrezzar, and he captured Carchemi sh from the
Egyptians, and then pursued the fleeing army as far as Hamat h, where he
apparently overwhelmed them. Hence, this was followed by a ret reat to by the
Egyptians to their eastern frontier at Gaza.

Necho is known to have been responsible for monuments honoring the Apris B ull
in Memphis. We also find inscriptional evidence of the king in the qua rries
of the Mokattam Hills.

But in many ways, Necho was a very foresighted individual who's vision inc
luded a "Suez Canal" almost 2,500 years prior to the modern construc t. He had
a navigable canal dug, using some 12,000  workers, through the W adi Tumilat
between the Pelusiac branch of the Nile (where the great front ier fortress of
Pelusium was located) and the Red Sea. H \caused a great p ort city,
Per-Temu-Tjeku ("the House of Atum of Tjeku", modern Tell el-Mas hkuta) west
of modern Ismailia to be built on the canal, and like Suez lat er, its
fortunes were inevitably linked with this new waterway. Traditi on held that
this was the Biblical city of Pithom, but recent excavatio ns have shown this
to be incorrect.

At this time, Greece was expanding her trading contacts and Necho took t he
opportunity to recruit displaced Ionian Greeks to form an Egyptian Nav y. This
was, militarily, revolutionary, for the Egyptians had an inhere nt distaste
for and fear of the sea. While this new navy was probably n ot much threat to
his rivals, it did lead to other benefits, such as the c reation of a new
African trade route. He also encouraged some Greek settle ment in the Delta.

When Nacho II died in 595 BCE., he left behind a son and three daughter s. His
son, Psammetichus II, only ruled for a brief period.

References:
Atlas of Ancient Egypt Baines, John; Malek, Jaromir 1980 Les Livres De Fra nce
None Stated
Chronicle of the Pharaohs (The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dyn
asties of Ancient Egypt) Clayton, Peter A. 1994 Thames and Hudson Ltd IS BN
0-500-05074-0
History of Ancient Egypt, A Grimal, Nicolas 1988 Blackwell None Stated
Monarchs of the Nile Dodson, Aidan 1995 Rubicon Press ISBN 0-948695-20-x
Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian 2000 Oxford University Pre ss
ISBN 0-19-815034-2
Who Were the Phraohs? (A history of their names with a list of cartouche s)
Quirke, Stephen 1990 Dover Publications ISBN 0-486-26586-2

If we mention the famous women of Egypt, including Hatshepsut and Cleopat ra
along with them we would have to name Nefertari, if for no other reas on then
her well known tomb. We know a great deal about Queens Hatcheps ut and
Cleopatra, but of course they were pharaohs.

It is very possible that Nefertari grew up as the daughter of a noblem an in
Thebes. One of Nefertari's names was Mery-en-Mut, which means, "Belo ved of
Mut". As the wife of Amun, Mut was part of the Theban tria d. It is
interesting to note that post references to Nefertari come from U pper
(southern) Egypt, while most of the other principal queen, Istnofre t, are
found in Lower, or northern Egypt. Furthermore, Ramesses II probab ly had a
better power structure in northern Egypt, and it is thought th at he may have
married a Theban to enhance his position in the South. T he two queens,
Nefertari and Istnofret, could have possibly even had a div ision of duties
geographically. However, it is has also been suggested th at Nefertari could
have been a daughter of Seti I, making her a half sist er of Ramesses II.

Nefertari was most likely Ramesses II's first wife when the prince was on ly
fifteen. She provided him with his first male heir, Amun-her-khepsesh ef (Amun
Is with His Strong Arm),  even prior to his ascending the thro ne of Egypt. In
addition, Ramesses II also fathered at least three more so ns and two
daughters by Nefertari. In fact, her oldest daughter, Meryetam un probably
later also married Ramesses II, possibly after the death of h er mother,
apparently when Nefertari was in her early forties.

She was probably Ramesses II's chief queen, at least up until her dea th in
about year 24 of Ramesses II's reign. From her tomb, we know a numb er of her
other names and titles.  They included "Hereditary Noblewoman; G reat of
Favors; Possessor of Charm, Sweetness and Love; Mistress of Upp er and Lower
Egypt; the Osiris; The King's Great Wife; Mistress of the T wo Lands,
Nefertari, Beloved of Mut, Revered Before Osiris".

Surely Ramesses II loved Nefertari. Few queens were built anything ne ar as
grand a shrine as her temple dedicated to Hathor at Abu Simbel, ne ar the
somewhat larger temple of her husband. Her tomb in the Valley of t he Queens
on the West Bank at Luxor (ancient Thebes) is today, one of t he most
fabulously decorated tombs at Luxor or anywhere else in Egyp t. If one had
only time enough to visit one tomb on the West Bank, it shou ld be this one.
Ramesses II, who said of Nefertari, "the one for whom t he sun shines", even
wrote of his weakness for the queen:

"My love is unique - no one can rival her, for she is the most beautiful w
oman alive. Just by passing, she has stolen away my heart."

Other then her tomb and temple at Abu Sembel, Nefertari is also famous f or
her beauty.  We have no mummy to help substantiate these claims, but th ere is
plenty of documentary evidence including images, although at this p oint in
Egypt's history, portraitures were not known for being complete ly accurate.
Even in ancient Egypt Nefertari was famous, becoming deifi ed even before her
death. It is said that as Great Royal Wife, her high st atus and and great
authority within the royal court, along with her appare nt beauty, charm,
"sweetness", intelligence and guile, she may have been o ne of Egypt's
greatest queens.

A description at Luxor Temple, says of her:
greatly favored, possessing charm, sweet of love....   Rich in love, weari ng
the circlet-diadem, singer fair of face, beautiful with the tall twin p lumes,
Chief of the Harim of Horus, Lord of the Palace; one is pleased wi th
what(ever) comes forth concerning her; who has (only to) say anythin g, and it
is done for her - every good thing, at her wish (?); her every w ord, how
pleasing on the ear - one lives at just hearing her voice..."

She died sometime before Year 11 (of Tuthmosis II), before her husband, Tu
thmosis III, began his reign.

18th Dynasty, Nehi served as Viceroy of Nubia during the reign of Tuthmos is
III. He was known as the "King's Son of Kush". He governed the territor ies
below the First Cataract of the Nile and was stationed at Elephanti ne Island
at Aswan. Annually, tribute was brought to the king by Nehi a nd he was
praised for his service on a stela of victory at Wadi Halfa.

Born ca. 580 BCE

Born ca. 900 BCE
He was Great Priest of Amun later pharoah.
Sources:  Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pp.160.

Usermaatre Setepenamun Osorkon II was a pharaoh[1] of the Twenty-second
Dynasty of Ancient Egypt and the son of Takelot I and Queen Kapes. He ruled
Egypt around 872 BC to 837 BC from Tanis, the capital of this Dynasty. After
succeeding his father, he was faced with the competing rule of his cousin,
King Harsiese A, who controlled both Thebes and the Western Oasis of Egypt.
Osorkon feared the serious challenge posed by Harsiese's kingship to his
authority, but, when Harsiese conveniently died in 860 BC, Osorkon II ensured
that this problem would not recur by appointing his own son Nimlot C as the
High Priest of Amun at Thebes. His younger son Shoshenq was made the High
Priest of Ptah in Memphis. In this period of Egypt's history, religious and
political power were at their most inseparable.

According to a recent paper by Karl Jansen-Winkeln, king Harsiese A, and his
son [..du] were only ordinary Priests of Amun, rather than High Priests of
Amun, as was previously assumed. The inscription on the Koptos lid for [..du],
Harsiese A's son, never once gives him the title of High Priest.[2]
demonstrates that the High Priest Harsiese who served is attested in statue
CGC 42225 – which mentions this High Priest and is dated explicitly under
Osorkon II – was, in fact, Harsiese B. The High Priest Harsiese B served
Osorkon II in his final 3 years. This statue was dedicated by the Letter
Writer to Pharaoh Hor IX, who was one of the most powerful men in his time.[3]
However, Hor IX almost certainly lived during the end of Osorkon II's reign
since he features on Temple J in Karnak which was built late in this Pharaoh's
reign, along with the serving High Priest Takelot F(the son of the High Priest
Nimlot C and therefore, Osorkon II's grandson). Hor IX later served under both
Shoshenq III, Pedubast I and Shoshenq VI. This means that the High Priest
Harsiese mentioned on statue CGC 42225 must be the second Harsiese: Harsiese
B.



Wikipedia®

Born/Died ca. 955-889 BCE
His ruling name was "Sekhemkheperre-Setpenre" and he was Pharoah of Egy pt at
Bubastis (XXII Dynasty) from about 927 to 8929 BC.
Sources:
1.   Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 422.
2.  Page, J.D. and Oliver, R. (eds) "The Cambridge History of Africa" Vo l. I,  
pp.881, chart.
3.  Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pp.160 & 209.

Osorkon I is in the second king of the Twenty-second Dynasty. Between t he
reigns of Osorkon I and Takelot I, a Shoshenk II is often shown as a co
-regent for a brief period of time.

He was the Great Priest of Amun.
Sources:
1. Bury, J.B., Cook, S.A. and Adcock, F.E. "The Cambridge Ancient Histor y" 
Vol. III, pp.253-254.
2. Page, J.D. and Oliver, R. (eds) "The Cambridge History of Africa" Vo l. I,
pp.    881, chart.
3. Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pp.152.

The short-lived successor of Herihor (possibly Herihor's son-in-law), the re
are records of Piankh fighting some rebels late in the reign of Ramesses XI,
but it is thought that Piankh and Ramesses XI died at the same time .

There is only one monument known of Piankh, a stela (from Abydos) which re
cords him as 'the Royal Fanbearer, Scribe, General, Prince of Kush, Chi ef of
the Southern Lands, High Priest of Amun, Chief of the Granaries a nd Chief of
the Archers'.

Born ca. 1105 BCE, died 1026 BCE
He was the Pharoah of Egypt (XXI Dynasty) from about 1049 to 1026 BCE a nd was
also the Great Priest of Amun.
Sources:
1. Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 424.
2. Page, J.D. and Oliver, R. (eds) "The Cambridge History of Africa" Vo l. I,
pp.    881, chart.
3.  Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pp.152 & 160.

THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD:
The capital moves from Tanis to Libyan, to Nubia, to Thebes, to SAIS, a nd
then back to Nubia and Thebes.

For the first 15 years of Siamun's rule Pinudjem I ruled at Thebes as t he
High Priest of Amun.
Pinudjem I is known mostly through his work in the Valley of the Kings - t he
reburial of the previous kings of Egypt. In Year 6 he reburied Tuthmos is II
and Amenhotep I. In the Years 12, 13 and 15 he cared for the mummi es of
Amenhotep III, Ramesses III and Ramesses II.

Evidence of Pinudjem I outside Thebes
As well as being High Priest, Pinudjem was still the Military command er of
his King's armies, as such his name appears as far south as the isla nd of
Sehel (near the 1st Cataract). The northern fortress of El Hibeh al so gives
his name.

It is, of course, in the temples of Thebes that his name occurs the mo st -
one example shows Pinudjem and his three brothers giving honour to Am un so
'that he may grant a long lifespan within Thebes' to their grandmoth er
Nodjmet. (However this request fell upon deaf ears as Pinudjem buried h is
grandmother shortly after taking office).

At Medinet Habu, Pinudjem added to the temple orginally built by Ramess es
III. At Karanak he usurped the avenue of sphinxes originally dedicat ed by
Ramesses II.

Pinudjem I after Year 15 - as king
Gradually Pinudjem I was assuming a more kingly role until, in Ye ar 15 of
Smendes I reign, he began to be depicted as a king as well as t he adoption of
a royal Horus name: 'Strong Bull, beloved of Amun', as we ll as the titles:
'King or Upper and Lower Egypt, pacifying the gods'.

By Year 16 (Years were still dated to the reign of Smendes I reign), Pinud jem
had appointed a new High Priest to Amun - Masaharta ('High Priest of A mun,
son of King Pinudjem I'). Following this Pinudjem I then effective ly became a
full pharaoh for the final years of the reign of Smendes I, t he short reign
of Amenemnisu and also for the opening years of Psusennes I .
Masaharta did not last to succeed his father, he died possibly after an il
lness. His mummy shows that his was a very large man, he did build a s et of
sphinxes at the Great Temple of Karnak. He seems he died around Ye ar 24, he
spent under 10 years in his role as priest and army commander.

The successor to Masaharta, Djedkhonsuefankh (another son of Pinudjem I ),
coincided with an outbreak of violence in Thebes. However, his ti me in office
was very short, It is possible that Djedkhonsuefankh was kill ed by the unrest
in Thebes at this time.

In Year 25, another son of Pinudjem I was sent for - Menkheperre. He was s
ummoned to Thebes to put a stop to the violence that had killed his brothe r,
this he did and exiled the ringleaders.

Pinudjum's tomb has never been truly identified - although faint trac es of
his cartouche have been found at the entrance to the tomb of Ramess es XI in
the Valley of the Kings (it has not been conclusively proven th at Pinudjum
was actually buried there). His mummy was found in the of coff in of Tuthmosis
I in the Deir el Bahri mummy cache, as well as his wife He nuttawy and
daughter Maatkare-Mutemhat . Another daughter of Pinudjum w as found in one of
the priestly caches near the temple of Hatshepsut at De ir el-Bahri (Bab
el-Gasus).

Born/Died ca. 684-610 BCE 26th Dynasty

Psammetikhos I was the first ruler of the 26th Dynasty, though his reign o
verlaps that of the 25th Dynasty. We believe he ruled from about 664 throu gh
610 BC. This is often referred to as the Saite period in Egyptian histo ry,
named for the power center of the Delta.   It was not until Psammetikh os'
ninth regnal year that he completely control Egypt. His birth name w as
Psamtik I, but he was known as Psammetichus I by the Greeks.  His thro wn name
was Wah-ib-re, meaning "Constant is the Heart of Re" (Horus Nam e: Aib, Nebty
Name: Neba, Bik-nub Name: Qenu).

Some Egyptologists place the 26th Dynasty in to Third Intermediate Peri od of
Egypt's history, while others place it in the Late Period.  Certainl y, when
Psammetikhos began his rule of Egypt, things were still chaotic, w ith various
rulers claiming power. But Psammetikhos would consolidate h is rule over
Egypt, and reign for about a half a century, returning Egy pt to stability.

Both Psammetikhos I and his father, Necho I of Sais were originally involv ed
with an intrigue associated with the Kushite ruler, Taharqo against Ass yria,
but were then captured, held and indoctrinated by the Assyrians. Psa mmetikhos
I was even given the Assyrian name, Nabu-shezibanni, before fina lly being
returned to Egypt where his father assumed power in the Delta.

Upon the death of Necho in 664, Psammetikhos was recognized by his Assyri an
overlords as King of Egypt, but this was a title at first without subst ance. 
He had rule over Memphis and Sais, but mostly the country was contr olled by
the old advisories of the Nubian Kings, who had been driven ba ck to their own
land. His was tasked with the responsibilities of controll ing not only the
unruly princes and petty kings of the Delta, but al so to reconcile with the
power center at Thebes.

Working with Thebes turned out to be easier then one might imagine, becau se
he was able to align himself with the daughter of a great Theaban noble man
named Mentuemhet.  At that time, she held the title, "Adoratice of Amu n"
(God's Wife of Amun). He was able to insert his own daughter, Nitokri s,  as
her successor He was therefor able to effect both secular and relig ious ties
that were to hold his growing presence in Egypt together, whi le he went after
his Delta opponents.  In order to do this, he raised a co nscript army, as
well as employing the services of mercenaries, many of wh om were Greek,
including Carians.  This involvement with foreign mercenari es apparently
caused some concern about their control within Egypt, and ar chaeological 
evidence suggests that sites such as Naukratis, among other s, were
established to facilitate this, along with offering Egypt an incre ased
commercial presence within the Mediterranean world.

Psammetikhos also took as his principle wife Mehtemweskhet who was the dau
ghter of Harsiese S, High Priest at Heliopolis, further cementing his rule .

To all appearances, Psammetikhos I had been a loyal subject of his Assyri an
overlords, but as that empire's glories waned, Psammetikhos took his op
portunity to break their hold, and in so doing became the absolute rul er of
Egypt.

During the remaining four decades of Psammetikhos I's rule, he continu ed to
consolidate his power and bring the country under complete unity, so mething
Egypt had really not seen in a number of years.  He undertook a nu mber of
building projects, including fortresses in the Delta at Naukrat is and
Daphnae, as well as at Elephantine.  He also greatly expanded the S erapeum at
Saqqara.

After consolidating Egypt, militarily, Psammetikhos I was mostly concern ed
with keeping Egypt's sovereignty strong. There were expeditions into no rthern
Nubia probably to discourage any further ambitions of the Kushite k ings. In
the north east, Babylon had become such an important power that t he king
actually formed an alliance with his old masters in Assyria in ord er to
combat Babylon's growing menace. This enabled Egypt to obtain contr ol of the
Palestinian coast.  There were also actions required on the Liby an frontier
in order to combat the threat posed by the fugitive Delta prin ces.

Psammetikhos I, as well as other kings of this dynasty, followed the archa
istic tendencies of the previous dynasty in art, as well as in many custom s,
such as the formulation of their names.  The renaissance in art is su ch that
it is sometimes difficult to tell whether an artifact came from th is period
of time, or from the Old or Middle Kingdoms.

Psammetikhos I was succeeded by his son, Necho (Nekau) II, who continu ed to
build on his father's accomplishments in Egypt.

References:
Atlas of Ancient Egypt Baines, John; Malek, Jaromir 1980 Les Livres De Fra nce
None Stated
Chronicle of the Pharaohs (The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dyn
asties of Ancient Egypt) Clayton, Peter A. 1994 Thames and Hudson Ltd IS BN
0-500-05074-0
History of Ancient Egypt, A Grimal, Nicolas 1988 Blackwell None Stated
Monarchs of the Nile Dodson, Aidan 1995 Rubicon Press ISBN 0-948695-20-x
Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian 2000 Oxford University Pre ss
ISBN 0-19-815034-2
Who Were the Phraohs? (A history of their names with a list of cartouche s)
Quirke, Stephen 1990 Dover Publications ISBN 0-486-26586-2

Wikipedia

Wahibre Psammetichus I (Psamtik or Psamtek), was the first of three kings of
the Saite, or Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt. His prenomen, Wahibre, means
"Constant is the Heart of Re.[3] The story in Herodotus of the Dodecarchy and
the rise of Psamtik is fanciful. It is known from cuneiform texts that twenty
local princelings were appointed by Esarhaddon and confirmed by Assurbanipal
to govern Egypt. Necho I, the father of Psammetichus by his Queen Istemabet,
was the chief of these kinglets, but they seem to have been quite unable to
hold the Egyptians to the hated Assyrians against the more sympathetic
Nubians. The labyrinth built by Amenemhat III of the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt
is ascribed by Herodotus to the Dodecarchy, or rule of 12, which must
represent this combination of rulers. Psamtik was the son of Necho I who died
in 664 BC. After his father's death, Psamtik managed to both unite all of
Egypt and free her from Assyrian control.

Psamtik I reunified Egypt in his 9th Year when he dispatched a powerful naval
fleet in March 656 BC to Thebes and compelled the existing God's Wife of Amun
at Thebes to adopt his daughter Nitocris I as her Heiress in the so-called
Adoption Stela. Psamtik's success destroyed the last vestiges of the Nubian
Dynasty's control over Upper Egypt under Tantamani since Thebes now accepted
his authority. Nitocris would serve in office for 70 years from 656 BC until
her death in 586 BC. Thereafter, Psamtik I campaigned vigorously against those
local princes who opposed his reunfication of Egypt. One of his victories over
certain Libyans marauders is mentioned in a Year 10 and Year 11 stela from the
Dakhla Oasis. Psamtik I proved to be a great Pharaoh of Egypt who won Egypt's
independence from the Assyrian Empire and restored Egypt's prosperity through
his long 54 Year reign. Psamtik proceeded to establish intimate relations with
the Greeks. He also encouraged many Greek settlers to establish colonies in
Egypt and serve in the services of his army.

The Greek historian Herodotus conveyed an anecdote about Psammetichus in the
second volume of his Histories. During his travel to Egypt, Herodotus heard
that Psammetichus ("Psamtik") sought to discover the origin of language by
conducting an experiment with two children. Allegedly he gave two newborn
babies to a shepherd, with the instructions that no one should speak to them,
but that the shepherd should feed and care for them while listening to
determine their first words. The hypothesis was that the first word would be
uttered in the root language of all people. When one of the children cried
"bekos" with outstretched arms the shepherd concluded that the word was
Phrygian because that was the sound of Phrygian word for "bread." Thus, they
concluded that the Phrygians were an older people than the Egyptians, and that
Phrygian was the original language of men. There are no other extant sources
to verify this story.

His chief wife was Mehtenweskhet, the daughter of Harsiese, the Vizier of the
North and High Priests of Atum at Heliopolis. Psamtik and Mehtenweshket were
the parents of Necho II, Merneith, Satnisat Djestkhebed and the Divine
Adoratice Nitocris I.

Psamtik's father-in-law--the aforementioned Harsiese--was married three times:
to Sheta, by whom he had a daughter named Naneferheres, to Tanini and,
finally, to an unknown lady, by whom he had both Djedkare, the Vizier of the
South and Mehtenweskhet.[4] Harsiese was the son of Vizier Harkhebi, and was
related to two other Harsieses, both Viziers, who were a part of the family of
the famous Mayor of Thebes Montuemhat.

Psammetichus II (also spelled Psammeticus or Psamtik) was a king of the
Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt (595 BC-589 BC). His prenomen, Neferibre, means
"Beautiful is the Heart of Re." (Clayton: p.195) He was the son of Necho II.

Psammetichus marched into the Kingdom of Judah, Philistia, and Phoenicia in
about 592 BC in response to moves made by Babylon, and attempted to generate
anti-Babylonian sentiment among their leaders. His son Apries by Queen Takhuit
or Takhut, a Princess of Athribis, succeeded him. They were also the parents
of Menekhubaste, a Priestess of Atum at Heliopolis, and Ankhenesneferibre, a
God's Wife of Amun who died after 525 BC.

Wikipedia®

Akheperre-setepanamun Psibkhaemne
Ruled from 1040-992 B.C.E.21st Dynasty
Psusennes I was the third king of the Twenty-first Dynasty and is probab ly
the best known of all this dynasty's kings. This is because of the disc overy
of his intact tomb during the excavation of Tanis. His mummy was fou nd in the
tomb and was that of an old man. Also is the tomb was a second b urial chamber
was for his sister and wife, Queen Mutnodjme. At some time l ater, her mummy
and funerary objects were removed. King Amunemope's mum my and funerary
objects were placed there after he was moved from anoth er tomb that was not
too far away. There were also several other mummies f ound in this tomb as
well. These mummies were thought to have been plac ed here to be protected
from the destruction of the other tombs around.

As one of the few queens who ruled Egypt as Pharaoh (between 1187 and 11 85
BC), it is regrettable that we have so little information on Tausert, t
raditionally the last ruler of Egypt's 19th Dynasty. Her name appears ev en in
modern works in many different forms, including Twosre, Twore, Tawos ret and
Twosret.  Her birth name appears to have been Two-sret (setep-en-m ut) which
means "Might Lady, Chosen of Mut".  Her Throne name was Sit-re M ery-amun
which means "Daughter of Re, Beloved of Amun".
Tausert becomes known to us as the wife of Seti II, and apparently a ve ry
beloved wife at that, even though she was not his first.  That was an h onor
given to a lady named Takhat II, though she apparently did not supp ly him
with an heir.  Tausert gave birth to his first born sun, Sethos Mer neptah,
but unfortunately he died young.  It was Seti II who initially ord ered her
tomb to be built in the Valley of the Kings, an honor given to f ew queens.

Upon Seti II's death, a son by what appears to be a Syrian wife, his thir d,
named Tiaa, ascended to the throne of Egypt.  His name was Ramesses-Sip tah
(Siptah Merenptah), but he was very young, probably in his early teen s.  He
also suffered from a deformed left leg.

It was Tausert who assumed the role of regent as the "Great Royal Wife", t
hough it appears that for the remainder of her life, another powerful non-
royal personage would perhaps be the power behind the throne.  In effec t,
Siptah was under the double supervision of his stepmother and a certa in
chancellor Bay.  Bay was originally the royal scribe of Seti II, a nd is
thought to have also been of Syrian decent. If tradition is to be be lieved,
Bay seduced the pharaoh's widow, who then gave him total contr ol of Egypt's
treasury.

Siptah held the throne of Egypt for approximately six years before his dea th,
when Tausert formally ascended the throne of Egypt herself.  In fac t, in the
fifth year of Siptah's rule, Tausert elevated herself considerab ly, taking
full royal titles as Hatshepsut had done several hundred yea rs in the past. 
However, it is believed that Bay continued to largely ru le in the background. 
Her reign was short, lasting perhaps two years.

While little is known of this time, we do believe that campaigns were wag ed
in the Sinai and Palestine, and there is evidence of her building wo rk at
Heliopolis, where a statue of the queen was found as well as at Theb es.  At
Thebes, she constructed a mortuary temple discovered by William Pe trie to the
south of the Ramesseum, and of course, continued work on her t omb in the
Valley of the Kings.  Her name also appears at Abydos, Hermopol is and
Memphis.

She was probably originally buried in her tomb in the Valley of the King s,
but this tomb was later taken by Ramesses III for his father, Setnakh t.  Her
mummy has not been positively identified, though it has been sugge sted that
the remains of an "Unknown Woman D" form KV 35 is that of Tauser t.

References:
Title Author Date Publisher Reference Number
Chronicle of the Pharaohs (The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dyn
asties of Ancient Egypt) Clayton, Peter A. 1994 Thames and Hudson Ltd IS BN
0-500-05074-0
History of Ancient Egypt, A Grimal, Nicolas 1988 Blackwell None Stated
Monarchs of the Nile Dodson, Aidan 1995 Rubicon Press ISBN 0-948695-20-x
Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian 2000 Oxford University Pre ss
ISBN 0-19-815034-2
Who Were the Phraohs? (A history of their names with a list of cartouche s)
Quirke, Stephen 1990 Dover Publications ISBN 0-486-26586-2

Born/Died ca. 1345-1296 BCE
His actual name was "Men.kheper.re'Ra.messe".  Horemheb, the last Pharo ah of
the XVII Dynasty, not having an heir of his body, apparently select ed Rameses
to succeed him (2).  Neither of the last two pharoahs of the XV III Dynasty,
Ay and Horemheb, were of direct royal blood and both confirm ed their
positions by marrying royal heiresses (3).  As the successi on to Rameses I
was fairly smooth, it seems likely that a similar allian ce was made or all
ready existed for him.  Stuart (1) notes the suggesti on that he was married
to an heiress of the royal family descended from Am enhotep III.  He was the
first Pharoah of the XIX Dynasty from about 12 98 to 1296 BCE. The first king
of the 19th Dynasty was the son of a milita ry commander named Seti. Ramesses
entered the military service and work ed his way up to commander of troops,
superintendent of the cavalry and ev entually general. A short time later he
became vizier to King Horemhe b. He was also Primate of Egypt, which was the
high priest of Amon, and w as in charge of all the temples in Egypt. Horemheb
died with no heir so Ra messes assumed the throne. His queen, Sitre, was the
mother of Seti I, w ho was already a veteran military commander. Ramesses was
originally buri ed in the Valley of the Kings. His tomb was later vandalized
so the pries ts removed the body to Deir el Bahri.

Sources:
1. Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 425.
2. Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds .)
"The      Cambridge Ancient History" 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #2A, pps. 80- 81 &
217-218.
Ramses
Egyptian kings of the XIX and XX dynasties. Ramses I, d. c.1314 B.C., succ
eeded Horemheb, the founder of the XIX dynasty, ruled one year, and was su
cceeded by his son Seti I. Seti's son, Ramses II, d. 1225 B.C. (r.1292-12 25
B.C.), usurped the throne from his brother. Under him EGYPT acquired un
precedented splendor, the empire extending from S Syria to the fourth cata
ract of the Nile. War with the HITTITES continued until he concluded a tre aty
(1280) and married (1267) a Hittite princess. He left monuments throug hout
Egypt, notably at KARNAK, LUXOR, and THEBES, and the great rock temp le at ABU
SIMBEL. The period was characterized by great luxury, increas ed slavery, and
the growth of a mercenary army, all contributors to Egypt 's eventual decline.
Ramses II was probably the pharaoh of exile in the O LD TESTAMENT. Ramses III,
d. 1167 B.C. (r. c.1198-1167), second king of t he XX dynasty, fought off
invasions by the Libyans and by Mediterranean s ea peoples. He was the last
Egyptian king to hold part of PALESTINE. Und er him the accumulation of slaves
and riches weakened the social structur e. His wife, TIY, plotted against him.
The XX dynasty was to be ruled by e ight other kings named Ramses until it
ended in 1090 B.C.

Sources: Encyclopedia.com & http://www.touregypt.net/hdyn19a.htm

Additional information, Nineteenth Dynasty
After the recovery from the religious revolution, Egypt was a changed worl d.
It is not easy to define the exact nature of the changes, since there a re
many exceptions. Yet, it is impossible not to notice the marked deterio ration
of the art, the literature, and indeed the general culture of the p eople. The
language which they wrote approximates more closely to the vern acular and
incorporates many foreign words. The copies of ancient texts a re incredibly
careless, as if the scribes utterly failed to understand the ir meaning. At
Thebes the tombs no longer display the bright and happy sce nes of everyday
life which characterized Dyn. XVIII, but concentrate rath er upon the perils
to be faced in the hereafter. The judgment of the hea rt before Osiris is a
favorite theme, and the Book of Gates illustrates t he obstacles to be
encountered during the nightly journey through the Neth erworld. The less
frequent remains from Memphis show reliefs of only sligh tly greater elegance.
The temples elsewhere depict upon their walls many v ivid representations of
warfare, but the workmanship is relatively coar se and the explanatory legends
are often more adulatory that informativ e. In spite of all, Egypt still
presents an aspect of wonderful grandeu r, which the greater abundance of this
period's monuments makes better kno wn to the present-day tourist than the far
finer products of earlier times .

Two statues found at Karnak in 1913, taken in conjunction with the famo us
stela of the year 400 discovered at Tanis fifty years earlier, prove t he
founder of the NINETEENTH DYNASTY to have been a man from the north-eas tern
corner of the Delta whom Haremhab raised to the end exalted rank of v izier.
Pra'messe, as he was called until he dropped the definite artic le at the
beginning of his name to become the king known to us as Ramess es I, was of
relatively humble origin, his father Set I having been a simp le 'captain of
troops'. We can well imagine Haremhab as having wished to c hoose his main
colleague from within his own military caste. The statue s, practically
duplicates of one another, portray Pra'messe as a royal scr ibe squatting upon
his haunches in the approved manner of his kind. The ha lf-opened papyrus on
his lap enumerates the various high offices to whi ch his lord had raised him.
Besides the vizierate these include the positi ons of superintendent of
horses, fortress-commander, superintendent of t he river-mouths, commander of
the army of the Lord of the Two Lands, n ot to mention several priestly
titles. Most significant of all is his cla im to have been 'deputy of the King
in Upper and Lower Egypt', as Haremh ab had been before him. Pra'messe was an
old man when he ascended the thro ne. He was not destined to enjoy the royal
power for long. Manetho, as quo ted by Josephus, allows him only one year and
four months of reign, a sp an not necessarily contradicted by the dating in
year 2 on the sole dat ed monument which we possess, a stela from Wady Halfa
now in the Louvre. E ven this appears to have been erected by his son and
successor Seti (Seth os I), who set up in the same place a stela almost
identical in tenor a nd dated in year 1 of his own reign. These two documents
record the establ ishment at Buhen (Wady Halfa) of a temple and new offerings
to Min-Amun, f or whose cult prophets, lector-priests, and ordinary priests
were appointe d, together with male and female slaves form 'the captures made
by His Maj esty'. These last words need not be taken too seriously in view of
the sho rtness of the reign, and indeed peace may at this time have been
firmly es tablished in Nubia, where Pesiur, the King's Son of Cush of
Haremhab's rei gn, was possibly still in office. Ramesses I's monuments in
other parts a re very scanty. A few reliefs bearing his name on and near the
Second Pyl on at Karnak suggest that he either initiated or acquiesced in the
stupend ous change there from Haremhab's open court with a central double li
ne of giant columns like that at Luxor to the great Hypostyle Hall whi ch is
among the chief surviving wonders of Pharaonic Egypt. His own to mb in the
Valley of the Tombs of the Kings was planned to rival in size th at of his
predecessor, and only stopped short, doubtless owing to his deat h, at the
chamber below the second flight of stairs, where his sarcophag us may still be
seen. His coffin and mummy suffered a fate not unlike th at which befell the
mummies of other kings. From his own tomb they were tr ansported first to that
of Sethos I, and from there to the great cac he at Der el-Bahri.

The great ruler who occupied the throne for the next fifteen or more yea rs
was colored with true affection and loyalty towards his father. But obe dient
devotion has its limits, and in the important funerary sanctuary whi ch Sethos
I built for himself at Kurna, the northern-most of the line of t emples
fringing the western desert at Thebes, he could spare only a few ro oms to
Ramesses I. At Abydos, however, he appended to his own great temp le a small
chapel with beautifully painted reliefs and a fine stela in whi ch he extolled
the virtues of his progenitor. Yet for all the recogniti on which Sethos was
prepared to pay his father , he was not averse to rega rding himself as the
inaugurator of a new period. This he showed by mea ns of the phrase
'Repetition of Births' appended to dating of his first a nd second regnal
years, and by inserting the corresponding epithet in h is Two-Ladies name and
sometimes in his Horus-name, as had been done by Am menemes I at the beginning
of Dyn. XII. But there may have been an additio nal reason for this. If the
calculations of the astronomical chronologi es are sound, a new Sothic period
began about 1317 BC, a very short time b efore Sethos I came to the throne.
Now the Alexandrian mathematician Theo n, referring to the Sothic period,
speaks of it as the era 'from Menophres ', and this royal name has been
interrupted by Struve, followed by Seth e, to be a slightly corrupted form of
the epithet Mry-n-Pth 'Beloved of Pt ah' which normally stands at the
beginning of Sethos's second cartouche. T his clever conjecture may or may not
be right.

As a stranger from the extreme north and with no royal lineage behind hi m,
Sethos ran a serious risk of being viewed as an upstart. The gods of t he land
had by no means completely recovered from the injuries inflicted u pon them by
the partisans of Akhenaten. Here Sethos found an opportuni ty of winning
popularity; doubtless it was with this in view that he set a bout restoring
the mutilated inscriptions of his predecessors. But his cle verest move
consisted in founding a temple whose magnificence should vie w ith that of the
very greatest fans of the capital cities. Abydos, the repu ted home of Osiris,
had always been a favorite site for the building activ ities of the Pharaohs,
but to none of Sethos's predecessors had it occurr ed to honor the place on
such a scale as he devised. His temple, togeth er with the mysterious memorial
at the back of it, remains to this day a p lace of pilgrimage which no
enterprising sightseer would willingly miss. T he reliefs of the walls, in
many cases still retaining the brilliance of t heir original colors, display a
delicacy and a perfection of craftsmansh ip surprising on the threshold of a
period of undisputed decadence. The in herited name of SetI 'the Sethian'
attests a devotion to the very god w ho had been the murderer of the venerated
numen loci. All the more necessa ry was it for him to placate Osiris, or
rather his powerful priesthood. De spite Sethos I's lavish expenditure on his
great monument the architects w hom he employed did not care to give Seth a
place among its divine occupan ts, and even in their writing of the monarch's
name the figure of Osiris w as prudently used in place of the grotesque
animalic image of his mortal e nemy. By way of compensation, however, Osiris
was not permitted to be excl usively worshipped here at Seth's expense. The
temple was conceiv ed of as a national shrine. Beside Osiris, chapels were set
apart for h is wife Isis and for his son Horus, these three constituting the
age-old t riad of Abydos. But neighboring their chapels are others of equal
size a nd importance dedicated to the three chief gods of the capital citie s,
to Amun of Thebes, to Ptah of Memphis, and to Re'-Harakhti of Heliopoli s. Nor
was Sethos I the man to dissociate himself from this noble compan y. It was to
his own cult that he caused to be consecrated the seventh a nd southernmost
chapel. To modern minds this action might well seem intole rably presumptuous,
but not so to an Egyptian Pharaoh. Was he not from ti me immemorial a great
god, if not the greatest of all? How should he not p ossess a memorial in the
holiest place of the Two Lands? And lastly, we mu st never forget that early
religion universally took for granted the princ iple do ut des. All the gods
would have languished, and rightly, had not t he Pharaoh's self-interest
demanded the steadfast maintenance of their cul ts.

The foundation or even the re-dedication of a temple was by no means compl ete
when the actual building was ended. Priests of different grades h ad to be
appointed, menial servants found, to discharge the ordinary duti es of
maintenance and commissariat and large tracts of land set apart to s upply the
revenues required for the upkeep. In return for this, a royal ch arter was
usually issued to define the rights of the sacred establishme nt and its
employees. Passing reference has been made to the decrees fr om the end of the
Old Kingdom which protected the temple of Min at Copt os form outside
interference. Good fortune has preserved for us the chart er or part of the
charter granted by Sethos to his great new sanctua ry at Abydos. This, strange
to say, is inscribed on a high rock at Nau ri a short distance to the north of
the Third Cataract.

It must suffice here to mention a few of the ways in which the privileg es of
the temple staff might be infringed. These men might be seized perso nally,
moved from district to district, commandeered for ploughing or reap ing,
prevented from fishing or fowling, have their cattle stolen, and so f orth.
Also any official who did not exact justice from the offenders was h imself to
be severely punished. Paragraph after paragraph deals with su ch matters, but
it has to be confessed that the entire decree is very care lessly drafted, and
leaves the impression rather of artificial legalist ic from that of precise
legal enactment.

Among the dependents of the Abydos temple mentioned in the Nauri text a re the
gold-washers who were employed at the mines in the neighborho od of the Red
Sea. Their task was to effect the extraction of the precio us metal by washing
away the lighter substances in the pulverized stone. T he hard lot of the
actual miners is described in a passage quoted by Diodo rus Siculus from the
geographer Agatharchides. It was important that the se poor wretches should
reach the scene of their labors without perishi ng on the way. In a long
inscription of year 9 engraved on the wall of a s mall temple in the Wady
Abbad some 35 miles east of Edfu, Sethos describ es the measures he has taken
to remedy their situation. A brief extract wi ll illustrate the style an
substance of the narration:

He stopped on the way to take counsel with his heart, and said: How misera ble
is a road without water! how shall travelers fare? Surely their throa ts will
be parched. What will slake their thirst? The homeland is far awa y, the
desert wide. Woe to him, a man thirsty in the wilderness! Come no w, I will
take thought for their welfare and make for them the means of pr eserving them
alive, so that they may bless my name in years to come, a nd that future
generations may boast of me for my energy, inasmu ch as I am one compassionate
and regardful of travelers.

Sethos then recounts the digging of a well and the founding of a settleme nt
in this locality. Another inscription in the speos warns later rulers a nd
their subjects not to steal the gold which was to be delivered to the A bydos
temple, and ends with a curse:

As to whosoever shall ignore this decree, Osiris will pursue him, and Is is
his wife, and Horus his children; and the Great ones, the lords of t he Sacred
Land, will make their reckoning with him.

Among her northerly neighbors Egypt's prestige had fallen to a very low le
vel, a situation which Sethos at once set to work to repair. The warlike s
cenes depicted upon the exterior north wall of the great Hypostyle Ha ll of
Karnak combine with conventional illustrations of the king's person al prowess
much information of a genuine historical character. These relie fs are no
great works of art, despite the prancing steeds of Pharaoh's cha riot and the
agonized contortions of his victims. But surely unique mu st be the picture of
Sethos on foot, with two Syrian prisoners tucked und er each arm. There are
two series of scenes, both converging towards a cen tral doorway near which
Amun stands to welcome the returning conqueror a nd to witness the doubtless
merely symbolic battering to death of the vanq uished chieftains. The lesser
captives who follow in long lines were desti ned to become slaves in the
workshops of the temple of Karnak. On the east ern side the lowest register
shows the military road along which Sethos 's army had to pass before he could
reach his main objectives in northe rn Syria. The starting-point, as with
Tuthmosis III and others, was the fo rtress of Tjel, the Latin Sile or Selle,
close to the modern El-Kanta ra so well known to our own soldiers in the two
world wars. From there t he way led across the waterless desert of the Sinai
peninsula beyond a sma ll canal now replaced by that of Suez. The reliefs
display in correct ord er the many small fortified stations built to protect
the indispensable we lls, and these together with a town with lost name which
is evidently Raph ia, 110 miles form Tjel, constitute the earliest equivalent
of a map th at the ancient world has to show. Twenty miles further on,
described as 't own of Canaan', is the Philistine Gaza a short distance within
the Palesti ne border. Before arriving there Sethos had been compelled to
inflict a gr eat slaughter on the rebellious nomads of the Shosu who barred
the wa y. It is difficult to say how far the campaign of year 1 extended since
t he top register on the east half of the wall is lost. But it certainly rea
ched as far as the Lebanon, where the native princes are seen felling t he
cedars or pines needed for the sacred bark and flagstaffs of the Theb an Amun.
What the accompanying hieroglyphic legend describes as 'ascent wh ich Pharaoh
made to destroy the land of Kadesh and the land of the Amor' p robably belongs
to a later year. The Kadesh here mentioned is naturally t he all-important
city on the Orontes, while the land of Amor is the adjace nt north Syrian
region extending to the Mediterranean coast. Of the two re maining registers
in the western half-wall that in the middle records a ba ttle against the
Libyans, of whom but little has been heard since the begi nning of Dyn. XII.
The lowest register shows Sethos at grips with the Hitt ites, the strength of
whose empire had been steadily growing in the han ds of Suppiluliumas's son
Mursilis II. Naturally the reliefs display Seth os as the victor. Stele from
Kadesh itself and from Tell esh-Shihab in t he Hauran bear Sethos's name, but
are of far less importance than the t wo inscriptions of his reign found at
Beisan, the Beth-shean of the Old Te stament, some 15 miles south of the Sea
of Galilee and only 4 to the we st of the Jordan. Here since the time of
Tuthmosis III a fortress of consi derable size had housed the Egyptian
garrison, and within its chapel had s tood the stele which told of Sethos's
exploits in the neighborhood. O ne of them which is nearly illegible, but has
been skillfully decipher ed by Grdseloff, deals with the 'Apiru-people
discussed above. The othe r, which is well preserved, narrates as follows:

Year 1, third month of Summer, day 2...on this day they came to tell His M
ajesty that the vile enemy who was in the town of Hamath had gathered un to
himself many people and had captured the town of Bethshael, and had joi ned
with the inhabitants of Pehel and did not allow the prince of Reh ob to go
forth. Thereupon, His Majesty sent the first army of Amun 'Powerf ul of Bows'
to the town of Hamath, the first army of Pre' 'Manifold of Bra very' to the
town of Bethshael, and the first army of Sutekh 'Victorio us of Bows' to the
town of Yeno'am. Then there happened the space of one d ay and they were
fallen through the might of His Majesty, the King of Upp er and Lower Egypt,
Menma're', the Son of Re', SetI-merenptah, given life.

All the places here named have been identified with some probability, no ne of
them at any great distance from Beisan; the capture of Yeno'am had b een
depicted in the Karnak reliefs. No more in the way of commentary is ne eded
than to draw attention to the three army corps named after the go ds of
Thebes, Heliopolis, and the later Pi-Ra'messe respectively. The se we shall
find reappearing in the Kadesh campaign of Ramesses II, and th ey seem to
imply the presence of really strong forces in the Palestinian a rea. Perhaps
in the quarter of a century from the beginning of Dyn. XIX, E gypt possessed
as much of an Asiatic empire as at any other period in h er history.
Nevertheless, the main administration probably lay in the han ds of the local
princes, and apart from the commanders of garrison the Egy ptian officials
claimed no more authoritative title than that of 'king's e nvoy to every
foreign country'. In Nubia, on the other hand, real governo rs were the King's
Son of Cush and his two lieutenants, though here too Se thos had to take
military action against a remote tribe in the fourth a nd eighth years of his
reign.

Apart from the temples of Kurna and Abydos already mentioned and the wo rk on
the great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak Sethos I's buildings are relative ly
unimportant. On the other hand, the sepulcher which he caused to be exc avated
for himself in the Biban el-Moluk is the most imposing of the enti re
necropolis. It is over 300 feet long and decorated from the very entran ce
with admirably executed and brilliantly colored reliefs equaling in qua lity
those found in the great monument at Abydos. The fine alabaster sarco phagus
is now the treasured possession of the Soane Museum in London. It h ad early
been robbed of its occupant, whose mummy ultimately found its w ay to the
cache at Der el-Bahri. Sethos was a man of only moderate heigh t, but the
well-preserved head, with heavy jaw and a wide and strong chi n, is cast in a
markedly different mound from that of the Dyn. XVIII kings .

If the greatness of an Egyptian Pharaoh be measured by the size and numb er of
the monuments remaining to perpetuate his memory, Sethos's son and s uccessor
Ramesses II would have to be pronounced equal, or even the superi or, of the
proudest pyramid-builders. The great Hypostyle Hall at Karn ak is his main
achievement, and on the west bank at Thebes his funerary te mple known as the
Ramesseum still retains a large part of its original gra ndeur. At Abydos his
temple stands, as a not unworthy second, side by si de with that of his
father, which he finished. The edifices at Memphis ha ve been largely
demolished later by thieves greedy for suitable building s tone, but portions
of great statues of Ramesses II attest the former prese nce of a vast temple
of his. Moreover, this is referred to in a well-kno wn stela preserved in the
Nubian temple of Abu Simbel, where Ramesses ackn owledges the blessings
conferred upon him by the Memphite god Ptah. The re mains at Tanis will be
spoke of later. It is in Nubia, however, that his c raze for
self-advertisement is most conspicuous. Omitting the names of fo ur important
sanctuaries which under any other king could not be passed ov er in silence,
we cannot refrain from voicing our wonder at the amazing te mple at Abu Simbel
with its four colossal seated statues of Ramesses front ing the river. Yet in
spite of all this monumental ardor, Ramesses II's st ature has undeniably
suffered reduction as the result of the last half-cen tury's philological
research. Previously the nickname Sese, given him in s ome later literary
texts, had persuaded Maspero that he was none other th an the conqueror
Sesostris so widely celebrated in the classical author s. We now know that
this half-mythical personage had arisen from the combi nation of two separate
kings of Dyn. XII. The less enviable claim to ha ve been the Pharaoh of the
Oppression survives in the works of the able st conservative scholars only in
a greatly modified form, while a by no me ans negligible minority of
historians are profoundly skeptical of the enti re Exodus story. Lastly
Ramesses II's glamour as a triumphant conqueror h as been much dimmed by
evidence from the Boghazkoy records. None the le ss the events of his
sixty-seven years of reign are better known and prese nt more of interest than
those of any other equal span of Egyptian history .

For the beginning of the reign, the main source is an inscription of gre at
length known to Egyptologists by the name Inscription dedicatoire giv en to it
by G. Maspero, its first translator. This occupies an entire wa ll in the
temple of Sethos I at Abydos and is the main boastful accou nt of Ramesses's
virtue in completing his father's splendid sanctuary. T he space devoted to
factual narrative is small, but an important passage d escribes Ramesses's
promotion in early youth to the position of crown prin ce and subsequently his
association with Sethos upon the throne:

The Universal Lord himself magnified me whilst I was a child until I beca me
ruler. He gave me the land whilst I was in the egg, the great ones smel ling
the earth before my face. Then I was inducted as eldest son to be Her editary
Prince upon the throne of Geb (the earth-god) and I reported the s tate of the
Two Lands as captain of the infantry and the chariotry. Then w hen my father
appeared in glory before the people, I being a babe in his l ap, he said
concerning me: 'Crown him as king that I may see his beauty wh ilst I am
alive.' And he called to the chamberlains to fasten the crowns u pon my
forehead. 'Give him the Great One (the uraeus-serpent) upon his hea d' said he
concerning me whilst he was on earth.

The accuracy of this statement has been challenged, but wrongly, since sce nes
at Karnak and at Kurna confirm Ramesses's co-regency with his fathe r.
Probably, however, he was less young when the co-regency began than th is
passage suggests, because there is evidence that he accompanied Seth os on his
military campaigns while he was still only the heir-apparent, a nd further
because the passage just translated goes on to say that Seth os equipped him
with a female household and a king's harem 'like to the be autiful ones of the
palace'. He must have been at least fifteen years o ld at the time, and in
guessing at the length of the co-regency, we must r emember the Ramesses had
still a reign of little less than seventy years a head of him, for he
undoubtedly counted his first year from his accessi on after Sethos's death.
The Abydos inscription also gives us some informa tion concerning his first
actions after the accession. Like Haremhab, he h ad come to Thebes to take
part in Amun's great feast of Ope, when the g od was carried in state in his
ceremonial boat from Karnak to Luxor. The f estivities over, he set forth by
river to his new Delta capital, stoppi ng at Abydos on the way to do reverence
to Osiris Onnophris and to give or ders for the continuation of the work on
Sethos's temple. This visit ga ve him the opportunity to appoint as new
high-priest of Onuris at Thini s, of Hathor at Dendera, and also at some
places farther south. This prefe rment is proudly recounted by Nebunenef, the
priest in question, in his to mb at Thebes. Proceeding on his way northwards
Ramesses arrived at 'the st rong place Pi-Ra'messe, Great-of-Victories',
thenceforth to be, with Memph is as an alternative, the main royal residence
in the north throughout Dyn s. XIX and XX. It is agreed that this town, the
Biblical Ramesses, was sit uated on the same site as the great Hyksos
stronghold of Avaris and that i ts principal god was Sutekh, as the name of
Seth was by this time mostly p ronounced. P. Montet and the present writer
have strongly maintained th at this was none other than the great city which
was later called Dja'n e, Greek Tanis, the Zoan of the Bible. No one who has
visited the si te or read about its monuments in books can have failed to be
impress ed by the multitude of the remains dating from the reign of Ramesses I
I. On the other hand , some 11 miles to the south, at Khat'ana-Kantir, por
tions of a fine palace of Ramesses II, adorned with splendid faience tile s,
have staked out a rival claim to be the true Pi-Ra'messe 'the Hou se of
Ra'messe', and among other scholars Labib Habachi has been particula rly
active and successful in finding stele and other evidence from the sa me
neighborhood which might swing the pendulum in that direction. Accordi ng to
this theory, the monuments of Ramesses II at Tanis were transport ed there by
the kings of Dyn. XXI, who are known to have chosen that ci ty as their
capital. The debate continues, and cannot be regarded as final ly settled
either the one way or the other.

Born/Died ca. 1217-1153 BCE, Buried: Medinet Habu, Valley of the Kings, Lu xor,
Egypt. His ruling name was "Usermaetre-Meryamun"and he was the Pharo ah of
Egypt (XX Dynasty) from about 1185 to 1153 BCE.

Sources:
1. Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 425.
2. Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds .)
"The      Cambridge Ancient History" 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #2A, pp.241-247.
3. Page, J.D. and Oliver, R. (eds) "The Cambridge History of Africa" Vo l. I,
pp.    872, chart.
4.  Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pp.152.

Over the some three thousand years of Egyptian history during the Pharaon ic
Period only a handful of the several hundred who ruled Egypt (or pa rt of
Egypt) can be considered truly great kings. Of these, Ramesses II I, who was
the second ruler of Egypt's 20th Dynasty, was the last of gre at pharaohs on
the throne. His reign was a time of considerable turmoil th roughout the
Mediterranean that saw the Trojan War, the fall of Mycenae a nd a great surge
of displaced people from all over the region that w as to reek havoc; even
toppling some empires.

Ramesses was this king's birth name, as it was for most of the 20th Dynas ty
rulers who appear to have wished to emulate the great Ramesses II of t he 19th
Dynasty. Ramesses means, "Re has fashioned him" A second (epithe t) part of
his birth name was heqaiunu, which means "Ruler of Heliopoli s" There are any
number of ways that Egyptologists spell his birth name, s uch as "Ramses". His
throne name was Usermaatre Meryamun, which means "Pow erful is the Justice of
Re, Beloved of Amun.

The Family of Ramesses III
Ramesses III's father was his immediate predecessor, a relatively unkno wn
king named Setnakhte. However, though the originator of what Egyptologi sts
refer to as the 20th Dynasty, he may actually have been a grands on of the
famous Ramesses II. Ramesses III probably served  a short co-reg ency with
him, we believe, because of a rock-chapel near Deir el-Medina th at was
dedicated to both his father and Ramesses III. Ramesses III's moth er was
Queen Tiy-merenese. He had a number of wives, including Isis, Ti ti and Tiy, 
as well as a number of sons including the next three rule rs of Egypt,
Ramesses IV, V and VI. We only know of one possible daught er named Titi.
However, despite his apparently long reign lasting so me 31 years and 41 days
according to the Great Harris Papyrus, little is k nown about the royal
family.

We know that the mother of his wife, Isis, named, Habadjilat, was probab ly a
foreigner, most likely of Asiatic extraction. She was buried in to mb QV51 in
the Valley of the Queens, though here name was omitted from t he cartouches in
the Medinet Habu temple where the queen's name would norm ally have appeared.
However, one of her sons would eventually rule Egy pt as Ramesses VI.

Another possible queen of Ramesses III was Queen Titi, who was buried in Q V52
in the Valley of the Queens. Though this tomb is large, it lacks any p roper
indication of her exact royal status. However, her titles suggest th at she
was possibly a daughter, and later a wife of Ramesses III who proba bly
outlived him. Her title as "Mistress of the Two Lands" appears so me 43 times
within this tomb, and she is listed as "Chief Royal Wife" 33 t imes. Other
titles include "King's Daughter, "King's Beloved Daughter of h is Body",  "His
Beloved Daughter" and "King's Sister". She is also call ed "King's Mother"
eight times and her son might have been Ramesses IV.

Ramesses III had as many if not more than ten sons, many of whom predeceas ed
him. A number of them were buried in the Valley of the Queens. These in clude
the tombs of Amenhirkhopshef (QV55), Khaemwaset (QV44), Parahirenem ef (QV42)
and Sethirkhopshef (QV43). Each of these sons held high position s, as might
be expected, prior to their deaths. Apparently devoted to Rame sses II,
Ramesses III gave his sons names that followed those of the earli er king's
sons. An especially noteworthy example was his son, Khaemwas et C, named for
Ramesses II's famous child. Like the earlier Khaemwase t, he took the same
office as sem-priest of Ptah at Memphis. However, Khae mwasret C. never
achieved the glory of Ramesses II's son, who rose to t he position of High
Priest. We also know that Amenhirkhopshef, named for R amesses II's oldest
son, and Sethirkhopshef held the office of Master of H orse.

A number of other tombs in the Valley of the Queens, which appear to da te
from the reign of Ramesses III,  appear to belong to unnamed princes a nd
princesses, though we have virtually no information on these individual s.

The Conspiracy
Another of Ramesses III's queens was Tiy, but in a several noteworthy papy rus
from his reign, particularly one known today as the Harem Conspiracy P apyrus,
we learn of an assassination attempt upon the king in which she w as at least
a part of the plot. Her name is provided in the text, but t he other
conspirators are called by names that indicate the great ev il of their crime,
such as Mesedsure, meaning "Re hates him". Tiy apparent ly wished for her son,
called in this papyrus, Pentewere, to ascend to t he throne of Egypt.

At some point during the latter part of Ramesses III's reign, there were e
conomic problems that became most visible when the Deir el-Medina workm en
failed to be paid, leading to a general strike, the first in recorded h
istory, in the 29th year of the king's reign. Against this background w as
hatched a plot against the king's life.

This was no simple conspiracy, considering that at least 40 people were im
plicated and tried as a group. Amongst their numbers were harem officia ls
many of whom were close to the king. Not only had they intended to ki ll the
king, but also to incite a revolt outside of the palace in ord er to
facilitate their coup.

The plot was seemingly hatched in Piramesses where one of the conspirato rs
had a house. The plan called for the murder of the king during the annu al
Opet Festival at Thebes. Preparations for this included magical spel ls and
wax figurines which were smuggled into the harem.

This conspiracy is thought to have failed, and the guilty were charged a nd
brought before a court consisting of a panel of fourteen officials incl uding
seven royal butlers (a respectably high office), two treasury overse ers, two
army standard bearers, two scribes and a herald. Ramesses III him self most
likely commissioned the prosecution, but according to the langua ge of the
papyrus, probably died during the trial, though not necessari ly from the
effects of the plot. Curiously, this court was given authori ty to deliver and
carry out whatever penalty they deemed fair, including t he death penalty,
which normally only the king could inflict. It shou ld be noted, however, that
scholars are in disagreement over the even ts of this conspiracy. Some
maintain that Ramesses III was in fact kill ed by the conspirators, and that
his son, Ramesses IV, set up the tribuna l, but others maintain that the mummy
of the king shows no acts of violenc e.

All of those involved in the plot were apparently condemned to death, as w as
certainly the fate of Queen Tiy herself. Though the record of the actu al
trial is lost, there were apparently three different prosecutions. T he first
consisted of twenty eight people, who included the major ringlead ers, who
were found guilty and (almost certainly) put to death. In the ne xt
prosecution six people were condemned and forced to commit suicide with in the
court itself. In the final trial, four additional individuals, incl uding the
son of Queen Tiy, were likewise condemned to suicide, though th ey were
presumably allowed to carry out the act in their prison.

Interestingly, there was also a fourth trial, but this one did not invol ve
the actual conspirators, but instead three of the judges and two office rs. It
would seem that the curious affair resulted from accusations tha t, after
their appointment to the conspiracy commission, they knowingly en tertained
several of the women involved in the plot, as well as consort ed with a
general referred to as Peyes. Though one of the judges was fou nd innocent,
the remainder of the group was condemned to have their ears a nd noses
amputated. One of the judges called Pebes committed suicide befo re the
sentence could be carried out.

The Military Affairs
Ramesses III's reign began quietly enough as he attempted to consolidate h is
empire begun by his father after problems arose in the late 19th Dynast y.
Nubia seems at this time to have been nothing more than a subdued colo ny to
the south. However, in his fifth year as ruler, Egypt was attack ed by Libyans
for apparently the first time since Merenptah had to deal wi th them in the
19th Dynasty. The Libyan invasion forces included two oth er groups of people
known as the Mshwesh and the Seped. Ramesses III easi ly dealt with this
threat, annihilating many, and making slaves of the res t. Though the Libyan
population of the western Delta continued to increa se by peaceful
infiltration (as they had actually done before the invasion ), and would later
form the basis for a line of kings that would ultimate ly rule Egypt, for a
time at least, this firm action kept other enemi es at bay.

By his eighth year as ruler, Ramesses III had to contend with a force of s uch
great magnitude, that it destroyed at least the Hittite empire, and de
vastated the entire region, though we really do not know of its sourc e. We
read that:

"The foreign countries conspired in their islands, and the lands were disl
odged and scattered in battle together; no land could stand before their a
rms: the land of the Hittites, Qode, Carchemesh, Arzawa and Cyprus were wa
sted, and they set up a camp in southern Syria. They desolated its peop le and
made its land as if non-existent. They bore fore before them as th ey came
forward towards Egypt."

Indeed, Cyprus had been overwhelmed and its capital, Enkomi, ransacked. Th ey
destroyed the Hittite capital, Hattusas, as well as many other empire s. They
conquered Tarsus and then settled on the plains of Cilicia in nort hern Syria,
razing Alalakh and Ugarit to the ground.

This upheaval was caused by a group of people collectively known as the S ea
People, who were displaced from their homes by events that are as of y et
unknown to us. However, this apparently took place over an extended per iod of
time, and involved massive numbers of humans, consisting of the Pel eset
(Philistines), Tjeker, Shekelesh (possibly Sikels from Sicily), Weshe sh and
the Denyen or Dardany, who could have been the Danaoi of Homer's Il iad.  The
invasion of these people into various regions of the Middle Ea st apparently
came in waves, as a number of Ramesses III's predecessors (p erhaps most
notably Merenptah) had to deal with similar bands of people.

Ramesses III had his fight against the Sea People documented on the out er
wall of the Second Pylon, north side, of his mortuary temple at Medin et Habu.
It is the longest hieroglyphic inscription known to us. On the ou ter north
wall of the temple proper he had carved the illustrations of t he battle.
After having stayed for a time in Syria, the Sea People apparen tly traveled
over land to the Egyptian border. This was not simply a milit ary campaign.
The Sea People had with them their women and children, toget her with their
possessions piled high on ox-carts. They also employed a s ea fleet that
apparently stayed in tract with those on land. Their intenti on was to settle
in Egypt.

Ramesses reacted swiftly to this threat, and in doing so, saved Egypt fr om
the fate that would befall other empires, at least for a while. He disp atched
squads of soldiers at once to the eastern Egyptian frontier at Dja hy
(southern Palestine, perhaps the Egyptian garrison in the Gaza strip) w ith
orders to stand firm at any cost until the main Egyptian army arrive d. Once
deployed, the Egyptian army then had little problem in slaying the se enemies,
as was depicted in the reliefs at Medinet Habu. However, the re was still the
sea fleet to consider.

Egypt was never particularly known for their navy, which was made up princ
ipally of infantry, including archers, who were given special marine train
ing. Yet they hated the sea, known as wdj wr, the "Great Green", as they c
alled the Mediterranean. However, as the Sea Peoples' fleet headed for t he
mouth of one of the eastern arms of the Nile, they were indeed met by t he
Egyptian fleet. In an inspired tactical maneuver, the Egyptian fleet wo rked
the Sea Peoples' boats towards shore, where land based Egyptian arche rs were
waiting to pour volley after volley of arrows into the enemy ship s, while the
Egyptian marine archers, calmly standing on the decks of the ir ships, fired
in unison. As the Egyptian ships threw grappling hooks in to the Sea People's
vessels, by the grace of the god Amun, the enemies fe ll dead into the water
from the onslaught of the combined Egyptian force s. In fact, this victory
provided considerable respect for the priestho od of Amun at Thebes. We have
no documentation of any pursuit of the fleei ng Sea People as they returned to
the Levant, but it is reasonable that th ere was such a campaign.

Hence, for some three years, all was well and Egypt was for the most pa rt at
peace. Then, after a gradual infiltration by immigrants into the ar ea west of
the Canopic arm of the Nile from Egypt's western border, the Li byans,
together with the Meshwesh and five other tribes, launched anoth er full scale
invasion during Ramesses III's eleventh year as ruler. On ce again, Ramesses
III countered the attack, crushing these opponents as w ell. Apparently some
2,000 of the enemy dead were left on the killing fiel ds, while the captured
leaders were executed. The booty of the enemy captu red during the battle,
consisting of  cattle and other possession's were s ent south to the treasury
of Amun. The details of this battle are fou nd on the inner, north wall of the
First Pylon at Medinet Habu.

There were apparently other campaigns during the reign of Ramesses II I, as
recorded on the walls of his mortuary temple, though some of these s cenes are
questionable. Many of these depictions record events that probab ly took place
in bygone years, a common practice of many kings in ord er to elevate their
reputations. In fact, some of these scenes from Medin et Habu clearly seem to
be copies of earlier battles fought by his illustr ious predecessor, Ramesses
II.

However, it does seem that there were some other minor conflicts, particul
arly from the desert around the latitude of Thebes, but these were rath er
minor in nature.

Non-Military Actions
Ramesses III established a number of foreign contacts for trade, most nota bly
with its old trading partner, Punt. This may have been Egypt's first c ontact
with that land since the famous ventures in the days of Hatsheps ut of the
18th Dynasty. He also seems to have sent an expedition to Atik a, where the
copper mines of Timna were located.

The king is well known for his domestic building program, a consolidati on of
law and order (as well as a tree-planting program). The end of the 1 9th
Dynasty saw considerable corruption and various abuses, and Ramesses I II was
forced to inspect and reorganize the various temples throughout t he country.
The Great Harris Papyrus provides that Ramesses III made hu ge donations of
land to the most important temples in Thebes, Memphis a nd Heliopolis. In
fact, by the end of his reign, a third of the cultivatab le land belonged to
the temples and of this, three quarters belonged to t he temple of Amun at
Thebes. Though Ramesses III's foremost construct w as his mortuary temple at
Medinet Habu, which was finished in about the 12 th year of his reign, at
Karnak he provided numerous relief decorations a nd two new, small temples
including one dedicated to Khonsu, the moon go d. Additional building work was
carried out in a number of centers, includ ing Piramesses (or Pi-Ramesses,
modern Qantir), Athribis (Tell Atrib), Hel iopolis, Memphis, Hermopolis
(Ashmunein), Syut (Greek Lycopolis, modern As yut), Abydos and Edfu.

For many generations, Egypt had two viziers, one governing Upper Egypt a nd
anther official who oversaw Lower Egypt. Apparently there was a proble m;
perhaps even a rebellion involving the unnamed Lower Egyptian vizier a nd so
Ramesses III unified this high office under a single person nam ed To (Ta).

The Death of Ramesses III
While we know that Ramesses III likely died during the trial of the har em
conspirators, we really do not know how he died, though some scholars b elieve
it was at the hands of the conspirators while others believe it w as not
related to the plot. Irregardless, his death signaled the coming e nd of the
New Kingdom, and even the lofty position that Egypt held on t he world stage.
He was buried in a large tomb (KV11) in the Valley of t he Kings on the West
Bank at ancient Thebes (modern Luxor). His is most fa mous for having some
secular scenes that were unusual among royal tombs, i ncluding a painting of
two blind male harpists. Hence, though sometimes ca lled "Bruce's Tomb after
its discoverer, James Bruce in 1769, in literatu re it is more well known as
"The Tomb of the Harper". Presumably, he was s ucceeded by his son, Ramesses
IV in about the year 1151 BC.

References:
Chronicle of the Pharaohs (The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dyn
asties of Ancient Egypt) Clayton, Peter A. 1994 Thames and Hudson Ltd IS BN
0-500-05074-0
Complete Valley of the Kings, The (Tombs and Treasures of Egypt's Greate st
Pharaohs) Reeves, Nicholas; Wilkinson, Richard H. 1966 Thames and Huds on Ltd
IBSN 0-500-05080-5
History of Ancient Egypt, A Grimal, Nicolas 1988 Blackwell None Stated
Monarchs of the Nile Dodson, Aidan 1995 Rubicon Press ISBN 0-948695-20-x
Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian 2000 Oxford University Pre ss
ISBN 0-19-815034-2

Additional Information:
The Tomb of Ramesses III (KV 11) is really a rather complex system.  It h as
been known since antiquity, but was first partially explored during mod ern
times by James Bruce in 1768. Later, William Browne gained access to t he
burial chamber in 1792, and Belzoni removed the sarcophagus and lid, wh ich
are now, respectively, in the Louvre and Fitzwilliam Museum. He nam ed it the
"Tomb of the Harpists", due to a bas relief representation of t wo blind
harpists. However, European travelers often referred to the to mb as "Bruce's
Tomb".  The tomb is beautifully decorated with grand colo rs that remain
vivid.
The tomb is 125 meters long and follows typical plans of the Nineteenth Dy
nasty's tombs, though it has an unusual number of annexes.  From the entra
nce, a stairway leads to the first corridor, which has an annex on eith er
side.  This corridor leads directly two a second corridor that has fo ur small
annexes on either side. The second corridor leads to a dead end r oom, but
with a third corridor leading off from the right side. This chan ge in axis
was due to the fact that workmen came across Amenemesses' to mb and so were
required to make adjustments to avoid it. Up to the poi nt of this change in
axis, the tomb was actually built for Setnakht, who a pparently abandoned the
work at this point.  Ramesses III offset the tom b, and continued the work as
his own.

From the third corridor, we finally reach the ritual shaft, and then a fo ur
pillared hall with one large annex off to its right.  After the pillar ed 
hall, a fourth corridor takes us to a two room vestibule, and then fin ally to
the burial chamber.  The burial chamber has one annex leading o ff from each
of its corners, plus a fifth annex at the rear.

At the entrance to the tomb are unique, twin Hathor-headed columns. Betwe en
them is the standard solar disc with goddesses.  The first several corr idors
were decorated for Sethnakhte, with remnants of his name still prese nt.
Passages from the Litany of Re adorn their walls. However, the side ch ambers
were added by Ramesses III, and are decorated with unique secular s cenes,
including paintings of the royal armory, representations of boat s, and the
famous blind harpists. There are also scenes of the king's trea sury showing
luxury items, some of which were clearly imported from Aegean .

After the offset, the decorative program clearly becomes that of Ramess es
III's work.  Scenes from the Amduat are found in the corridor leading f rom
the offset, while standard divine scenes decorate the ritual shaft. T he four
pillared hall is decorated with scenes from the Book of Gates, wi th Ramesses
and various deities on the pillars themselves.  The final corr idor is
inscribed with material from the Opening of the Mouth ceremony.

In the antechambers, we find decorations depicting various deities. With in
the burial chamber itself are to be found decorations form the Bo ok of Gates
and the Book of the Earth.  Interestingly, there are no ceili ng decorations,
but the side rooms are decorated with texts an an examp le of the Book of the
Divine Cow.

There was little in the way of funerary equipment found in the Tomb. Oth er
then the sarcophagus mentioned above, with the exception of five shabt is
figures cast in solid bronze, now in the British Museum, in Turin, in t he
Louvre, and in the Oriental Museum in Durham.

Born/Died 1137-1099
His ruling name was "Khepermaetre-Setpenre" and he was the Pharoah of Egy pt
(XX Dynasty) from about 1104 to 1094 BCE.
Sources:
1.  Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 425.
2.  Page, J.D. and Oliver, R. (eds) "The Cambridge History of Africa" Vo l. I,
pp.    872, chart.
3.  Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pps.152 & 209.

Ramesses X was the ninth king of the Twentieth Dynasty. During his reign t he
workers went on strike for wages not paid. There are few monuments of R
amesses that have survived. He left a tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

Twentieth Dynasty


Manetho has no more to tell us about Dyn. XX than that it consisted of twe lve
kings of Diospolis (Thebes), who reigned according to Africanus for 1 35 years
and for 178 according to Eusebius. Nevertheless, it was a peri od of stirring
events and at least one mighty Pharaoh. Also, a number of l engthy and highly
informative writings have survived. The discussion of wh ich will demand
considerable space. Meanwhile, the enemies of Egypt were d rawing ever closer,
foreshadowing the humiliations which little over a cen tury later were to
reduce her prestige almost to vanishing point. At the o utset, however, it
seemed that an epoch of exceptional splendor was abo ut to dawn. A retrospect,
contrasting this with a largely imaginary peri od of previous gloom, is worth
quoting if only to exemplify a standing con vention of Pharaonic historical
writing.

The land of Egypt was cast adrift; every man a law unto himself. They h ad no
commander for many years previously until there were other times wh en the
land of Egypt consisted of princes and heads of villages; one man s laying his
fellow both high and low. Then another time came after it consi sting of empty
years, when Arsu a Syrian was with them as prince, and he m ade the entire
land contributory under his sway.

The text goes on to speak of the bloodshed which ensued, and the neglect w ith
which the gods were treated until they restored peace by appointing Se tnakhte
as king. In this strange passage, the glorious achievements of Dyn s. XVIII
and XIX are ignored and we are transported back to the conditio ns of
pre-Hyksos times. The sole specific fact recorded is the emergen ce of a
Syrian condottiere who gained mastery over the entire land. The id entity of
this foreigner has been much debated, the most interesting sugge stion due to
Cerny, being that we have here a veiled reference to the 'kin g-maker' Bay
mentioned at the end of the last chapter. But the writer's on ly purpose here
was to commend the new sovereign of Egypt. Little is kno wn about Setnakhte
except that he was the father of the great king Ramess es III and the husband
of the later's mother Tiye-merenese. There are reas ons for thinking that the
interval between the end of Dyn. XIX and his acc ession was quite short,
perhaps not more than ten years. He may have reign ed less than two years. He
usurped the tomb of Twosre and was doubtless bu ried in it. His coffin was
found in the tomb of Amenophis II, but his mum my has not been discovered.

Whatever the author of the retrospect may have pretended, Ramesses III w as
himself very conscious of the greatness of the most celebrated of his p
redecessors in Dyn. XIX, for he modeled both his Prenomen and his Nomen up on
those of Ramesses II. His early years were fraught with terrible danger s. In
the south, it is true, he had little to fear. Nubia had grown in to an
Egyptian province, and the scenes which have survived of a batt le in this
direction seem likely to be a mere convention borrowed from ear lier
representation. For the very real and dangerous conflicts which Rames ses III
had to face, our knowledge is mainly derived from the inscriptio ns and
reliefs on the walls of his great temple of Medinet Habu; the be st preserved
and most interesting of all the funerary sanctuaries on the w estern side of
Thebes. This splendid monument, with its gigantic pylons a nd noble columnar
courts, lay within inner and outer enclosures containin g, besides the central
shrine itself, a whole township of dwellings for t he priests and their
dependents, as well as a garden and a lake. The out er girdle wall of crude
brick, approached by a canal branching off from t he Nile, had a height of 59
feet and a thickness of 25 feet, the length fr om front to back exceeding 300
yards. The center of the eastern side exhib ited a unique feature in a lofty
gatehouse built to resemble one of tho se Syrian fortresses which the Egyptian
armies had met with so often in th eir Asiatic campaigns, but here the purpose
was not military. The upper st ories served as a resort where the Pharaoh
could disport himself with t he ladies of his harem. The palace proper abutted
onto the south side of t he temple's first court, with a balcony where the
king might appear in ord er to distribute rewards to such nobles as he wished
to honor. The wal ls of no other temple show scenes of greater interest.
Religious subjec ts of course predominate, but pictures of warfare are also
numerous and su pplement the written legends in the most valuable fashion.
More so since t he latter have a turgidity in which narrative passages almost
disappear am ong the surplus of flattering eloquence.

The long inscription of year 5 first tells of a campaign against the weste rn
neighbors of Egypt known generically as the Tjehnu. These people were i
ncensed at having had imposed upon them a new ruler of the Pharaoh's choic e.
The royal wisdom, so highly praised in the hieroglyphs, had evidently n ot
been appreciated. Color on some of the sculptured reliefs shows prisone rs
with red beards, side-locks, and long richly ornamented cloaks. Three t ribes
are here mentioned, the Libu or Libyans who as we have seen are comm emorated
in the name still applied to the whole north-eastern part of Afri ca outside
Egypt, the Sped of whom nothing more is known, and the Meshwes h, first
mentioned under Amenophis III, who henceforth play an ever increa singly
important part in our historical records. They are commonly thoug ht of as the
equivalent of the Maxyes located by Herodotus in the neighbor hood of Tunis.
The next threat to Egypt was far more dreadful, being nothi ng less than an
attempt on the part of a confederacy of sea-faring norther ners to establish
themselves in the rich pasture-lands not only of the Del ta, but also of Syria
and of Palestine. Permanent settlement was their ai m, and they brought their
women and children with them in wheeled carts dr awn by humped oxen. We have
seen that an attack of this kind, in which t he sea-peoples and the Libyans
had been in alliance, had been repell ed by Merenptah. Now the Mediterranean
war, though almost simultaneous wi th the Libyan wars of years 5 and 11, is
described as a separate event, b ut was none the less dangerous on that
account. The main aggression, dat ed to year 8, swooped down by land and sea
simultaneously. The Sherden we re once again among the hostile forces, and
once again warriors of this ra ce are shown fighting both with and against the
Egyptians. The long-sin ce failing Hittite Empire was swept away, and with it
the Anatolian alli es who had taken part in the battle of Kadesh. Of the
enemies who had conf ronted Merenptah perhaps only the Sheklesh still played a
part. A new tri be named the Weshesh are a mere name. Of deep interest, to
Greek schola rs and to Orientalists, are three new peoples who emerge here for
the fir st time, though it is just possible that the Danu or Danuna, surely
the Da naoi of the Iliad, may have been mentioned once in the El-'Amarna
letter s. Much more important, however, are the Peleset and the Tjekker, since
t he incursion of these tribes into Palestine was, to some extent, successf ul
and permanent. A narrative dating from about a century later describ es the
Tjekker as sea-pirates occupying the port of Dor, but nothing mo re is known
of them or of the name they bore. The Peleset, on the other ha nd, are the
Philistines who were later alternately conquerors of and conqu ered
Israelites, who gave their name to Palestine and whom our modern parl ance
still remembers in an unfairly deprecatory way. There was a traditi on that
they came from Caphtor or Crete, but this may have been only a sta ge in their
migratory wanderings. In the Medinet Habu reliefs, both they a nd the Tjekker
have feathered head-dresses and round shields.

The rebuff inflicted upon these aggressive peoples is splendidly depict ed in
the reliefs; the naval battle, in particular, being unique among Egy ptian
representations. The verbal descriptions are sandwiched into a boast ful
speech addressed by Ramesses III to his sons and his courtiers. The fo llowing
extracts omit sentences from which nothing historical is to be lea rned:

The foreign countries made a plot in their islands. Dislodged and scatter ed
by battle were the lands all at one time, and no land could stand befo re
their arms, beginning with Khatti, Kode, Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alasiy a...A
camp was set up in one place in Amor, and they desolated its peop le and its
land as though they had never come into being. They came, the f lame prepared
before them, onwards to Egypt. Their confederacy consist ed of Peleset,
Tjekker, Sheklesh, Danu, and Weshesh, united lands, and th ey laid their hands
upon the lands to the entire circuit of the earth, the ir hearts bent and
trustful 'Our plan is accomplished!' But the heart of t his god, the lord of
the gods, was prepared and ready to ensnare them li ke birds...I established
my boundary in Djahi, prepared in front of the m, the local princes,
garrison-commanders, and Maryannu. I caused to be pr epared the rivermouth
like a strong wall with warships, galleys, and skiff s. They were completely
equipped both fore and aft with brave fighters car rying their weapons and
infantry of all the pick of Egypt, being like roar ing lions upon the
mountains; chariotry with able warriors and all good ly officers whose hands
were competent. Their horses quivered in all the ir limbs, prepared to crush
the foreign countries under their hoofs.

Ramesses then compares himself to Mont, the god of war, and declares himse lf
confident of his ability to rescue his army:

As for those who reached my boundary, their seed is not. Their hearts a nd
their souls are finished unto all eternity. Those who came forward toge ther
upon the sea, the full flame was in front of them at the rivermouth s, and a
stockade of lances surrounded them on the shore.

For the details of the naval defeat, we turn rather to the reliefs th an to
the verbal descriptions, although in the latter the outcome was desc ribed in
the graphic words:

a net was prepared for them to ensnare them, those who entered into the ri
ver-mouths being confined and fallen within it, pinioned in their place s,
butchered and their corpses hacked up.

The artist has managed to combine into a single picture the various phas es of
the engagement. First we see Egyptian soldiers attacking, in an unpe rturbedly
form, the deck of their ship. Opposite them in a vessel, held fa st with
grappling irons, the enemy is in the utmost confusion; two of th em falling
into the water and one looks towards the shore in the hope of m ercy from the
Pharaoh. Another of their vessels, however, displays them m et with a shower
of arrows from the land. The Egyptian fleet now turns hom eward, taking with
it numerous captives helpless and bound. One of them se eking to escape, is
caught by a soldier on the bank. On the way upstre am a capsized vessel is
encountered, with its entire crew flung into the w ater. The defeat of the
invaders is complete. Nine separate ships have suf ficed to tell the tale, and
there remains to be recounted only the present ation of the prisoners and the
other details of the triumph to Amen-Re.

The external troubles of Egypt were not yet at an end. In year 11, the Lib yan
peril flared up again. On this occasion, the enemy is specifically sta ted to
have been the Meshwesh. A circumstantial account of Ramesses's deal ings with
these people is given in the closing section of the great papyr us from which
the retrospect at the beginning of this chapter was quoted a nd which much
will be said later.

The Libu and Meshwesh were settled in Egypt and had seized the towns of t he
Western Tract from Kikuptah (Memphis) to Keroben, and had reached the G reat
River on its every side. They it was who had desolated the towns of X ois for
may years when they were in Egypt. Behold, I destroyed them, sla in at one
stroke. I laid low the Meshwesh, Libu, Asbat, Kaikash, Shayte p, Hasa, and
Bakan, overthrown in their blood and made into heaps. I ma de them turn back
from trampling upon the boundary of Egypt. I took of tho se whom my sward
spared many captives, pinioned like birds before my horse s, their women and
their children in tens of thousands, and their catt le in number like hundreds
of thousands. I settled their leaders in strong holds called by my name. I
gave to them troop-commanders and chiefs of tri bes, branded and made into
slaves stamped with my name, their women and th eir children treated likewise.
I brought their cattle to the House of Amu n, made for him into everlasting
herds.

Two great inscriptions at Medinet Habu, both dated in year 11, deal exclus
ively with the same struggle, but their flowery language, in which many fo
reign and otherwise unknown words occur, conveys far less information th an
the passage above quoted. There is only one addition. We learn that Mes her,
the Chief of the Meshwesh, was taken prisoner, and that his father Ke per
appealed for mercy in vain. This incident is also depicted in the stri king
scene where are enumerated the hands and phalli of the slain, the cap tives,
the arms taken as booty, and the cattle added to the herds of the T heban god
and those otherwise disposed of. The numbers given, though grea t, are by no
means incredible. Another picture shows the Egyptians fighti ng from two
fortresses, a clear indication that they had been on the defen sive.

At Medinet Habu, there are several scenes of campaigns in Asia which sti ll
require consideration. On one wall, Ramesses III is seen attacking t wo
Hittite towns, one of them labeled 'The town of Arzawa'. In another sce ne,
the town Tunip is being stormed, and a third town, Amor,is on the poi nt of
surrendering. All these pictures are clearly anachronisms and must h ave been
copied from originals of the reign of Ramesses II. There is, howe ver, ample
evidence that the designers of Medinet Habu borrowed greatly fr om the
neighboring Ramesseum. Confirmation is given in the papyrus cited a bove. This
has no mention of a Syrian campaign, still less of one again st the Hittites.
All that is said is that Ramesses III 'destroyed the Seir ites in the tribes
of the Shosu'; the Shosu have been already mention ed as the Bedouins of the
desert bordering the south of Palestine. 'The mo untain of Se'ir' named on an
obelisk of Ramesses II is the Edomite mounta in referred to in several
passages of the Old Testament. It looks as thou gh the defeat of these
relatively unimportant tent-dwellers was the utmo st which Ramesses III could
achieve after his struggle with the Mediterran ean hordes, and this allusion
closes for more than two centuries the sto ry of Egypt's strivings to achieve
an Asiatic empire.

Although Ramesses III reigned for a full thirty-one years and celebrat ed a
Sed-festival perhaps at the beginning of his thirtieth, there are sig ns of
various internal troubles, particularly towards the end of his lif e. At one
moment the monthly rations due to the workmen engaged on the roy al tomb were
sadly in debt, and this led to strikes ended only by the inte rvention of the
vizier To, who was, however, unable to supply more than ha lf what was
actually required. Far more serious was a conspiracy which thr eatened the
life of the monarch himself. From early in the reign, there h ad been
indications that trouble was likely to arise over the successio n. To judge
from the latest date recorded at Medinet Habu, that great temp le had been
completed by year 12, and it is a curious fact that thoug h, as in the
Ramesseum, many of the king's sons were there depicted, as we ll as the queen
in a few instances, no names were ever filled in, though s pace was left for
them. And yet, it is certain that the son who actually s ucceeded as Ramesses
IV was already alive, since his mummy, discover ed in the tomb of Amenophis
II, was that of a man at least fifty yea rs of age and probably more'. Without
speculating on this and much furth er evidence of the kind which complicates
the history of all the next reig ns, we turn now to the graphic story related
in several papyri of which t he most important is preserved in the Turin
Museum. This magnificent manus cript, written in large hieratic majuscules
befitting a state docume nt of the highest importance, suggests that its
original home may have be en the temple-library at Medinet Habu. Omitting, for
the moment, the lo ng but fragmentary introduction which precedes the main
narrative, we n ow quote the first entry:

The great enemy Paibekkamen who had been major-domo. He was brought on acc
ount of his having attached himself to Tiye and the women of the hare m. He
made common cause with them and proceeded to carry their words outsi de to
their mothers and their brothers and sisters who were there, sayi ng 'Collect
people and foment hostility' so as to make rebellion against t heir lord. And
they set him in the presence of the great officials of t he Place of
Examination and they examined his crimes and found that he h ad committed
them. And his crimes took hold of him, and the officials w ho examined him
caused his punishment to cleave to him.

Twenty-nine of the criminals, classified in five categories, are dealt wi th
in similar manner, besides six wives not individually specified. A curi ous
fact is that a number of the men's names have been deliberately disgui sed,
apparently on account of some overauspicious word that entered into t heir
composition. Thus a certain butler--very high court-officials were of ten
butlers in Ramesside times--assuredly did not bear the name Mesedsur e' here
credited to him. Mesed-means 'hates' and the real name will have b een
Mersure' 'Re loves him'. The harem, in which the plot was hatche d, is termed
'the harem in accompanying', presumably one not station ed in a particular
place like those of Memphis and of Miwer in the Fayou m, but one which
accompanied Ramesses upon his journeying. Many harem offi cials were involved,
the overseer and deputy-overseer, two scribes, and s ix inspectors, besides
the wives of the door-keepers. More dangerous th an most of those arrested was
a troop-commander from Cush. He had been sub orned by his sister, one of the
harem-women, and had their schemes prosper ed they might have stirred the
whole of Nubia into revolt, especially if a ssisted by the general Paiis. It
is characteristic of the age that among b oth accused and judges, several were
foreigners: Ba'almahar was clear ly a Semite, Inini is described as a Libyan,
and the name of Peluka procla ims him a Lycian. The more prominent among the
guilty were allowed to peri sh by their own hand. Others who were left
unharmed 'died of their own acc ord' possibly from starvation. Cutting off of
the nose and ears was the fa te of four officials who in spite of precise
instructions given to them h ad caroused with women of the harem and with
Paiis. Only one man, a standa rd-bearer, got off with nothing worse than a
severe reprimand. This w as a person who together with two of the four just
mentioned, had fou nd a place among the judges when first appointed. It is
strange that so li ttle should be learnt about Tiye; the lady around whom the
entire plot cen tered. Also, her son Pentawere, possibly the boy whom the
conspirators we re planning to place upon the throne, is mentioned only very
casually as o ne of those who 'died of their own accord'.

Further light is thrown upon the conspirators' machinations by the other f
ragmentary papyri dealing with the case. A former overseer of cattle had i
nduced a learned scribe to write magical spells and to make waxen images w
hich were to be smuggled into the harem, but it is expressly said that t he
ploy was unsuccessful and that the culprits met with the fate that th ey
deserved. It still remains to discuss the nature of these extraordina ry
documents. A first step in the right direction was taken by Breasted, w ho
noticed that in one place where Ramesses III is mentioned, he receiv es the
epithet 'the great god' reserved for kings already deceased. He con cluded
that though Ramesses had ordered the trial, he had been severely wo unded and
had died before the criminals were brought to trial. Unhappil y, in Breasted's
day our knowledge of Late-Egyptian syntax was not suffici ently advanced to
enable him to translate the damaged introduction of t he Turin papyrus
correctly. It is the merit of de Buck to have seen that i nstead of the king
there giving an order in the present tense, the whole t ext is a narrative of
past events fictitiously put into the mouth of the d ead monarch. After
enumerating the judges whom he had appointed and quoti ng the words of his
instruction to them, he continues as follows:

And they went and examined them, and they caused to die by their own han ds
those whom they caused to die, though I know not whom, and they punish ed the
others also, though I know not whom. But I had charged them very st rictly
saying 'Take good heed and beware lest punishment be inflicted up on anyone
crookedly by an official who is not over him'; thus I spoke to t hem (the
judges) again and again. And as for all that has been don e, it is they who
have done it; let all that they have done fall upon the ir heads. For I am
exempted and protected everlastingly, being among the r ighteous kings who are
in the presence of Amen-Re', King of the Gods, a nd in the presence of Osiris,
the Ruler of Eternity.

This passage reads like an apologia on Ramesses III's part for an excessi ve
severity or even some degree of injustice which had been charged again st him.
The narrative as presented to us was evidently compiled by comma nd of
Ramesses IV, and it will soon be seen how eager the son was to displ ay his
deceased father's reign as a period of clear generosity. That Rames ses III
himself ordered the trial cannot be reasonably doubted, but the no te of
self-pardon put into his mouth may well have been the invention of h is
successor. There is no solid ground for supposing that the conspiracy w as
either wholly or half successful. The mummy of Ramesses III found in t he
cache at Der el-Bahri is stated by Maspero to have been that of a man a bout
65 years of age, and no trace of wounds is reported. Nor is there a ny reason
for dating the plot towards the end of the reign. It may have oc curred much
earlier. No mention of it is found in the great manuscript n ow to be
described.

Papyrus Harris No. 1, in the possession of the British Museum, is the mo st
magnificent of all Egyptian state archives. It is a document 133 feet l ong by
16 1/2 inches high containing 117 columns of hieratic writi ng of an amplitude
that could only belong to an original of the utmost imp ortance. The somewhat
vague information that has survived with regard to i ts discovery suggests
that it, like the conspiracy papyri, once belong ed to the records of the
great temple of Medinet Habu. The opening page su mmarizes the benefactions
bestowed by Ramesses III upon the various divini ties of the entire land, and
here again he is clearly represented as a de ad king speaking in his own
person. Next, a fine colored picture represen ts the king worshipping before
Amen-Re', Mut, and Chons, the three princip al deities of his Theban capital.
In a long narrative passage he then desc ribes in rhetorical, self-laudatory
fashion all the buildings, temple equi pment, lands, ships, and so forth with
which he has endowed the city. Th is is followed by a lengthy statistical
section giving precise figures f or the donations received from various
sources throughout the entire durat ion of the reign, first the personnel,
cattle, vineyards, fields, ships, t owns in Egypt and Syria given by the king
himself from his first to his th irty-first year, then the amounts obtained by
taxation, and lastly other i tems received in various ways and for other
purposes. This part of the bo ok concludes with a prayer in which Ramesses III
asks that as his reward b lessings may be bestowed upon his beloved son
Ramesses IV. There follow s, written by a different hand, and obviously
furnished by the priestho od of Atum in the north, a Heliopolitan section
composed upon exactly t he same lines and ending in exactly the same way; to
this succeeds a Memph ite section addressed to Ptah and to the associated
deities of the third g reat capital city. The remaining local divinities are
dealt with comprehen sively in a shorter section of special value as showing
what towns were pa rticularly honored by Ramesses III, but the list names no
place farther so uth than Coptos. Then comes a summary in which are added up,
though not wi thout some errors, all the figures previously given, and we see
that the e state of Amen-Re' at Karnak was by far the greatest beneficiary.
Even if t he Pharaoh more frequently resided in Lower Egypt, Thebes remained
the spi ritual center of the kingdom, and its wealth was prodigious.

The great roll ended with that comprehensive survey of past and recent eve nts
from which several quotations have been given above. Doubtless belongi ng to
the era of peace which followed upon the early wars of the reign we re several
expeditions which are graphically described: one to Pwene when ce the
returning ships brought back with them much myrrh to be present ed to the
Pharaoh himself at his downstream capital by the children of th at distant
land's chieftain. Quests for copper to some unlocated mines a nd for turquoise
to the famous site of Serabit el-Khadim in the Peninsu la of Sinai. Ramesses
III had previously boasted of having refrained fr om taking from the temples
one man in every ten to serve in the army, th at having been the custom under
earlier kings. He would now have us belie ve that perfect tranquillity
prevailed throughout the entire land:

I caused the woman of Egypt to walk freely wheresoever she would unmolest ed
by others upon the road. I caused to sit idle the soldiers and the char iotry
in my time, and the Sherden and the Kehek in their villages to l ie at night
full length without any dread.

Some internal disturbances there may indeed have been, apart from the form
idable plot above treated at length. There was trouble in Athribis wi th a
vizier who was removed from his office. It may have been on this occa sion
that, contrary to previous custom, To was granted the vizierate of bo th
halves of the country. The final retrospect was addressed to all the of
ficials and military officers of the land, and concluded by urging th em to
show loyal service to the new king Ramesses IV. Perhaps that was t he real
purpose of this voluminous composition.

Born/Died ca. 1060-1108 BCE
His ruling name was "Neferkare-Setpenre"and he was the Pharoah of Egypt ( XX
Dynasty) from about 1123 to 1104 BCE.
Sources:
1. Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 425.
2. Page, J.D. and Oliver, R. (eds) "The Cambridge History of Africa" Vo l. I,
pp.    872, chart.
3.  Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pps.152 & 209.

Ramesses IX was the eighth king of the Twentieth Dynasty. He is thoug ht to
have reigned for about seventeen or more years. During his reign, th ere was a
scandal in which the tombs in the Theban necropolis were being r obbed. There
were also campaigns by Libyan bandits. He had a son, Montuher khopshef, who
did not live to succeed Ramesses. His tomb was found in t he Valley of the
Kings.

Additional Sources:
Complete Valley of the Kings, The (Tombs and Treasures of Egypt's Greate st
Pharaohs) Reeves, Nicholas; Wilkinson, Richard H. 1966 Thames and Huds on Ltd
IBSN 0-500-05080-5
Guide to the Valley of the Kings Siliotti, Alberto 1997 Barnes & Noble Boo ks
ISBN 0-7607-0483-x
Valley of the Kings Weeks, Kent R. 2001 Friedman/Fairfax ISBN 1-5866-3295- 7
Valley of the Kings Heyden, A. Van Der   Al Ahram/Elsevier

Born/Died ca. 1110-1069 BCE
His ruling name was "Menmaetre-Setpenptah" and he was the Pharoah of Egy pt
(XX Dynasty) from about 1094 to 1064 BCE.  He was the last of the Rames side
pharoahs although at least one of the early pharoahs of the XXI dynas ty had a
Ramesside name.  The compiled genealogies of the subsequent sever al
generations (1) are impossible to reconcile with the historical informa tion
available (2), the primary problem appearing to be that the genealogi es of
the Tanite pharoahs of the XXI dynasty and the High Priests of Am un at Thebes
appear to have been scrambled. The following is William L. "T oby" Dills
attempt to unscramble them.
Sources:
1. Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 425.
2. Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds .)
"The      Cambridge Ancient History" 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #2A, pp.643-657.
3. Page, J.D. and Oliver, R. (eds) "The Cambridge History of Africa" Vo l. I,
pp.    872, chart.
4.  Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pps.152 & 209.

Ramesses XI was the tenth and the last king of the Twentieth Dynasty as we ll
as the New Kingdom. The reign of this king was a period of turmoil. Ram esses
was not a very energetic or vital ruler. The viceroy of Nubia, Paneh si, went
from Elephantine to Thebes to try to stop the unrest that was ari sing from
contention over the region that was between the high priest of A mon and
others. At the same time there was a famine and was called the "Ye ar of the
Hyena." Hrihor was left in Thebes by Panehsi to control the affa irs there. He
soon assumed the role of the high priest of Amon and eventua lly became the
vizier as well. This was the cause of the eventual downfa ll of Panehsi.
Panehsi rebelled and stopped Egypt's domination in Nubia. H rihor administered
the affairs of Egypt while Ramesses XI remained in secl usion. Upon the death
of Ramesses, Hrihor and Smendes divided Egypt betwe en themselves. Ramesses
was technically pharaoh until his death, but Hrih or was the ruler of Upper
Egypt for all practical purposes. Ramesses' dea th marked the end of the
Twentieth Dynasty and the New Kingdom. His to mb is located in the Valley of
the Kings.

Tomb Information:
Tomb KV4, located in the Valley of the Kings on the West Bank at Luxor (an
cient Thebes)  has been known and open since antiquity (though not op en to
the public now), and it received many ancient tourists, as evidenc ed by the
Demotic Egyptian, Greek , Latin, Coptic and later, French and En glish
graffiti on its walls, and was noted by the French expedition to Egy pt in the
late 18th century. It was used as a workshop during the 21st Dyn asty by
Pinudjem for the purpose of stripping the funerary equipment fr om KV20
(Hatshepsut), KV34 (Tuthmosis III) and KV38 (Tuthmosis I) during t he process
of moving the mummies to the other locations such as KV35's mum my cache. At
this time, Egypt's economy was failing and apparently the val uable gold and
other materials were needed to bolster its treasuries. Duri ng the Christian
period, it became a residence and a stable, as did oth er tombs in the valley.
Later, Howard Carter used the tomb as a storero om and dining hall while he
worked to clear the tomb of Tutankhamen. Howev er, it was only cleared in 1979
by John Romer for the Brooklyn Museum. Mo re recently, Richard Wilkinson and
his University of Arizona team complet ed an epigraphic and iconographic
recording of this tomb, as well as othe rs in the Valley.
Though there is no evidence of any flooding within this tomb, KV4 has a cr ack
between the columns and the roof of the burial chamber that was probab ly the
result of the dessication of the limestone. Also, an apparent ancie nt repair
was made to the lower edge of the overhand at the end of the ent ry approach.
Here several beams had been placed to help support the ceilin g, as evidenced
by their holes. A substantial vertical crack zigzags throu gh the center of
the overhand and displacement slippage is readily eviden t. There are large
cracks also in the walls of the upper corridors, that h ave resulted in the
loss of plaster and the wall surfaces, particularly wi thin the entrance and
the first corridor.

It would seem that while tomb KV4, located just outside the main eastern g
roup of tombs and a little further up a narrow wadi beyond the tomb of Yu la
and Tuya, was dug for Ramesses XI, who was the last ruler of Egypt's 20 th
Dynasty, it was abandoned without ever being used for this king's buri al
(though it is relatively complete in the basic architectural elemen ts of this
period for tombs). In fact, the first pillared hall and buri al chamber were
left unfinished, with the decorative theme only reaching t he first of the
corridors. Were this tomb open to the public, it wou ld be of little interest,
its main attraction simply being that it was t he last of the Royal tombs to
be built in the Valley of the Kings.

The tomb consists of an initial entrance, a first corridor followed by a r
elatively sharp descending ramp, with a second, and then a third corrid or
prior to reaching the undecorated and undug ritual well room. The entra nce
and first two corridors have a shallow slope, and in the second corrid or we
find a pair of rectangular niches in the usual positions, near the c orridor's
entrance, on the north and south walls. The unfinished pillar ed hall follows,
after which a ramp leads into the unfinished burial chamb er with a deep
burial shaft in its center. Interestingly, within the buri al chamber the
pillars are rectangular rather then square. The ceili ng is vaulted. While
there were no barriers in this tomb, pivot holes f or door leafs were present
in most of the inner corridors and chambers.

The shaft within the burial chamber was an unusual feature, leading John R
omer to believe there might have been additional chambers below. He stated :

"Ramesses (XI)'s tomb had one feature which intrigued us: in the splend id
vaulted burial chamber...., more than 250 ft. into the cliff face the re was,
instead of the usual granite sarcophagus...., a vast shaft, so me 14 ft. by 10
ft., which dropped straight down into pitch darkness....

To clear it out was going to be an awkward job. But once we had done it, w hat
might we not find? A hidden door to another corridor, and other chambe rs?"

Obviously, Romer was disappointed that the shaft led only down to its flo or
below, with no mysteries left to be found.

The only decorations discovered within the tomb were on the doorway betwe en
the entrance and the first corridor, and at the beginning of the fir st
corridor. In the doorway lintel between the entrance and the first corr idor,
we find Ramesses XI kneeling between two goddess flanked by the s un disk,
Atem. We also find the king's name on the door jamb.

Within the first corridor, which was plastered over with a thick, yellowi sh
coating, only preliminary sketches in red are present. Here, the ki ng is
found before gods on either side near  the corridor's entrance. On t he south
wall, the king faces Amun-Re Horakhty, who has four ram heads, a nd the
Goddess of the West. On the north side the king stand before a hawk -headed
Amun Re Horakhty. Part of this scene was repaired by Pinudjem, w ho was a High
Priest of Amun. In the scene, Pinudjem substituted his own n ame for that of
the king. It would seem that Pinudjem had thought to be bu ried here himself,
but like Ramesses XI, he also ended up rejecting the id ea.

Related to Ramesses XI, the major artifact finds in this tomb consist ed of
three foundation deposits inscribed with his name that were unearth ed at the
mouth of the burial shaft deep  within the tomb. Other items inc luded
limestone chips left by the tomb builders, and small fragments of fa ience,
gold gesso and cedar wood, mostly found on the floors of the inn er corridors
and chambers. However, due to the work of Pinudjem, intrusi ve items were also
found. These items included a two large fragmen ts of a blue faience vessel
inscribed with the Horus name of Tuthmosis I a nd Ramesses II (though which
king it belonged to is unknown), gilded ges so from the coffin of Tuthmosis
III, as well as some chopped up funerary s tatuettes from that king's tomb,
who of which bore hieroglyphs incorporati ng Tuthmosis III's throne name,
fragments of the coffin of Queen Hatsheps ut and a crude and three "lost
contour" calcite shabtis of Ramesses I V. We are also told that a beeswax
figure, basically a sculptor's mode l, of Ramesses XI standing before the
goddess Ma'at was also found in KV 4, though the references on this are scant.

There were also intrusive burials within the tomb, evidenced by 22nd Dynas ty
remains of a wooden coffin and the bones of as many as three bodies. Th ey
were found in the shaft of the burial chamber. Evidencing the Coptic oc
cupation of the tomb were a mud floor between the second and third corrido rs
and a stone wall between the well shaft and the pillared hall.

Currently, we do not know the location of Ramesses XI's actual burial, b ut it
has been suggested that he may have been laid to rest somewhere in N orthern
Egypt.

Rudamun was the final pharaoh of the Twenty-third dynasty of Ancient Egypt. His
titulary simply reads as Usermaatre Setepenamun, Rudamun Meryamun, and
excludes the Si-Ese or Netjer-Heqawaset epithets employed by his father and
brother.

He was the younger son of Osorkon III, and the brother of Takelot III. He is a
poorly attested pharaoh of this Dynasty according to Kenneth Kitchen's seminal
book on The Third Intermediate Period of Egypt. Kitchen credits him with a
brief reign of about 2-3 years due to the few contemporary documents known for
him. These include a small amount of decorative work done on the Temple of
Osiris Heqadjet, several stone blocks from Medinet Habu, and a vase. In recent
years, two fragments of a faience statuette bearing Rudamun's name from
Hermopolis) have been discovered.[2] This recent discovery suggests that
Radamun managed to preserve the unity of his father's large kingdom in Upper
Egypt ranging from at least Herakleopolis to Thebes during his reign.

Some Egyptologists such as David Aston have argued that Rudamun is the
anonymous Year 19 king attested at Wadi Gasus. However, recent archaeological
discoveries favour Takelot III instead since a donation stela from Takelot
III's Year 13 was discovered in February 2005 at Dakhla Oasis by an expedition
from New York’s Columbia University.[3]. Another alternative is that the Year
19 Wadi Gasus ruler was a certain Shoshenq VII, a new unknown ruler as
proposed by G. Broekman in a paper based on Nile Level Text No.3 which is
dated to Year 5 of a Theban king who ruled after Osorkon III.[4] However,
there are serious doubts among scholars as to whether Nile Level Text No.3
contained the nomen Shoshenq rather than Takelot. Jean Legrain who had the
first opportunity to survey the Karnak Quay Texts did not read any royal nomen
in this inscription--from his 1898 publication of the Quay Texts--since the
stone had already been badly eroded. The stone would have been in even worse
shape when Von Beckerath inspected the document in 1953 and assumed the
surviving traces on the Text No.3 referred to a king Shoshenq, rather than a
Takelot.[5]

Soon after Rudamun's death, his kingdom quickly fragmented into several minor
city states under the control of various local kings such as Peftjaubast of
Herakleopolis, Nimlot at Hermopolis, and Ini at Thebes. Peftjaubast married
Irbastudjanefu, Rudamun's daughter, and was, therefore, Rudamun's
son-in-law.[6] Nothing is known about Rudamun's final burial place and the
surviving contemporary information from his reign suggests that it was quite
brief.

Born ca. 1635 BCE
She was described as a sister, daughter and grand daughter of kings and w as
probably descended from earlier rulers of the XVII and XVIII dynasti es (1).
Sources:
1. Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds .)
"The Cambridge Ancient History" 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #1, pp.70-71.

reigned 1 year?

reigned 3 years

Pharoah in 17th Dynasty, 2nd Intermediate Period, ruled from Elphanti ne to
Abydos, Nile River valley, Egypt. Born ca 1658 BCE, died 1558 BCE. H is throne
name, Sa-nakht-en-re, means "Perpetuated like Re."
Sources: 1. Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberge r, E.
(eds.) 'The Cambridge Ancient History' 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #1, pp.70-73 .

Source: My lines by Robert Brian Stewart, http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~c
ousin/html/d0005/g0000590.html#I24723
Vizier under (probably) Mernerferre Ay, king of all Egypt circa 1713-16 90
BCE. Probably identical with Senebhanef, controller of the hall, s on of
Yauyebi, vizier under (probably) Wahibre Yauyebi, king c. 1723-17 13 and
Renressonb, certainly daughter of Id, Herald of Adhur-nakht.

Possibly granddaughter of Amenemhet III, king of Egypt (XII) 1844 BCE-17 97
BCE, died-1797, buried in the pyramid at Dahshur or Hawara, ruled 46 ye ars.
However, I am not including it in the genealogy, as I have only se en it from
one source and cannot verify with other Egytian sources. JCT 5/ 12/03

Near a village called Lisht, about halfway between Dahshur and Maidum, a nd
just south of the city of El Aiyat lies the ancient area known as Lish t. 
There are ruins of a residential town, called Itytawi,  founded by t he first
two 12th Dynasty Kings.  However, the two main attractions, thou gh both
considerably ruined, are the Pyramids of Amenemhet I and Senwosr et I. Neither
of the pyramids have the substance of those to the Nor th in the
Cairo/Memphis/Sakkara area.

Amenemhet I's Pyramid is partly constructed of limestone blocks taken fr om
Old-Kingdom monuments.  The granite door removed from the north entran ce and
now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, covered little, as that entran ce is
inaccessible. Originally, it was at the back of a chapel which le ad to an
access shaft.  However, there is water in the burial chamber, whi ch makes it
impossible to visit.

To the east and on a lower terrace is the funerary temple, which is al so in
ruins.  Little remain of this, but inside the enclosure are royal to mbs and
mastabas, which include that of the visier Antefoker.  The to mb of Senebtisi,
where a number of papyri were discovered, lies outside t he southwest corner
of the wall.

Born/Died ca. 1323-1279 BCE. Buried: Dayr al-Bahri, Valley of the Kings, L
uxor, Egypt. His actual name was "Men.maat.re'Sety mer.en.ptah" His Thro ne
name, Men-maat-re, means "Eternal is the Justice of Re." His birth na me and
epithet, Seti Mery-en-ptah, means "He of the God Seth, Beloved of P tah, and
he was the Pharoah of Egypt (XIX Dynasty) from about 1296 to 12 79 BCE. Stuart
(1) notes the suggestion that Rameses I and possibly Se ti I were married to
heiresses of the royal family descended from Amenhot ep III.  A specific
marriage for either is not mentioned in the Cambrid ge history (2), although
it is not unreasonable. In any case the descent f rom Amenhotep III is not
likely to have been through his primary wif e, as heirs of that marriage would
probably have taken precedence in the s uccession earlier. In Thebes, he built
his tomb, located in the Vall ey of the Kings. Buried with him were over 700
Shabti

Sources:
Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 425.
Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds.) "T he
Cambridge Ancient History" 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #2A, pp.217-225.
Armies of the Pharaohs Healy, Mark 1992 Osprey Publishing ISBN 1 85532 9 39 5
Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian; Nicholson, Paul 1995 Har ry N.
Abrams, Inc., Publishers ISBN 0-8109-3225-3
Egyptian Treasures from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo Tiradritti, Francesc o,
Editor 1999 Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-3276-8
Egyptian Warfare and Weapons Shaw, Ian 1991 Shire Publications LTD IS BN 0
7478 0142 8
History of Ancient Egypt, A Grimal, Nicolas 1988 Blackwell None Stated
Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian 2000 Oxford University Pre ss
ISBN 0-19-815034-2
Warrior Pharaoh, The: Rameses II and the Battle of Qadesh Healy, Mark 19 93
Osprey Publishing ISBN 1 84176 039 0

Seti I was the father of perhaps Egypt's greatest rulers, Ramesses II, a nd
was in his own right also a great leader.  His birth name is Seti Mery-
en-ptah, meaning "He of the god Seth, beloved of Ptah.  To the Greek s, he was
Sethos I, and his throne name was Men-maat-re, meaning "Etern al is the
Justice of Re".  He ruled Egypt for 13 years (though some Egypto logists
differ on this matter, giving him a reign of between 15 and 20 yea rs) from
1291 through 1278 BC. In order to rectify the instability under t he Amarna
kings, he early on set a policy of major building at home a nd a committed
foreign policy.
Seti was the son of Ramesses I and his queen, Sitre. He probably rul ed as
co-regent, evidenced by an inscription on a statue from Medamud. Se ti married
into his own military caste. His first wife was Tuya, who was t he daughter of
a lieutenant of charioteers. His first son died young, b ut his second son was
Ramesses II.  There was also a daughter, Tia, a nd a second daughter named
Henutmire, who would become a minor queen of Ra messes II.

This was truly a great period in Egypt, and perhaps the greatest in regar ds
to art and culture. In the building projects that Seti I undertook, t he
quality of the reliefs and other designs were probably never surpass ed by
later rulers.  He is responsible for beginning the great Hypostyle H all in
the Temple of Amun at Karnak, which his son Ramesses II later finis hed. 
Seti's reliefs are on the north side and their fine style is evide nt when
compared to later additions.

However, at Abydos, he built perhaps the most remarkable temple ever const
ructed in Egypt.  It has seven sanctuaries, dedicated to himself, Ptah, Re
-Harakhte, Amun-Re, Osiris, Isis and Horus.  Interestingly, in this temp le a
part called the Hall of Records or sometimes the Gallery of Lists, Se ti is
shown with his son before a long official list of the pharaohs begin ning with
the earliest times.  However, the names of the Amarna pharaohs a re omitted,
as if they never existed, and the list jumps from Amenhotep I II directly to
Horemheb.

Behind the temple at Abydos Seti build another remarkable structure kno wn as
the Osireion.  Completely underground, originally a long tunnel deco rated
with painted scenes from the  Book of Gates led to a huge hall.  Th is whole
structure with a central mound surrounded by canal water was symb olic of the
origins of life from the primeval waters.  It was here that Se ti rested after
his death and before being taken to his tomb in the Vall ey of the Kings.

Other building projects included a small temple at Abydos dedicated to Set i's
father, Ramesses I, his own mortuary temple at Thebes, and his best bu ilding
project of all, his tomb in the Valley of the Kings.  This tomb, o ne of the
few actually completed, was without doubt the finest in the Vall ey of the
Kings, as well as the longest and deepest.

Militarily, Seti let an expedition to Syria as early as his first ye ar as
king.  This was probably understandable, as he had also led campaig ns to
Palestine during the last months of his father, Ramesses I's rule. T his, and
other campaign during his first six years of rule are document ed on the outer
north and east wall of the great temple of Amun at Karna k. There is also a
stele from Beth-Shan, for some time a major Egyptian ce nter in Palestine,
that records his early  campaign.  The attack was up t he coast of Gaza, where
he secured wells along the main trade route, and t hen taking the town, before
pressing on further north.  He took the ar ea up to Tyre before returning to
the fortress of Tjel in the north east D elta.

There was a latter attack on Syria and Lebanon where he (and the Egyptian s)
fought the Hittites for the first time.  One scene at Karnak shows t he
capture of Kadesh, which would  also be attacked later by Ramesses I I.  He
also fought campaigns against the Libyans of the western deser t. We further
learn that in year eight of Seti's reign, he had to cru sh a rebellion in
Nubia in the region of Irem, where he carried off over s ix hundred prisoners. 
However, apparently this was a minor problem as t he campaign only lasted for
seven days.

Seti's mummy is said to be the finest of all surviving royal mummies, thou gh
it was not found in his tomb.  Rather, it was found in the Deir el-Baha ri
cache in 1881.  Dockets on the mummy show that it had been restored dur ing
the reign of the High Priest of Amun, Heribor (1080-1074 BC) and aga in in
year 15 of Smendes (about 1054 BC).

His throne name, User-kheperu-re Setep-en-re, means "Powerful are the Mani
festations of Re, Chosen by Re." His birth name and epithet, Seti mer-en-p
tah, means "He of the god Seti, Beloved of Ptah."

Birth: ABT 1350 BCE
Death: ABT 1293 BCE in Egypt

Born ca. 1240 BCE, Died 1185 BCE
Stuart (1) notes that Settipani, a noted scholar of such things, shows Set
hnaknte as son of Ramesses II and the Hittite wife, whose Egyptian na me is
given in the Cambridge history (2).  This latter source shows no par entage
for Sethnakhte (3) however. Dodson (5) suggests he was grands on of Ramesses
II.  He was the first Pharoah of the XX Dynasty in Egypt un til about 1198 BC
and his ruling name was "Userkhaure".
Sources:
1. Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 425A.
2. Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds .)
"The      Cambridge Ancient History" 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #2A, pp.232.
3.  Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds .)
"The    Cambridge Ancient History" 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #2A, pp.239-241.
4.  Page, J.D. and Oliver, R. (eds) "The Cambridge History of Africa" Vo l. I,
pp.    872, chart.
5.  Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pps.142, 152 & 209.

Refusing to acknowledge the previous two pharaohs, the first king of the 2 0th
Dynasty dated the beginning of his reign to that of Seti II. He probab ly
usurped the throne from Tworse, Seti II’s widow, and later queen-pharao h. He
was at an advanced age when he took the throne but managed to accomp lish
peace and order in a short period of time. His tomb was not complet ed when he
died so he was placed in that Tworse’s. His coffin was fou nd in Amenophis
II's tomb but his mummy has not been found. Sethnakhte w as the father of
Ramesses III and the husband of Ramesses' mother, Tiye-me renese.

Additional Information:
Setnakhte was the first king of Egypt's 20th Dynasty, the last dynas ty of the
New Kingdom. This is the king's birth name that, together with h is epithet,
mereramunre, means "Victorious is Set, Beloved of Amun Re ". He is sometimes
also known as Setnakht and Sethnakht. His throne name w as Userkhaure
Setepenre, meaning "Powerful are the Manifestations of Re, C hosen by Re".
The cloud that surrounds the end of the 19th Dynasty swirls about a charac ter
known as Bay. He was a chancellor who has been referred to as the "kin
gmaker", for he made the claim that it was he who "established the ki ng on
the throne of his father", referring to Siptah. Indeed, he probab ly assisted
Tausert as she ruled Egypt in the name of her stepson, Sipta h. In fact, as
Tausert eventually took on the full regalia of rulership af ter Siptah's
death, it is certainly possible that Bay may have effective ly ruled Egypt.
Originally a scribe to Seti II, we believe that he could h ave been of foreign
blood, perhaps Syrian.

After the death of Tausert, Chancellor Bay may have even ruled Egypt f or a
brief period, for many Egyptologists believe that it was he who is re ferred
to in the Papyrus Harris I as Iarsu (Irsu):

"The land of Egypt was overthrown from without and every man was thrown o ut
of his right; they had no chief for many years formerly until other tim es.
The land of Egypt was in the hands of chiefs and of rulers of towns; o ne slew
his neighbor great and small. Other times having come after it, wi th empty
years, Iarsu, a certain Syrian was with them as chief. He set t he whole land
tributary before him together; he united his companions a nd plundered their
possessions. They made the gods like men and no offerin gs were presented in
the temples."

Actually, the name Iarsu has the meaning, "self-made man", which would ha ve
been a derogatory way of referring to him as an usurper of the thron e, and
irregardless of whether  Chancellor bay is one and the same as Iars u, he had
an evil reputation. However, it is interesting that he was appar ently allowed
a burial in the Valley of the Kings, (KV13). One way or t he other though, is
is very clear that Egypt suffered some amount of turmo il at the end of the
19th Dynasty.

It was Setnakhte, who ended the confusion and reestablished ma'at in the T wo
Lands, though we know very little about him. Almost all of our informat ion
about the king is either from the Papyrus Harris I, which was writt en some 65
years after his death, or from a stela he had erected on the is land of
Elephantine dated to the second year of his reign (though it may h ave been
the first year he was in complete control of Egypt after having s ettled the
earlier confusion).

In fact, we really have no information about how Setnakhte came to the thr
one, though it has been suggested that he may have been a grandson of t he
great king, Ramesses II. That may have been reason enough, consideri ng that
every other king of the 20th Dynasty took Ramesses as part of the ir names,
wishing to emulate the success of their notable predecessor.  Ho wever,
whether he was Ramesses II's grandson or not, judging by his bir th name
(Setnakhte), which makes reference to Seth who was revered by t he 19th
Dynasty kings, there must surely have been some family connecti on with that
earlier period.

The last four pages of the Papyrus Harris I tell us that Senakhte ro se to
power and put down the rebellions fermented by Asiatics, telli ng us that it
was he would relieved the besieged cities of Egypt, bought b ack those who had
gone into hiding and reopened the temples and restored t heir revenue. His
stela at Elephantine also relates that he expelled rebe ls who, on their
flight, left behind the gold, silver and copper they h ad stolen from Egypt,
and with which they had intended to hire reinforceme nts among the Asiatics.

In reality, the dynastic change between the 19th and 20th Dynasties may n ot
have been as much of a problem as the Papyrus Harris makes out. Setnakh te
seems to have kept Hori son of Kama in office as Viceroy of Kush (a kin gdom
in Nubia), who was originally appointed to that position during the r eign of
Siptah. Another Hori, who was a vizier, was also apparently allow ed to remain
in office.

Setnakhte's reign was short, perhaps only two or three years and he may ha ve
come to the throne fairly late in life. He was the father of Egypt's la st
great Egyptian King, Ramesses III by his wife, Tiymerenese. Ramesses I II may
have held a short co-regency with his father.

Upon his death, Setnakhte was buried with full royal honors. Accordi ng to the
Papyrus Harris I, "he was rowed in his king's barge upon the riv er (crossed
the Nile to the west bank), and rested in his eternal house we st of Thebes".
Though we are not sure of the actual reason, he was buri ed in the tomb that
was originally excavated for Queen Twosret (KV14) on t he West bank at Thebes
(modern Luxor) in the Valley of the Kings. He may h ave usurped this tomb
himself because the tomb that he had originally beg un to construct for
himself, KV11, had been abandoned after workers excava ting it broke through
into the adjacent tomb of Ameenmesses (KV10). Anoth er possibility is that his
son, Ramesses III, usurped KV14 for his fathe r, with the intention of
realigning and finishing KV11, where he was burie d, for himself.

Alas, Setnakhte's body was not discovered in KV14, but his coffin was fou nd
during 1898 in the royal cache in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV35 ). It is
possible that his body was that of an unwrapped and unidentifi ed man
discovered on a wooden boat in that tomb.

References:
Chronicle of the Pharaohs (The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dyn
asties of Ancient Egypt) Clayton, Peter A. 1994 Thames and Hudson Ltd IS BN
0-500-05074-0
History of Ancient Egypt, A Grimal, Nicolas 1988 Blackwell None Stated
Monarchs of the Nile Dodson, Aidan 1995 Rubicon Press ISBN 0-948695-20-x
Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian 2000 Oxford University Pre ss
ISBN 0-19-815034-2
Valley of the Kings Weeks, Kent R. 2001 Friedman/Fairfax ISBN 1-5866-3295- 7

Born/Died ca. 990-927 BCE
His actual name was "Hedjkheperre'Setepenre" and he was the first Pharo ah of
XXII Dynasty Egypt at Bubastis from 948-927 BCE.
Sources:
1.  Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 422.
2.  Page, J.D. and Oliver, R. (eds) "The Cambridge History of Africa" Vo l. I,
pp. 881, chart.

Shoshenk I was the first king of the Twenty-second Dynasty and ruled for t
wenty-one years. His name first appeared in a long inscription found at Ab
ydos while he was the 'great chief of the Meshwesh, prince of princes.' H is
father was Nemrat, who was the son of the lady Mehetemwaskhe, died a nd
Shoshenq asked the king at that time to allow a funerary cult to be bui lt at
Abydos in his honor. The king must have been the last Psusennes of t he
Twenty-first Dynasty. Shoshenq's son had married Psusennes' daughter, M akare.
It is possible that the transition from the Twenty-first to the Twe nty-second
Dynasty was a peaceful one. Shoshenq's wife, Kar omat, was t he mother of
Osorkon I who was Shoshenk's successor. Shoshenk did consider able building at
home in Egypt. He added a new colonnaded forecourt wi th a triumphal gate that
formed an extension of the hypostyle hall in t he Amun temple. No work had
been done at Karnak since the end of the Ninet eenth Dynasty. He also had a
successful campaign against the kingdom of Ju dah and the kingdom of Israel.
His tomb is located at Tanis

Born/Died ca. 925-883 BCE
He was Great Priest of Amun.
Sources: Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pp.160.

Shoshenk II is thought to have been the co-regent during the period betwe en
Osorkon I and Takelot I during the Twenty-second Dynasty. His mummy w as found
at Tanis in the tomb of Psusennes I.

Heqakheperre Shoshenq II was an Egyptian king of the 22nd dynasty of Egypt. He
was the only ruler of this Dynasty whose tomb was not plundered by tomb
robbers. His final resting place was discovered within Psusennes I's tomb at
Tanis by Pierre Montet in March 1939. It contained a large number of
jewel-encrusted bracelets and pectorals, along with a beautiful hawkheaded
silver coffin and a gold facemask.[1] Montet later discovered the intact tombs
of two Dynasty 21 kings—Psusennes I and Amenemopet in February and April 1940
respectively. Shoshenq II's prenomen, Heqakheperre Setepenre, means "The
Manifestation of Re rules, Chosen of Re."[

There is a small possibility that Shoshenq II was the son of Shoshenq I. Two
bracelets from Shoshenq II's tomb mention king Shoshenq I while a pectoral was
inscribed with the title 'Great Chief of the Ma Shoshenq,' a title which
Shoshenq I employed under Psusennes II before he became king.[3] These items
may be interpreted as either evidence of a possible filial link between the
two men or just mere heirlooms.

A high degree of academic uncertainty regarding the parentage of this king
exists: some scholars today argue that Shoshenq II was actually a younger son
of Shoshenq I--who outlived Osorkon I and Takelot I--due to the discovery of
the aforementioned items naming the founder of the 22nd Dynasty within his
intact royal Tanite tomb. As Karl Jansen-Winkeln observes in a recent 2005
book on Egyptian chronology: "The commonly assumed identification of this king
with the (earlier) HP and son of Osorkon I does not appear to be very
probable."[4] A forensic examination of Shoshenq II's body by Dr. Douglas
Derry, head of Cairo Museum's anatomy department, reveals that he was a man in
his fifties when he died.[5] Hence, Shoshenq II could have survived beyond
both Osorkon I and Takelot I's combined 48 year reign and ruled Egypt for a
short while before Takelot I came to power since Manetho's Epitome claims that
“3 Kings” intervened between Osorkon I and Takelot I.[6] However, Manetho's
suggested position for these three kings cannot be presently verified and some
writers have suggested they instead ruled in the interregnum between Takelot I
and Osorkon II. One of these poorly known rulers must be the mysterious
Tutkheperre Shoshenq who was an early Dynasty 22 ruler since he is now
monumentally attested in both Lower and Upper Egypt at Bubastis and Abydos
respectively.[7]; a second king would be Shoshenq II himself. Evidence that
Shoshenq II was a short-lived predecessor of Osorkon II is indicated by the
fact that his hawk-headed coffin is stylistically similar to "a hawk-headed
lid" which enclosed the granite coffin of king Harsiese A, from Medinet
Habu.[8] This implies that Shoshenq II and Harsiese A were close
contemporaries since Harsiese A was the son of the High Priest of Amun
Shoshenq C at Thebes and the grandson of Osorkon I. Harsiese A was therefore a
contemporary of Osorkon II who was also a grandson of Osorkon I.

Harsiese's funerary evidence places Shoshenq II roughly two generations after
Osorkon I and dates him to the brief interval between Takelot I and Osorkon I
at Tanis.[9] In this case, the objects naming Shoshenq I in this king's tomb
would simply be heirlooms, rather than proof of an actual filial relation
between Shoshenq I and II. This interpretation is endorsed by Jürgen von
Beckerath, in his 1997 book, Chronologie des Pharaonischen Ägypten who
believes Shoshenq II was actually an elder brother of Takelot I. The view that
Shoshenq II was a son of Takelot I is also endorsed by Norbert Dautzenberg in
a GM 144 paper.[10] Von Beckerath instead places Shoshenq II between Takelot I
and Osorkon II, and gives him an independent reign of 2 years at Tanis.[11]

Kenneth Kitchen, in his latest 1996 edition of '’The Third Intermediate Period
in Egypt (c.1100–650 BC)’', maintains that Shoshenq II was the High Priest of
Amun Shoshenq C, son of Osorkon I and Queen Maatkare, who was appointed as the
junior coregent to the throne but predeceased his father.[12] Kitchen suggests
such a coregency is reflected on the bandages of the Ramesseum mummy of
Nakhtefmut, which contain the dates "Year 3 [Blank]" and "Year 33 Second Heb
Sed" respectively.[13] The “Year 33” date mentioned here almost certainly
refers to Osorkon I since Nakhtefmut wore a ring which bore this king's
prenomen. Kitchen infers from this evidence that Year 33 of Osorkon I is
equivalent to Year 3 of Shoshenq II, and that the latter was Shoshenq C
himself.[14]

Unfortunately, however, the case for a coregency between Osorkon I and
Shoshenq II is unproven because there is no clear evidence that the Year 3 and
Year 33 bandages on Naktefmut's body were made at the same time. These two
dates were not written on a single piece of mummy linen—which would denote a
true coregency. Rather, the dates were written on two separate and unconnected
mummy bandages which were likely woven and used over a period of several
years, as the burial practices of the Amun priests show. A prime example is
the Mummy of Khonsmaakheru in Hamburg which contains separate bandages dating
to Years 11, 12, and 23 of Osorkon I—or a minimum period of 12 Years between
their creation and final use. (Altenmüller: 2000) A second example is the
mummy of Djedptahiufankh, the Third or Fourth Prophet of Amun, which bears
various bandages from Years 5, 10, and 11 of Shoshenq I, or a spread of six
years in their final use for embalming purposes. As these two near
contemporary examples show, the temple priests simply reused whatever old or
recycled linens which they could gain access to for their mummification
rituals. The Year 3 mummy linen would, hence, belong to the reign of Osorkon's
successor. Secondly, none of the High Priest Shoshenq C's own children—the
priest Osorkon whose funerary papyrus, P. Denon C, is located in the Russian
National Library in St. Petersburg or a second priest named Harsiese (likely
king Harsiese A) who dedicated a Bes statue in memory of his father, now in
Durham Museum—give royal titles to their father on their own funerary objects.
The priest Osorkon only calls himself the "son of the High Priest Shoshenq",
rather than the title "King's Son" in his funerary papyri, which would
presumably have been created long after his father's death.[15]

On Harsiese, Jacquet-Gordon notes that "there is no good evidence to suggest
that the 1st prophet Shoshenq C ever claimed or was accorded royal rank."[16]
She observes that Harsiese designated his father as a High Priest of Amun on a
Bes statue without any accompanying royal name or prenomen and stresses that
if Shoshenq C "had [even] the slightest pretensions to royal rank, his son
would not have omitted to mention this fact. We must therefore conclude that
he had no such pretensions."[17][18] This implies that the High Priest
Shoshenq C was not king Shoshenq II. While Shoshenq C's name is indeed written
in a cartouche on the Bes statue, no actual royal name or prenomen is ever
given. An example of a king's son who enclosed his name in a cartouche on a
monument but never inherited the throne was Wadjmose, a son of the New Kingdom
king Thutmose I.

More significantly, Shoshenq II's intact burial did not contain a single
object or heirloom naming Osorkon I--an unlikely situation if Osorkon did
indeed bury his own son. As Kitchen notes, this king's burial goods included a
pectoral that was originally inscribed for the Great Chief of the Ma Shoshenq
I—before the latter became king—and "a pair of bracellets of Shoshenq I as
king but no later objects."[19] This situation appears improbable if Shoshenq
II was indeed Shoshenq C, Osorkon I's son who died and was buried by his
father. Other Dynasty 21 and 22 kings such as Amenemopet and Takelot I, for
instance, employed grave goods which mentioned their parent's names in their
own tombs. This suggests that Heqakheperre Shoshenq II was not a son of
Osorkon I but someone else. Since this pharaoh's funerary objects such as his
silver coffin, jewel pectorals, and cartonnage all give him the unique royal
name Heqakheperre, he was most likely a genuine king of the 22nd Dynasty in
his own right, and not just a minor coregent. Jürgen von Beckerath adopts this
interpretation of the evidence and assigns Shoshenq II a brief independent
reign of 2 Years.[20] The exclusive use of silver for the creation of Shoshenq
II's coffin is a potent symbol of his power because in Egypt, silver was more
precious than gold since it had to be imported from Asia.[

Dr. Derry's medical examination of Shoshenq II's mummy reveals that the king
died as a result of a massive septic infection from a head wound.[21] The
final resting place of Shoshenq II was certainly a reburial because he was
found interred in the tomb of another king, Psusennes I of the 21st Dynasty.
Scientists have found evidence of plant growth on the base of Sheshonq II's
coffin which suggests that Shoshenq II's original tomb had become
waterlogged[22]; hence, the urgent need to rebury him and his funerary
equipment in Psusennes' tomb. As Aidan Dodson writes:

"It is abundantly clear that the presence of Shoshenq II within NRT III
(Psusennes I's tomb) was the result of a reburial. Apart from the presence of
the [king's] coffinettes within an extremely mixed group of secondhand jars,
the broken condition of the trough of the king's silver coffin showed that it
had received rough handling in antiquity."[

Wikipedia®

Born ca. 1367 BCE
Stuart (1) notes the suggestion that Rameses I and possibly Seti I were ma
rried to heiresses of the royal family descended from Amenhotep III.  A sp
ecific marriage for either is not mentioned in the Cambridge history (2 ),
although it is not unreasonable.
Sources:
1. Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 425.
2. Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds .)
"The Cambridge Ancient History" 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #2A, pp. 217-225.

Continuation of Additional information on 19th Dynasty
A fine stela, of year 3 found in the fortress of Kuban in Lower Nubia, rec
ords the successful digging of a well in the land of Ikita where gold w as to
be found in large quantities. The King's Son of Cush confirmed the r eport
that when gold-workers were sent there, only half of them ever arriv ed; the
rest perished of thirst on the way. He added that the well commiss ioned by
Sethos I had proved a failure, unlike that in the Wady Abbad ment ioned above.
Doubtless the supplies of the precious metal from farther nor th were growing
exhausted, whence it became increasingly important to util ize the desert road
of the Wady 'Allaki which opened out eastwards from ne ar Kuban. For our
purpose, however, this inscription is mainly of intere st as corroborating
Ramesses' early appointment as crown-prince and his pa rticipation in all
royal enterprises from his very childhood. We are to ld that he served as
'captain of the army when he was a boy in his tenth y ear', not an
impossibility in the Orient when understood with the necessa ry qualification.

At the very beginning of the reign we have the first Egyptian mention of t he
Sherden, pirates who later undoubtedly gave their name to Sardinia, tho ugh at
this time they may have been dwelling in a quite different pa rt of the
Mediterranean. A stela from Tanis speaks of their having come ' in their
war-ships from the midst of the sea, and none were able to sta nd before
them'. There must have been a naval battle somewhere near the ri ver-mouths,
for shortly afterwards many captives of their race are se en in the Pharaoh's
body-guard, where they are conspicuous by their helme ts with horns, their
round shields and the great swords with which they a re depicted dispatching
the Hittite enemies. Little more than a century la ter, many Sherden are found
cultivating plots of their own; these doubtle ss rewards given to them for
their military services. But they were not t he only foreigners whom Ramesses
II was apt to use in this way. A litera ry papyrus, reflecting the conditions
of his reign, describes an expeditio nary force of 5,000 out of which, besides
520 Sherden, there were thrice t hat number of Libyans belonging to the tribes
of the Kehek and Meshwesh, t ogether with 880 Nubians. Most of these were,
doubtless, prisoners of w ar or the children of sun, for there is no evidence
that mercenaries we re employed at this time, as is often erroneously stated.

A great trial of strength between Egypt and the Hitites could not be delay ed.
Ramose was ambitious to repeat his father's successes in northern Syri a, and
Muwatallis, the grandson of Suppiluliumas, was determined to upho ld the many
treaties that had been made with the petty princes of that rei gn. The first
'Campaign of Victory', as large-scale Asiatic expeditions we re termed in the
Egyptian records, took place in year 4, when Ramesses l ed his troops along
the coast of Palestine as far north as the Nahr el-Ke lb ('Dog-river')a few
miles beyond Beyrut, where he caused a stela, now il legible except for the
date, to be carved facing the sea. To the followi ng year belongs the mighty
struggle in which Ramesses performed a person al feat of arms that he never
tired of proclaiming to his subjects on t he temple-walls built by him. The
story is told in two separate narrativ es which usefully supplement one
another and are illustrated by sculptur ed reliefs accompanied by verbal
explanations. What was at first kno wn to Egyptologists as the Poem of Pentaur
is a long and flowery inscripti on now described simply as the 'Poem', though
it is no more of a poem th an many another historical record from other
reigns. The attribution to Pe ntaur was dropped when it was recognized that he
was merely the scribe res ponsible for a particular copy preserve in a papyrus
shared by the Louv re and the British Museum. The text, often defective in the
individual hie roglyphic examples, has been reconstructed from eight
duplicates in the te mples of Karnak, Luxor, Abydos, and the 'Ramesseum, while
the shorter vers ion known as the 'Report' or the 'Bulletin' has been
similarly edited fr om the same temples, except that it is not found at Karnak
but exists in t he great sanctuary of Abu Simbel.

Ramesses and his army crossed the Egyptian frontier at Sile in the spri ng of
his fifth year, and just a month's marching brought him to a command ing
height overlooking the stronghold of Kadesh from a distance of abo ut 15
miles. Kadesh, now Tell Neby Mend, lies in the angle formed by the n orthward
flowing Orontes and a small tributary entering from the west, a nd as already
stated, its great strategic importance was due to its positi on near the exit
from the high-level valley between the Lebanons called t he Bika'. Along this
valley every north-bound army had necessarily to pa ss if it was to avoid the
narrow route, intersected by rivermouths, alo ng the Phoenician coast. Kadesh
had, as we have seen, been captured by Set hos I, but had since fallen into
Hittite hands. This was Ramesses's obvio us objective and the place which gave
its name to the great battle abo ut to be fought. The Egyptian army was
divided into four divisions of whi ch those bearing the names of Amun , Pre',
and Sutekh have been encounter ed on the stela of Sethos from Beisan, while
the fourth, named after Pt ah of Memphis, appears here for the first time.
Ramesses having passed t he night on the afore-mentioned hilltop south of
Kadesh made an early sta rt next morning, doubtless hoping to have captured
the fortress-town befo re dusk. At the head of the division of Amun he
descended some 600 fe et to the ford of the Orontes just south of Shabtuna,
this evidently the m odern Ribla. Either before or immediately after crossing
the river, two Be douins were brought to him who, on being questioned,
declared that they h ad been with the Hittite king, but that they wished to
desert to the Phara oh. They also stated that the Hittites were still far away
in the la nd of Khaleb (Aleppo) to the north of Tunip. Misled by this
information Ra messes and his body-guard pushed ahead of the rest of the army,
and beg an to set up camp to the north-west of the fortress-city some 6 or 7
mil es from the ford. Obviously the wise course would have been to wait unt il
the rest of his army had reached the left bank, so that all could ha ve been
to wait until the rest of his army had reached the left bank, so t hat all
could have advance together. Instead of this Ramesses placed a dis tance of
some miles between himself and the division of Pre', while the di vision of
Ptah was even farther back. The division of Sutekh was so far aw ay, that it
could play no part in the battle and is not heard of agai n. It was not until
the king was seated upon his golden throne, in his fin al camping-place, that
the unwelcome truth dawned upon him. They had pass ed round to the south of
the town, forded the river, and cut their way thr ough the division of Pre'.
Immediately Ramesses dispatched his vizier to h asten the arrival of the
division of Ptah, which as yet had barely disenga ged itself from the forest
of Robawi. A message was sent to the royal chil dren to flee behind the
palisade of shields surrounding the still unfinish ed camp and to keep clear
of the fight. At this point in the two narrativ es Ramesses's desire for
self-glorification takes the upper-hand, and h is personal prowess is dwelt
upon at great length. He describes himse lf as deserted by his whole army and
surrounded by the vast host of the Hi ttites, whose king had collected for his
crowning enterprise auxiliaries f orm so far west as the Ionian coast and from
his principal neighbors in As ia Minor.

There is much more in this strain before it is told how His Majesty rout ed
the foe single-handed, hurling them into the Orontes. What actually hap pened?
It cannot be doubted that the Egyptian king did display valor on th is
momentous occasion, but both the 'Report' and the sculptured scenes sug gest
that what saved Ramesses was the arrival, in the nick of time, of t he
youthful troops that had been mentioned earlier as stationed in the la nd of
Amor. Perhaps we should think of them as coming up from the neighbor hood of
Tripoli along the road crossed by the Eleutheros river. At all eve nts, they
attacked the Hittites in the rear and completed their conques t. The Egyptian
sources mention by name a number of prominent Hittites w ho were either
drowned in the river or trodden underfoot by Ramesses's hor ses. Among them a
brother of the Hittite king, who himself is describ ed as taking no part in
the fight, but cowering somewhere in the backgroun d. Finally, the 'Poem'
reports the arrival of a letter in which the Hitti te ruler praises the
Pharaoh's valor in the most exaggerated terms and en ds with the words 'Better
is Peace than War; give the breath (of life)'. U nhappily the Boghazkoy
tablets tell a very different tale. On one of the se Khattusilis, Muwatallis's
brother and successor, recalling the even ts of earlier years, relates how
Ramesses was conquered and retreated to t he land of Aba near Damascus, only
to be replaced there by himself as rege nt. From another tablet we learn that
Amor, which had perhaps been subje ct to the Egyptian power since the time of
Sethos, now fell to Muwatalli s, who replaced its king by one of his own
choice. However, if the Egypti an reliefs are to be trusted, after the Kadesh
episode, Ramesses enjoy ed a number of military successes. In year 8 he
reduced a whole seri es of Palestinian fortresses including Dapur in the land
of Amor, thou gh he had also been obliged to storm Ashkelon not far from the
Egyptian bo rder. There is also talk of an occasion when in fighting against a
Hitti te town in the territory of Tunip, he had not even troubled to don his
cor set. Whatever the exact truth of all these warlike proceedings, everythi
ng pointed to the necessity of ending a conflict profitable to neither sid e,
and we shall see that this necessity was fully realized a few years lat er.

It was found politic to cement the friendship between the two great powe rs of
the time in other ways as well, and a lively correspondence spra ng up between
the two Courts. The Boghazkoy fragments include congratulati ons on the
conclusion of the peace treaty addressed to Khattusilis by Rame sses's chief
wife, Nofretari, by his mother Tuia, and by his son Sethikhop shef. At least
eighteen letters from Ramesses himself have survived, thou gh mostly in a poor
state of preservation, and a very curious and interest ing fact has revealed
itself: almost identically worded tablets were se nt not only to Khattusilis,
but also Pudukhipa his queen. Evidently the Hi ttite queen played a much more
important political role that the Que en of Egypt, influential and prominent
though the latter was in all oth er respects. Much of the letter-writing
between the two monarchs turns up on a marriage arranged between Ramesses and
a daughter of Khattusilis. Th is union actually took place in year 34, when
the princess was broug ht to Egypt and there given the name Mahornefrure' or
Manefrure'. The sto ry is told in a great inscription of which copies were
exposed to the publ ic view at Karnak, Elephantine, Abu Simbel, and Amarna,
and doubtless in o ther temples as well. It is difficult to imagine a less
complimentary w ay in which relations with a friendly foreign sovereign could
be presente d. More than half of the hieroglyphic text is devoted to fulsome
eulogi es of the Pharaoh. When at last the submissive author embarks upon a
narra tive of facts, the account which he gives runs roughly as follows: the
Syr ian princes had been in the habit of sending yearly tribute to the Egypti
an king, not even withholding their own children. Only Khatti held aloo f, so
that Ramesses found himself compelled to exact compliance by for ce of arms.
Years of poverty ensued for Khatti, until its king decid ed to make overtures
to his victorious enemy.

Stress is laid on the difficulties of the journey and of the many mountai ns
and narrow defiles through which the travelers had to pass. When the Ph araoh,
for his part, realized the necessity of sending troops to welcome t he
princess and her assemblage, he feared the rain and snow usual in Pales tine
and Syria in time of winter. For this reason he made a great feast f or his
father the god Sutekh praying him to endow mild weather, a mirac le which
actually occurred. The arrival in Egypt was the occasion for gre at rejoicing,
the representation of both nations eating and drinking toget her and 'being of
one heart like brothers, and there being no rancor of o ne towards the other'.
Happily the Hittite maiden's beauty found fav or in Ramesses's sight, and she
was quickly raised to the position of King 's Great Wife; if the wonderful
statue of her royal husband is the Turin M useum tells the truth they must
have been a handsome pair. By a strange ch ance, we have evidence that this
alien spouse was sometimes taken to the h arem kept by the sovereign at Miwer,
a town at the entrance to the Fayyu m. A scrap of papyrus found by Petrie
lists garments and linen belongi ng to her wardrobe.

Though this foreign alliance was by no means, as we have seen, unique in E
gyptian history and may indeed even have been repeated later in the same r
eign, yet it was long remembered, doubtless on account of the outstandi ng
importance of the contracting parties. A fine stela in the Louvre, whi ch was
formerly held to narrate a kind of sequel, is now recognized as a l ater
fiction intended to enhance the prestige of the Theban god Chon s. It tells
how the younger sister of Ramesses II's Hittite queen--here, h owever,
described as the daughter of the king of a remote country called B akhtan--was
possessed by an evil spirit, and how a messenger was dispatch ed to Egypt to
seek medical help. After the skilled physician, Dhutemha b, failed to effect a
cure, an image of Chons himself was sent and quick ly exorcised the evil
spirit. Whether this unhistoric narrative was the pr oduct of Ptolemaic times
or earlier, its substance is truly Egyptian in ch aracter, and recalls the
sending of the Ishtar of Nineveh to heal Amenoph is III.

So proud was Ramesses II of his extensive progeny that it would be wro ng to
omit all reference to the long enumerations of his sons and daughte rs to be
read on the walls of his temples. At Wady es-Sebua in Lower Nub ia over a
hundred princes and princesses were named, but the many lacun ae make it
impossible to compute the exact figure. From several templ es it is clear that
the eldest son was Amenhiwenamef, but his mother is un known and he evidently
died early. It will be recalled that Sethos I provi ded his youthful co-regent
with a large number of concubines, and these wi ll have been responsible for
the vast majority of children about whom noth ing more is heard. The most
highly honored were naturally those born to Ra messes II by his successive
King's Great Wives. Queen Isinofre was the mot her of four who were depicted
together with her and her husband. Foremo st among them is Ramesse, at a given
moment the crown prince, but it was h is younger brother Merenptah, the
thirteenth in the Ramesseum list, who su rvived to succeed his father. Another
son who perhaps never had pretensio ns to the throne was Kha'emwise, the
high-priest (setem) of Ptah at Memphi s. He gained great celebrity as a
learned man and magician, and was rememb ered right down to Graeco-Roman
times. It was doubtless in that capacity t hat he was charged with the
organization of his father's earliest Sed-fest ivals from the first I year 30
down to the fifth in year 42. Ramesses II l ived to celebrate twelve or even
thirteen in all. A daughter of Isinofr e, who bore the Syrian name of
Bint-anat, is of interest for a special rea son: she received the title King's
Great Wife during her father's lifetim e. We cannot overlook the likelihood
that she served at least temporari ly as his companion. Even more frequent are
the references to Queen Nofret ari-mery-en-Mut, the Naptera of an already
mentioned Baghazkoy letter. S he is familiar to Egyptologists as the owner of
the magnificently paint ed tomb in the Valley of the Queens on the west of
Thebes. This hencefort h, the burial-place of many females of the Ramesside
royal family. Ramess es II himself had a tomb at Biban el-Moluk no doubt once
as large and fi ne as that of Sethos I, but now closed owing to its dangerous
condition. T he great king's mummy suffered a fate similar to that of so many
of his pr edecessors, finally finding its way to the cache at Der el-Bahri.
Until mo ved to the mausoleum at Cairo, his corpse could still be seen as th
at of a shrivelled-up old man with a long narrow face, massive jaw, and pr
ominent nose, conspicuous also for his admirably well-preserved teeth.

Born/Died ca. 1100-1043 BCE
Hedjkheperresetepenre Nesbaneb-Djedet
Smedes was an official during the reign of Ramesses XI of the 20th Dynast y.
Smedes began his rule in Tanis. There he was the high priest of Amon a nd the
viceroy of Lower Egypt. Hrihor was also a high priest of Amon and t he viceroy
of Upper Egypt. Together these two kept Ramesses XI in seclusi on on his
estates. Upon the death of Ramesses, Smedes and Hrihor divided E gypt among
them, which started the Twenty-first Dynasty. As a native of Dj ede, Smedes
could have no personal right to the throne. The only reco rd of Smedes' reign
is a damaged inscription on a pillar in a quarry at Ge belen.

Source: My lines by Robert Brian Stewart, http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~c
ousin/html/d0005/g0000590.html#I6240
His tomb, and that in which his wife Nubkhas was buried as well, was o ne of
the first to have been found desecrated by the official inspecti on of royal
tombs conducted by the XX Dynasty.

Born ca. 1685 BCE. died ca. 1622, married ca, 1661.

Born/Died ca. 875-825 BCE
His name was "Hejd.kheper.re'Setep.en.re" and he was Pharoah of Egypt at B
ubastis (XXII Dynasty) from about 850 to 825 BC.  Some sources show h im as a
son of Osorkon II.  Dodson (3) notes his origins as being unkno wn except that
he was probably descended from the earlier pharoahs of t he XXII dynasty and
probably also the XXI dynasty. His lineage would therefore be similar to t hat
of Harsiese, who is one of the persons who was possibly Takelot's fath er and
whose son he is shown as here.
Sources:
1.   Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 420.
2.  Page, J.D. and Oliver, R. (eds) "The Cambridge History of Africa" Vo l. I,       
pp.882, chart.
3.  Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pp.165-166.
4.  Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pp.160.

Takelot II was the sixth king of the Twenty-second Dynasty. He was the fat her
to the high priest of Amun, Osorkon. This Osorkon was responsible f or the
longest inscription on the Bubastite Gate. According to his inscrip tion,
during the fifteenth year of Takelot's reign, there was warfare in t he North
and South and a great convulsion broke out in the land. The remai ns of
Takelot II were found in a usurped sarcophagus from the Middle Kingd om in
Tanis. His Canopic jars and ushabti-figures were found with him as w ell.

Hedjkheperre Setepenre Takelot II Si-Ese was a pharaoh of the Twenty-Third
Dynasty of Ancient Egypt in Middle and Upper Egypt (840 – 815 BC). He has been
identified as the High Priest of Amun Takelot F, son of the High Priest of
Amun Nimlot C at Thebes and, thus, the son of Nimlot C and grandson of king
Osorkon II according to the latest academic research.[1] Most Egyptologists
today including Aidan Dodson,[2] Gerard Broekman,[3] Jürgen von Beckerath,[4]
M.A. Leahy and Karl Jansen-Winkeln accept David Aston's hypothesis[5] that
Shoshenq III was Osorkon II's actual successor at Tanis, rather than Takelot
II. As Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton write in their comprehensive book on the
Royal Families of Ancient Egypt:

“ Takelot II is likely to have been identical with the High Priest Takelot F,
who is stated in [the] Karnak inscriptions to have been a son of Nimlot C, and
whose likely period of office falls neatly just before Takelot II's
appearance.[6] ” 

Takelot II rather ruled a separate kingdom that embraced Middle and Upper
Egypt, distinct from the Tanite Twenty-second Dynasty who only controlled
Lower Egypt. Takelot F, the son and successor of the High Priest of Amun
Nimlot C, served for a period of time under Osorkon II as a High Priest of
Amun before he proclaimed himself as king Takelot II in the final three regnal
years of Osorkon II. This situation is attested by the relief scenes on the
walls of Temple J at Karnak which was dedicated by Takelot F – in his position
as High Priest – to Osorkon II, who is depicted as the celebrant and king.[7]
All the documents which mention Takelot II Si-Ese and his son, Osorkon B,
originate from either Middle or Upper Egypt (none from Lower Egypt) and a
royal tomb at Tanis which named a king Hedjkheperre Setepenre Takelot along
with a Year 9 stela from Bubastis are now recognised as belonging exclusively
to Takelot I. While both Takelot I and II used the same prenomen, Takelot II
added the epithet Si-Ese ("Son of Isis") to his royal titulary both to
affiliate himself with Thebes and to distinguish his name from Takelot I.

The Crown Prince Osorkon

Takelot II controlled Middle and Upper Egypt during the final 3 Years of
Osorkon II and the first 2 decades of Shoshenq III. The majority of
Egyptologists today concede that king Osorkon III was the illustrious "Crown
Prince and High Priest Osorkon B," son of Takelot II. A misunderstanding arose
over his identity because in the Crown Prince's famous Chronicle, which was
carved on the Bubastite Portal at Karnak, Osorkon dates his actions by both
the regnal years of Takelot II (years 11 through 24) —with a short year 25
left unmentioned — and then by those of the Tanite king, Shoshenq III (from
regnal years 22 through 29).[8] While Kenneth Kitchen has interpreted this to
mean that Shoshenq III succeeded Takelot II at Tanis, in fact Takelot II and
Shoshenq III were likely close contemporaries because immediately after the
death of his father in year 25 of Takelot II, Osorkon B started dating his
activities to year 22, and not year 1, of Shoshenq III onwards. Consequently,
there was never a two decade long break in Osorkon B's struggle to regain
control of Thebes (from Year 1 to Year 22 of Sheshonq III) as Kitchen's
chronology implies because year 25 of Takelot II is equivalent to year 22 of
Sheshonq III.[9] Osorkon B did not immediately ascend to his father's throne
presumably because he was involved in a prolonged civil war with his rival
Pedubast I and, later, Shoshenq VI, for control of Thebes. Instead, he merely
dated his activities to the serving Dynasty 22 Pharaoh at Tanis: Shoshenq III.
The Crown Prince Osorkon B was not outmaneuvered to the throne of Tanis by
Shoshenq III because both men ruled over separate kingdoms with the 22nd
Dynasty controlling Lower Egypt, and Takelot II/Osorkon B ruling over most of
Upper Egypt from Herakleopolis Magna to Thebes, where they are monumentally
attested. In 1983, a donation stela was discovered by Japanese excavators
(Heian Museum 1983) at Tehna which reveals that Osorkon III was once a High
Priest of Amun himself. This person can only be the well-known High Priest
Osorkon B since no other Theban High Priests named Osorkon are known until the
reign of Takelot III half a century later when the latter's son Osorkon F
served in this office.

Theban Uprising and Conflict

In Year 11 of Takelot II, an insurrection began under Pedubast I whose
followers challenged this king's authority at Thebes. Takelot reacted by
dispatching his son, Osorkon B, to sail southwards to Thebes and quell the
uprising. Osorkon B succeeded in retaining control of the city and then
proclaimed himself as the new High Priest of Amun. Some of the rebel's bodies
were deliberately burned by Osorkon to permanently deny their souls any hope
of an afterlife. However, just four years later, in year 15 of Takelot II, a
second major revolt broke out and this time Osorkon B's forces were expelled
from Thebes by Pedubast I. This caused a prolonged period of turmoil and
instability in Upper Egypt as a prolonged struggle broke out between the
competing factions of Takelot II/Osorkon B and Pedubast I/Shoshenq VI for
control of Thebes. This conflict would last for 27 long years – from Year 15
to Year 25 of Takelot II and then from Year 22 to Year 39 of Shoshenq III when
Osorkon B finally defeated his enemies and conquered this great city. Osorkon
B proclaimed himself as king Osorkon III sometime after his victory. On other
matters, the Chronicle of Prince Osorkon B, which is carved on the Bubastis
Portal at Karnak, records Osorkon's activities between regnal years 11 and 24
of his father and then from regnal years 22 through 29 of Shoshenq III.
However, Takelot II's brief 25th year is attested by a donation stela made by
his son in his position as High Priest at Thebes shortly before Takelot died.
As of 2007 no tomb or final resting place has been found for Takelot.

Marriages and children

Takelot II married his sister and Great Royal Wife Karomama Merymut II; they
were the parents of Osorkon B, the High Priest of Amun at Thebes that later
became king Osorkon III, and king Sheshonq III. He also married his aunt
Tjesbastperu, daughter of Osorkon II; they were the parents of
Djed-Bast-Es-Ankh, the Great Royal Wife of Shoshenq III.

Wikipedia®

Born ca. 1610 BCE
He was the 14th king of the Theban 17th Dynasty - which was ruling alongsi de
the 15 and 16th Hyksos Dynasties. A period of began between the co-ruli ng
dynasties and Egypt plunged into civil war when Sequenenre Tao II recei ved a
message from Apophis ruler of the Hyksos (writing from his Delta cap ital
Avaris) complaining that he could not sleep at night because the Hipp opotami
in the sacred pool at Thebes were keeping him awake with their sno ring. An
insult was taken and so began the campaign to remove the 'foreign ers' from
Egypt.

Sequenere Tao II died soon after starting the campaign against the Hyks os
kings, he was followed by his son Kamose who continued the action. B ut it was
a younger son, Ahmose I, who eventually succeeded in defeating t he Hyksos,
drove them from Egypt and began Egypt's glorious 18th Dynasty.

Sequenenre-Tao II was found in what was most probably his original coffi n,
the style is consistent with that dating to the 17th Dynasty. The surfa ce of
the coffin had originally been gilded, but all gold had been scrapp ed off by
robbers. Although only one coffin remains, the king would most c ertainly have
been buried within a nest of coffins. The mummy was in a mu ch worse state -
when the mummy was originally examined it was fou nd to be a very badly
damaged, disarticulated skeleton, also '... a stro ng odour, a rather foul,
oily smell' came from the mummy. The state of Seq uenenre's mummy may be due
to the way he died - his skull shows that he m et a very violent death - at
least five seperate wounds are clearly visibl e. His body had not been
straighten out in the customary position - whi ch has been taken to mean that
he died and was embalmed on the field of ba ttle.

Additional information on the Second Intermediate Period
Since the passage of Time shows no break in continuity, nothing but some m
omentous event or sequence of events can justify a particular reign bei ng
regarded as inaugurating an era. What caused Sobeknofru, or Sobeknofrur e' as
later sources call her, to be taken as closing Dyn. XII will doubtle ss never
be known. But the Turin Canon, the Saqqara king-list, and Manet ho are
unanimous on the point. The Abydos list jumps straight from Ammenem es IV to
the first king of Dyn.XVIII. The date of Amosis I, the found er of Dyn. XVIII,
being fixed with some accuracy, the interval from 17 86 to 1575 BC must be
accepted as the duration of the Second Intermedia te Period. This is an age
the problems of which are even more intractab le than those of the First.
Before entering upon details, it will be we ll to note that the general
pattern of these two dark periods is roughly t he same. Both begin with a
chaotic series of insignificant native ruler s. In both, intruders from
Palestine cast their shadow over the Delta a nd even into the Valley. Also in
both, relief comes at last from a hardy r ace of Theban princes, who after
quelling internal dissension expel the fo reigner and usher in a new epoch of
immense power and prosperity.

Some account has already been given of the formidable difficulties here co
nfronting us, but these must now be discussed at length. As usual we sta rt
with Manetho. The THIRTEENTH DYNASTY according to him, was Diospolite (
Theban) and consisted of sixty kings who reigned for 453 years. The FOURTE
ENTH DYNASTY counted seventy-six kings from Xois, the modern Sakha in t he
central Delta, with a total of 184 or, as an alternative reading, 484 y ears.
For Dyns. XV to XVII there is divergence between Africanus and Euseb ius,
while a much simpler account is preserved by the Jewish historian Jos ephus in
what purports to be a verbatim extract from Manetho's own writin g. For our
present purpose the data supplied by Africanus must suffice. H is FIFTEENTH
DYNASTY consists of six foreign so-called 'Sheperd' or Hyks os kings, whose
domination lasted 284 years. The SIXTEENTH DYNASTY consist ed of Shepherd
kings again, thirty-two in number totaling 518 years. Lastl y, in the
SEVENTEENTH DYNASTY Shepherd kings and Theban kings reigned conc urrently,
forty-three of each line altogether 151 years. Adding these figu res, but
adopting the lower number of years given for Dyn. XIV, we obta in 217 kings
covering a stretch of 1590 years, over seven times the durati on to which
acceptance of the Sothic date in the El-Lahun papyrus has comm itted us. To
abandon 1786 BC as the year when Dyn. XII ended would be to c ast adrift from
our only firm anchor, a course that would have serious con sequences for the
history, not of Egypt alone, but of the entire Middle Ea st.

Of the three monumental king-lists that of Karnak alone enumerates rule rs of
the period. In its undamaged state it may have mentioned as ma ny as thirty,
about half that number being authenticated by actual remain s, building
blocks, stelae, or the like, mostly from the Theban area. Unfo rtunately these
names are interspersed among those of Old or Middle Kingd om kings in so
disorderly a fashion that not trustworthy sequence is obtai nable. The Turin
Canon, despite its fragmentary condition, is a sour ce of great value. As
remounted by Ibscher, the papyrus fragments distribu te the kings from Dyn.
XIII until far down in the direction of Dyn. XVI II over no less than six
columns, each containing up to thirty entrie s. It would be unwise, however,
to assume that the manuscript, when intac t, named as many as 180 distinct
kings. Columns 10 and 11 are somewhat dou btful quantities, and some of the
names mentioned in them, as well as in c olumn 9, have a very suspect
appearance. Not more than about sixty names a re still sufficiently well
preserved to make their identity certain, on ly about a third of these being
authenticated by external monuments. On t he other hand, the monuments
acquaint us with a considerable number of nam es which must belong to this
period but for one reason or another--so me no doubt on account of the Canon's
defective condition--are not to be f ound in that document. Immense labor has
been devoted to collecting this m aterial, and to seeking to place the
different reigns in correct chronolog ical order. For this purpose the style
of the scarabs found bearing roy al cartouches, the appearance and structure
of the names themselves, and o ther evidence equally tenuous, have all been
employed. When all is said a nd done the results have been of a hypothetical
character ill calculat ed to commend itself to any but the most venturesome
scholars. Here we wi ll content ourselves with little more than a scrutiny of
the Turin Canon i tself. Indubitably the Ramesside compiler believed himself
able to prese nt the hundred or so kings known to him in a single continuous
series, wi th the exact length of each reign correctly stated. The number of
yea rs is preserved in some twenty-nine cases, these totaling in all 153 yea
rs without counting the odd months and days. Included in that total are s ix
kings (mostly to be named hereafter) whose reign in each instance excee ds ten
years, amounting together to 101 years, though the reading of the n umerals is
not always as certain as one could wish. This leaves for the re maining
twenty-three kings a sum of no more than fifty-two years, an avera ge of
little more than two years apiece. It is conspicuous that in the ra re
occurrences of dated monuments the date is more often than not in the f irst,
second, or third year. Remembering the contention that in Egypt prol onged
length of reign is a sure indication of the country's prosperit y, we can now
maintain the converse and argue that during the period whi ch in the Turin
Canon corresponds to Manetho's Dyns. XIII and XIV the la nd was in a state of
dire havoc and confusion, its rulers murdering and re placing one another with
extreme rapidity. In two, if not three, cases t he Canon mentions a kingless
interval, in one case of six years' duratio n. On four occasions a formula is
found which Ed. Meyer without solid grou nd interpreted as marking the advent
of a new dynasty, but twice there occ ur words summing up a preceding one' of
far greater interest than the isol ated '[Total], five kings....' in II. 15 is
an unnumbered fragment known a lready to Seyffarth and rediscovered by Botti,
which Ibscher and Farina pl aced in the middle of column 10. Immediately
following a line which mu st be restored as '[Chieftain of a foreign country]
Khamudy' comes anoth er giving '[Total, chieftains of ] a foreign country, 6,
making 108 years '. These are obviously the foreign usurpers referred to by
Africanus in co nnection with Manetho's Dyns. XV, XVI, and XVII. But more of
them later. H ere we are concerned only with chronology. The entry just quoted
practical ly compels us to conclude that the Canon embraced contemporary
dynasties r uling in different parts of Egypt, even if the compiler was
unaware of t he fact. For when 108 years are subtracted from the 211 which are
all th at can be allowed for the Second Intermediate Period, we find a hundr
ed or more kings huddled into little more than a century, which is, of cou
rse, absurd and becomes still more so when account is taken of the above-m
entioned 101 years assigned to six reigns. It follows that the 108 yea rs of
the Hyksos rulers cannot be subtracted in this way, and must ref er to
domination somewhere in the Delta. The alternative, therefore, whi ch all
recent Egyptologists accept, is that the Canon's enumeration compri sed many
kings existing simultaneously, but presumably in widely distant p arts of the
country. Manetho, as may be seen from his reference to Xois, w as not entirely
unaware of the fact, though he too regarded his dynasti es as consecutive.
Unhappily is only seldom that a king of the Turin li st can be pinned down to
a restricted area. Perhaps the dynast who took t he Nomen of Mermesha 'the
General' held sway only in the extreme north. Ou tside the Canon he is known
only from two statues found at Tanis, and t he like may be true of Nehasy 'the
Nubian' who despite his name seems to h ave belonged to the Delta. It is
possibly significant that nearly ha lf of the kings of column 6 have left
monuments or fragments in Upper Egyp t. Only very few have been found of the
kings of the remaining column s. It will be seen how sadly, in discussing
matters such as these, we a re reduced to guessing.

Much ingenious argument has been used in the attempt to group the kin gs of
the period differently from the way in which the Turin Canon presen ts them.
It would be unjust to dismiss all such hypotheses as failures. B ut nowhere
apparently has its ordering of names been definitely prov ed at fault. In the
observations that follow the sequence of the Can on is accepted only for the
lack of one more solidly founded. The re is no doubt, at all events, about the
first two rulers of Dyn. XIII. Th ey are respectively Sekhemre'-khutowe and
Sekhemkare', the last kin gs to be mentioned in the El-Lhun papyri, and the
last in whose reigns lev els of the Nile were recorded at Semna. Between them
they ruled no more th an ten years, after which came the already mentioned
kingless gap of six y ears. That both exerted their authority over the entire
land from the Fayy um to the Second Cataract and beyond is clear, and the
facts that the fir st of the two took the name Amenemhe-Sebehotpe as his
Nomen, and that t he second may have adopted Amenemhe-sonbef as his, show how
desperately th ey clung to the hope of being recognized as legitimate
successors of Dy n. XII. This hope is even more pathetically exhibited in the
Nomen of S'an khibre', the sixth king of the dynasty, who could be satisfied
with nothi ng less pompous than the name Ameny-Inyotef-Amenemhe. Immediately
precedi ng him was an upstart with the very plebeian Prenomen Afnai ('He is
mine ') and half a dozen places later there occurs another ruler with the
equal ly plebeian name Rensonb--he held the throne for no more than four month
s. It is remarkable that as many as six kings of the period chose for them
selves the Nomen Sobekhotep 'Sobk is satisfied', with a reference to the c
rocodile-god of the Fayyum first honored in a cartouche by Queen Sobeknofr u.
Later on, in what we shall find convenient to describe as Dyn. XVII, ki ngs
and queens bearing the name of Sobekemsaf ('Sobk is his protection') s how
that the crocodile-god was still thought of as somehow connected wi th the
monarchy. By that time, however, the link with the Fayyum was broke n, and we
discern a tendency to associate the deity with another Crocodilo polis not
more than 15 miles south of Thebes. This continuity of nomenclat ure has
sometimes been used, and probably rightly, as evidence of the shor tness of
the Second Intermediate Period. Other features like the trifli ng changes in
art and material remains are equally cogent testimony.

At this point we will call a temporary halt to the dreary discussion of t he
period's ephemeral king, and turn our attention to a document that tran sports
us into the very midst of the vital realities. This is a papyrus di scovered
at Dra'Abu 'n-Naga a hundred years ago in the tomb of a scri be of the Royal
Harem. It is nothing less than the accounts of the Theb an court extending
over twelve days in the third year of one of the Sebekh otpe kings. Here the
receipts and distribution of bread, beer, vegetable s, and so forth are
meticulously recorded from day to day. Two sourc es of revenue are
distinguished. Firstly, there is the fixed income requir ed for the sustenance
of the king's womenfolk, officers of state, and so f orth. This was supplied
jointly by three departments (wa're), namely, t he Department of the Head of
the South, the Office of the People's Givin g, and the Treasury, the first of
the three contributing nearly twice as m uch as either of the other two.
Secondly, there were very considerable add itions called inu, a term elsewhere
used for 'tribute' or 'complimentary g ifts', which were utilized for
exceptional purposes such as banquets for t he chief dignitaries and the staff
of what is curiously styled 'the Hou se of the Nurses', or else as rewards for
special services. The latter ki nd of income, for which the vizier or some
other prominent functionary mig ht be responsible, varied from almost as much
as the former down to absolu tely nil, so that no generalization can be given
as to its amount. On t he other hand, we learn that the daily needs of the
royal household demand ed nearly 2, 000 loaves and different kinds of bread
and between 60 and 3 00 jugs of beer. Meat seems to have been reserved for
special occasion s. A surprising detail is that by the king's command the
temple of Amun h ad to supply 100 loaves per diem. The actual amounts
distributed varied sl ightly according to the balance brought forward form the
previous day. A ll manner of interesting information is obtainable from this
fascinating t ext, or would be but for the usual obstacles of ragged condition
and diffi culties of decipherment. For instance, there extended over a
fortnight t he entertainment of a small body of Medja Nubians, including two
chieftai ns later joined by a third, who had come to make their submission.
These b arbarians do not seem, however, to have been admitted to a great banqu
et in the columnar hall of the palace which counted as many as sixty parti
cipants, including the musicians. The queen and the king's sisters were n ot
present on this occasion, which was the culmination of the festiv al of the
god Mont of Medamud, on the eve of the departure of his visiti ng statue from
the capital. All the guests mentioned were males, with t he vizier, the
commander of the army, and the overseer of fields at the ir head. Elsewhere
mention is made of the reception at the Court of the le ading men of
Hermonthis and Cusa, the latter 25 miles north of Asyu r. It is important to
note that by this time there is no longer menti on of feudal princedoms or
nomes, and that towns are referred to in the ir stead. From her comes the word
haty-'o, which earlier has been right ly rendered as 'prince' or 'count', is
from now onward best translat ed as 'mayor'.

The vizier 'Ankhu, who more than once heads the officials receiving gif ts of
food by the royal command, is known from several other sources. O ne is a
papyrus in the Brooklyn Museum, where a written command is address ed to him
by a king who reigned at least five years. The same papyrus ment ions another
who is usually recognized as Sobekhotep III, and who has le ft more memorials
of himself than most of the petty rulers of those troubl ed times. The
connection between the two references is obscure. Our 'Ank hu figures also on
one of two stelae in the Louvre recording the extensi ve restorations made in
the temple of Abydos by a priestly personage of th at neighborhood named
Amenysonb. This was in the reign of Khendjer, the be arer of a Nomen of
outlandish appearance and possibly of foreign origin. N ow Jequier in 1931
identified a small pyramid at Saqqara as belongi ng to a King Khendjer, who
unfortunately bore a Prenomen different from th at on the Louvre stela. Were
there then two Khendjers, one in the north a nd one in the south? It seems a
more probable hypothesis that one and t he same monarch vacillated as regards
his Prenomen. The problem is typic al of the difficulties presented by this
period. The Saqqara Khendjer is l isted with certainty in the Turin Canon and
if, as is believed, Sobekhot ep III was intended by the entry four places
farther on we might have t he strange phenomenon of a single vizier holding
office during the reig ns of five ephemeral and possibly hostile monarchs.
W.C. Hayes has produc ed evidence that throughout Dyn. XIII (roughly column 6
of the Canon) t he Pharaonic capital was still at Lisht, though the Court
sometimes mov ed to Thebes. The pyramid above mentioned and the fact that the
vizier's s on who assisted Amenysonb in his Abydos operations fared northwards
when t he work was finished certainly lend color to this hypothesis.

According to the Canon, Sobekhotep III was succeeded by a King Neferhote p,
who reigned eleven years. Memorials of him, like those of his predecess or,
are relatively numerous. Many rock inscriptions at the First Catara ct appear
to attest a visit of his, and a steatite plaque found a Wady Hal fa at least
suggests that his influence extended there. Even more interest ing is a relief
discovered a far-distant Byblos on the Syrian coast, and d epicting the local
prince doing homage to his person. A portrait of him su rvives in a fine
statuette in the Bologna Museum. To the student of hierog lyphics, however,
the most important relic of his reign is a great stela d iscovered by Mariette
at Abydos, and left exposed on the spot on accou nt of its much damaged
condition. The general drift is still clear in spi te of the defective copy
alone available. It is the second oldest, and qui te the most elaborate,
telling them that he wishes to fashion in their tr ue forms statues of the god
Osiris and his Ennead and asking them to arran ge for his inspection of the
ancient books where such things are recorde d. The courtiers assent with
characteristic obsequiousness. An offici al is sent to Abydos to prepare the
way. He arranges for Osiris to appe ar in procession in his sacred boat, and
then the king himself arrives, pe rsonally supervises the fabrication of the
images, and takes part in the m imic destruction of the god's enemies. The
rest of the text is devot ed to pious adulation of the deity, and threats to
future persons who m ay thwart the remembrance of so great a royal benefactor.

This Neferhotep--there seems to have been a second of the name wh om it is
impossible to place--was followed by a Sihathor whose tenure of t he throne
was only three months. Then came a brother of Neferhotep by t he same
non-royal parents, a Kha'neferre' Sobekhotep reckoned as the four th of the
name. The length of this king's reign is lost in a lacuna, b ut a stela of the
eighth year is known, and he too was evidently a powerf ul monarch to judge
from the number of his surviving monuments. It is diff icult to know what to
make of a headless statue of him found at the Isla nd of Argo just south of
Kerma, more especially since a damaged inscripti on in the British Museum
alludes to hostilities in that direction. Can t he enterprise of this Dyn.
XIII king have dispatched his agents or soldie rs beyond the Third Cataract? A
fifth Sobekhotep is accorded only four yea rs by the Turin Canon, and he was
succeeded by a Wahibre'-Iaib with ten ye ars of reign and then by a
Merneferre' with as many as twenty-three. Hard ly anything, only a stela, a
lintel, and some scarabs remain to commemora te these last two kings. They
managed to hold the allegiance of their subj ects for so long, they cannot
have been insignificant. After a Merhotep wi th the Nomen Inai known elsewhere
only from a stela and a single scarab, d arkness descends upon the historical
scene, leaving discernible in the twi light little beyond royal names for
which the list of kings at the e nd of this work must be consulted. Our next
concern here is with the momen tous question of the rulers known as the
Hyksos.

Concerning these foreigners the Jewish historian Josephus, in his polem ic
Against Apion, claims to quote the actual words of Manetho:

Tutimaios. In his reign, for what cause I know not, a blast of God smote u s;
and unexpectedly from the regions of the East invaders of obscure ra ce
marched in confidence of victory against our land. By main force they e asily
seized it without striking a blow. Having overpowered the rule rs of the land,
they then burned our cities ruthlessly, razed to the grou nd the temples of
the gods, and treated all the natives with cruel hostili ty, massacring some
and leading into slavery the wives and children of oth ers. Finally, they
appointed as king one of their number whose name was Sa litis. He had his seat
at Memphis, levying tribute from Upper and Lower Eg ypt, and always leaving
garrisons behind in the most advantageous places.. ..In the Sethroite nome he
found a city very favorably situated on the ea st of the Bubastic branch of
the Nile, and called Avaris after an ancie nt religious tradition. This place
he rebuilt and fortified with massive w alls....After reigning for 19 years
Salitis died; and a second king Bnon s ucceeded and reigned for 44 years. next
to him came Apachnan, who ruled f or 36 years and 7 months; then Apophis for
61, and Iannas for 50 years a nd 1 month; then finally Assis for 49 years and
2 months. These six king s, their first rulers, were ever more and more eager
to extirpate the Egyp tian stock. Their race as a whole was called Hyksos,
that is 'king-shepher ds'; for hyk in the sacred language means 'king' and sos
in common spee ch is 'sheperd'.

Josephus goes on to give from another manuscript a different derivati on of
the name Hyksos, according to which it signifies 'captive-shepherds '. The
Egyptian hyk being a word for 'captive'. This etymology he prefe rs because he
believed, as do many Egyptologists, that the Biblical sto ry of the Israelite
sojourn in Egypt and the subsequent Exodus had as i ts source the Hyksos
occupation and later expulsion. In point of fact, alt hough there are sound
linguistic grounds for both etymologies, neith er is the true one. The word
Hyksos undoubtedly derives from the expressi on hikkhase 'chieftain of a
foreign hill-country' which from the Middle Ki ngdom onwards was used to
designate Bedouin sheiks. Scarabs bearing this t itle, but with the word for
'countries' in the plural, are found with seve ral undoubted Hyksos kings and,
as we have seen, the final proof is in t he Turin Canon. It is important to
observe, however, that the term refe rs to the rulers alone, and not, as
Josephus thought, to the entire rac e. Modern scholars have often erred in
this matter, some even implying th at the Hyksos were a particular race of
invaders who after conquering Syr ia and Palestine ultimately forced their way
into Egypt. Nothing justifi es such a view, even though the actual words of
Manetho might seem to supp ort it. It is true enough that for some centuries
past there had been a gr owing pressure of alien peoples downwards into Syria,
Hurrians from the Ca spian region being among the first, these paving the way
for the Hittit es who followed from the north-west at the end of the sixteenth
century. B ut of such movements there can have been no more than distant
repercussio ns on the Egyptian border. The invasion of the Delta by a specific
new ra ce is out of the question; one must think rather of an infiltration by
Pal estinians glad to find refuge in a more peaceful and fertile environmen t.
Some, if not most, of these Palestinians were Semites. Scarabs of the p eriod
mention chieftains with names like 'Anat-her and Ya'kob-her, and wha tever the
meaning of the element -her. 'Anat was a well-known Semitic godd ess, and it
is difficult to reject the accepted view that the patriarch Ja cob is
commemorated in the other name. It is doubtless impossible to suppr ess the
erroneous usage of the word Hyksos as though it referred to a spec ial race,
but is should be born in mind that the Egyptians themselves usua lly employed
for those unwelcome intruders the term 'Aamu, which we transl ate with rough
accuracy as 'Asiatics' and which had much earlier serv ed to designate
Palestinian captives or hirelings residing in Egypt as ser vants.

Born ca. 1590 BCE, Died in battle ca. 1553. His throne name, Seqen-en-r e,
means "Who strikes like Re."  Pharoah, in 17th Dynasty, 2nd Intermedia te
Period, ruled from Thebes, Nile River valley, Egypt. The fourteenth ki ng of
the Theban Dynasty, ruling Egypt contemporaneously with the Hyksos 1 5th and
16th Dynasties, was the son of Tao I and Queen Tetisheri. When T ao received
word from Apophis, ruler of the Hyksos capital in Avaris, th at the
hippopotami in the sacred pool at Thebes kept him awake with the ir snoring,
Tao regarded it as an insult. The hippopotami were 400 miles f rom Apophis
sleeping chambers! Tao declared war but was soon killed. His m ummy shows
evidence of blows by battle-axes, spears and lances. His rib s, vertebrae and
skull were fractured. His heir, Kamose, assumed the thro ne and the war, and
was victorious.

His ruling name was "Seqenenre".  He was called "Tao II the Brave" and w as
the Pharoah of Thebes in Egypt (XVII Dynasty) from about 1558-1553 BCE.
Sources:
1.  Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds .)
"The Cambridge Ancient History" 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #1, pps. 70-73 & 289-2 90.
2.  Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pp.72

Additional information
Killed in battle. The terrible wounds on Seqenenre's skull were caus ed by at
least two people attacking him with a dagger, an axe, a spear a nd possibly a
mace. The horizontal nature of the four of five wounds indic ate that he was
lying on his right side, either asleep, or having been fel led by a blow. The
body was hurridly embalmed [perhaps on the battlefiel d] without the usual
careful preparation and straightening of the limbs.

Born/Died ca. 1487-1424 BCE
Sources:
1.  Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds .)
"The Cambridge Ancient History" 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #1, pp.16-321.
2. Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pp.77-88

Egyptian Pharaoh, reigning from 1504 to 1450 BCE.
Thutmose 3 was son of Thutmose 2, and son-in-law to queen Hatshepsu t, as he
married her daughter — his own half-sister.
As an adult ruler, Thutmose 3 conducted 17 successful campaigns which serv ed
him a position as the most successful Pharaoh ever — in military term s. He
extended Egyptian territory and power considerably, into Mesopotam ia and
Nubia. The conquered territories were put under control of vassal k ings and
chiefs, who paid high taxes to Egypt. He extended the temple at K arnak, as
well as constructing new monuments at Abydos, Aswan, Heliopol is and Memphis.
His mummy was found in 1881 at Dayru l-Bahri.
He was succeeded by Amenhotep 2.
BIOGRAPHY

1504 BCE: Taking over as Pharaoh after his father, he soon came seco nd to his
mother-in-law Hatshepsut.
1483: With the death of Hatshepsut Thutmose took control, and revenged him
self on his mother-in-law by defacing monuments of her.
1482:Thutmose 3 started a number of conquests, and attacked Syria. He w as
himself the leaders of the campaigns.
1479: The Syrians seeking refuge in Megiddo, are defeated. After this he a
ttacked the powerful kingdom of Mitanni, which controlled norhern Mesopota
mia, and experienced quick victories. At the same time, the Egyptian armi es
made great advances in Nubia.
1450: Dies.

For different reasons, to different people, Egypt's 18th Dynasty is probab ly
one of Egypt's most interesting periods.  For the general public, Th is was
the Dynasty of Tutankhamun, probably the best known, though certain ly not the
most powerful pharaoh of all time.  To others, Akhenaten, the h eretic king,
will provide an everlasting curiosity. Closer to the beginni ng of this
Dynasty, Hatshepsut ruled as perhaps the most powerful of all E gyptian
queens, even though she often disguised and promoted herself thou gh
inscriptions as a man, and even though her predecessor, Tuthmosis II na med
his young son to succeed him upon his death. But upon Tuthmosis' deat h, his
son, Tuthmosis III was still a young child, so there was little cho ice but
for his stepmother and aunt Hatshepsut to initially act as his reg ent.  His
birth name was probably Djehutymes III in Egyptian, but he is fr equently
referred to by his Greek name of Tuthmosis (Born of the god Thoth ).  He is
also known as Thutmose III, Thutmosis, and his Throne name was M en-kheper-re
(Lasting is the Manifestation of Re).

By the second year of the young king's rule, Hatshepsut had usurped her st
epson's position and so inscriptions and other art began to show her wi th all
the regalia of kingship, even down to the official royal false bear d.  Yet,
at the same time, she did little to really diminish Tuthmosis' ru le, dating
her own rule by his regnal years, and representing him frequent ly upon her
monuments.

It is likely that Tuthmosis III,  was lucky to have survived her rule, tho ugh
there is some debate on this issue.  He obviously stayed well in the b
ackground, and perhaps even demonstrated some amount of cunning in ord er to
simply keep his life.  Because of the prowess he would later demonst rate on
the battlefield, we assume he probably spent much of Hatshepsut 's rule in a
military position. To an extent, they did rule togethe r, he in a foreign
military position, and her taking care of the homelan d. When Hatshepsut
finally died, outliving her powerful ministers, Tuthmos is III was at last
able to truly inherit the thrown of Egypt, and in doi ng so, proved to be a
very able ruler.

Interestingly, it was not until the last years of his reign that he demons
trated what must have been some anger with his stepmother by destroyi ng as
much of her memory as possible.  Her images were expunged from monum ents
throughout Egypt. This is obvious to most visitors of Egypt because o ne of
the most effected monuments was her temple at Deir el-Bahari, tod ay a primary
tourist site.  There, Tuthmosis III destroyed her reliefs a nd smashed
numerous statues into a quarry just in front of the templ e.  He even went so
far as to attack the tombs of her courtiers. Yet if th is was over the
frustration of his youth when she ruled, why did he wait u ntil such a late
date to begin the destruction?

Military Exploits
In any event, Tuthmosis III became a great pharaoh in his own right, and h as
been referred to as the Napoleon of ancient Egypt (by the Egyptologist s,
James Henry Breasted).  But perhaps is reputation is due to the fact th at his
battles were recorded in great detail by the archivist, royal scri be and army
commander, Thanuny.  The battles were recorded on the inside w alls
surrounding the granite sanctuary at Karnak, and inscriptions on Than uny's
tomb on the west bank state that, "I recorded the victories he w on in every
land, putting them into writing according to the facts". Refer red to as the
Annals, the inscriptions were done during Tuthmosis' 42nd ye ar as pharaoh,
and describe both the battles and the booty that was take n. These events were
recorded at Karnak because Tuthmosis's army marched u nder the banner of the
god, Amun, and Amun's temples and estates would lar gely be the beneficiary of
the spoils of Tuthmosis' wars.

Having close ties with his military, Tuthmosis undoubtedly received sage a
dvice from his commanders.  It was probably decided that the Levant offer ed
the greatest potential for glory and wealth if the trade routes dominat ed by
Syrian, Cypriot, Palestinian and Aegean rulers could be taken.

Tuthmosis III fought with considerable nerve and cunning.  On one campaig n,
he marched to Gaza in ten days and from Yehem, planned the battle to ta ke
take Megiddo which was held by a rebellious prince named Kadesh.  The re were
three possible approaches to Megiddo, two of which were fairly ope n,
straightforward routes while the third was through a narrow pass that s
oldiers would only be able to march through in single file.

Though he was advised against this dangerous pass by his commanders, Tuthm
osis not only took this dangerous route, but actually led the troops throu gh. 
Whether by luck, or gifted intuition this gamble paid off, for wh en he
emerged from the tight canyon, he saw that his enemies had arrang ed their
armies to defend the easier routes.  In fact, he emerged betwe en the north
and south wings of the enemy's armies, and the next day decis ively beat them
in battle. It apparently took a long siege (seven month s) to take the city of
Megiddo, but the rewards were great.  The spoils we re considerable, and
included 894 chariots, including two covered with gol d, 200 suites of armor
including two of bronze, as well as over 2,000 hors es and 25,000 other
animals.

Tuthmosis III had marched from Thebes up the Syrian coast fighting decisi ve
battles, capturing three cities, and then returned back to Thebes.  Ov er the
next 18 years, his armies would march against Syria every summer a nd by the
end of that period, he established Egyptian dominance over Pales tine. At
Karnak he records the capture of 350 cities, and in the 42nd ye ar of his
rule, Kadesh itself was finally taken.

He also made campaigns into Nubia where he built temples at Amada and Sem na
and restored Senusret III's old canal in his 50th year of rule so th at his
armies could easily pass on their return to Egypt.

Queens and Vassals
Tuthmosis' main queen was Hatshepsut-Merytre, who survived him and liv ed as
Queen Mother into the reign of her son. However, he also had sever al minor
queens, some of whom had been acquired due to diplomatic exchange s. We know
the names of three such minor queens, Menhet, Menwi and Merti f rom the
discovery of their tomb west of Deir el-Bahri. He also took a numb er of
foreign princes hostage, who then received training and indoctrinati on in
Egyptian ways. They would later be returned to their homeland as obe dient
vassals of Egypt.

Building Projects
Tuthmosis is well attested in many parts of Egypt and outside of Egyp t. We
find blocks deep within Nubia at Gebel Barkal, and also at Sai, Pnu bs at the
third cataract, Uronarti, Buhen, Quban, Faras and Ellesiya, as w ell as his
temples at Amada and Semna.  He also built a temple dedicat ed to the goddess
Satet at Elephantine, as well as projects at Kom Ombo, E dfu, El-Kab, Tod,
Armant, Akhmim, Hermopolis and Heliopolis.  From a li st of one of Tuthmosis'
overseers, we also know of projects at Asyut, Atfi sh and various locations in
the delta.

Tuthmosis III built his own temple near Hatshepsut's on a ledge between h er
temple and that of Mentuhotep.  His small temple was excavated recent ly by a
polish mission.  The excavation revealed stunningly fresh relief s, perhaps
because a rock fall from the cliffs above covered the temple sh ortly after
its completion.  Close by, Tuthmosis built a rock cut sanctua ry to the
goddess Hathor.  This monument was accidentally discover ed by a Swiss team
when a rock fall exposed its opening. Apparently, the s hrine was in use up to
the Ramesside period, when it was destroyed by an e arthquake.

But of the many monuments associated with Tuthmosis III, none faired bett er
then the temple of Karnak. Wall reliefs near the sanctuary record the m any
gifts of gold jewelry, furniture, rich oils and other gifts offer ed to the
temple,. mostly from the spoils of war, by Tuthmosis III. He w as responsible
for the Sixth and Seventh Pylons at Karnak, as well as cons iderable
reconstruction within the central areas of the temple. He erect ed two
obelisks at the temple, one of which survives at the Hippodrom at I stanbul. 
There is also a great, black granite Victory Stele embellishi ng his military
victories.

He also built a new and very unique temple at Karnak that is today referr ed
to as his Festival Hall.  The columns are believed to represent the pol es of
the king's campaign tent.  In the rear is a a small room with repres entations
of animals and plants bought back from Syria during the 25th ye ar of his
reign.  For obvious reasons, this room is referred to as the Bot anical
Garden.

The opulence of his reign is also reflected in the quality tombs bui lt by his
high officials.  The tome of his vizier, Rekhmire is notable, wi th many
scenes of daily life, crafts as well as a long inscription concern ing the
office of vizier. However, the presence of a military elite is al so attested
by no less then eleven Theban tombs from the reign of Tuthmosi s.

Information related to tomb in the Valley of the Kings
The tomb of Tuthmosis III (KV 34) is said to be one of the most sophistica ted
tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Discovered by Victor Loret's workm en in
1898 during this famous Egyptologist's absence, work did not beg in on
clearing the rubble form the entrance until his return. He then exca vated the
site meticulously, using 24 square grids and recording the place ment of even
the smallest of objects.
The tomb itself can be found in a narrow gorge at the bottom of the Vall ey of
the Kings. The entrance is 30 meters above ground level, but of cour se this
did not stop ancient tomb robbers, though Loret did find some fune rary
furniture that had been left behind.

The orientation of the tomb is such that the entrance lies in the north, w
hile the burial chamber deviates to the east, a tradition originating wi th
the Middle Kingdom Pyramid of Sesostris II. This complex path symboliz ed the
region of the netherworld. Typically for this period, but a first f or the
Valley of the King's proper, the tomb begins with a stairway, a cor ridor, a
second stairway and a second corridor before reaching the ritu al shaft. The
ceiling of the ritual shaft is painted with a blue sky and y ellow stars.
After the ritual shaft, like most tombs of this period, the re is a 90 degree
turn into the Vestibule, which is then followed by the b urial chamber with
its four lateral annexes. While the passages are not de corated, other areas
were plastered and painted for the first time.

The vestibule has two pillars, and is decorated with the 741 diviniti es of
the Amduat that generate the daily sun.  A flight of stairs leads di rectly
from there to the burial chamber, which is oval and also has two pi llars. The
oval burial chamber is common also to the tombs of Thutmos is I and Thutmosis
II. The burial chamber is large, and holds a beautif ul red quartzite
sarcophagus. However, Tuthmosis III's mummy was not fou nd here, bur rather in
tomb DB 320 at Deir el-Bahri (in 1881).

The walls of the burial chamber are designed like a huge ornamental scrol l,
with the complete text of the Book of Amduat.  The ancient Egyptians ca lled
this book the "Book of the Secret Room". Amduat meant "that which the re is in
the afterlife", and the book is divided into twelve parts, repres enting the
hours of the night. On the two square pillars of the burial cha mber, and for
the first time, we find passages from the Litani es of Re on seven of the
surfaces, and on the eighth a unique scene in whi ch the king is shown being
nursed by a divine tree goddess labeled "Isis ".  It is likely, however, that
these pillar decorations were added hastil y, after the king's death.

This tomb had been brutally plundered by reckless robbers.  They took no c are
whatsoever to prevent damage, and in some instances demonstrated almo st a
violent hatred, throwing objects forcefully against the walls, whe re traces
of gold foil may still be seen. The principal item of funerary e quipment
found in the tomb was the sarcophagus.  Other items included a nu mber of
wooden statues of the king and various deities, pieces of wooden m odel boats,
pottery and bones from a baboon and a bull.  However, a founda tion deposit
was also discovered that contained model tools, plaques and v essels.  A
number of other items from the tomb were also discovered by Dar essy, Carter
and John Romer in other areas of the Valley of the Kings.

Additional Sources:
Chronicle of the Pharaohs (The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dyn
asties of Ancient Egypt) Clayton, Peter A. 1994 Thames and Hudson Ltd IS BN
0-500-05074-0
Complete Valley of the Kings, The (Tombs and Treasures of Egypt's Greate st
Pharaohs) Reeves, Nicholas; Wilkinson, Richard H. 1966 Thames and Huds on Ltd
IBSN 0-500-05080-5
Mummies Myth and Magic El Mahdy, Christine 1989 Thames and Hudson Ltd IS BN
0-500-27579-3
Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian 2000 Oxford University Pre ss
ISBN 0-19-815034-2

Stuart suggests the ancestor of the wives of Rameses I and possibly Se ti I was
the primary wife Tiy-Nefertari (1).  The succession of heirs n ot directly
related to the previous pharoah was frequently cemented by mar riage to
daughters of the primary queen (2).
Sources:
1. Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 425.
2. Page, J.D. and Oliver, R. (eds) "The Cambridge History of Africa" Vo l. I,
pp.    866.

Born ca. 1400 BCE, died ca. 1350. Her mummy, which is kept in the Egypti an
Museum at Cairo, was identified in 1976

Queen Mother dies." She died, a grand old lady, probably in her sixti es in
Year 22 or early 23 Ramesses' reign.

See Additional information related to Ramesses-Siptah of Egypt, step-s on of
Twosret.
Nineteenth Dynasty
That for Egypt herself the reign of Ramesses II was a period of great pros
perity cannot be doubted. Monuments of the period, dated and undated, a re
very numerous, but are mostly memorials of individual persons throwi ng little
or no light upon the state of the country as a whole. The val ue of recent
attempts to construct a coherent picture out of the titles bo rn by such
individuals need not be denied, but the results thus obtained a re too
speculative to receive more that a passing glance in the present bo ok. To
mention here only the highest functionaries of the administrative a nd the
priestly orders respectively, it may be noted that the vizierate w as usually
in the hands of a single dignitary, though as the ousts there w as one vizier
for Upper Egypt and another for Lower Egypt. The High-prie st of Amen-Re' at
Thebes certainly retained his pre-eminence in his own sp here, but his office
was not yet hereditary, and we have no means of knowi ng to what extent the
wealth of the god's estate had increased or diminish ed since the religious
revolution. Two of these pontiffs are interested on ly to tell us by what
steps and at what ages they climbed to the top of t he priestly ladder. An
exception to such tedious information is found on t he walls of a tomb at
Saqqara belonging to a no more exalted personage th an a scribe of the
treasury in the Memphite temple of Ptah. Here are set f orth at length the
proceedings in a trial in which matter at stake was t he ownership of a tract
of land in the neighborhood of Memphis. This estat e, the plaintiff Mose
maintained, had been given by King Amosis as a rewa rd to his ancestor Neshi,
a ship's captain. Much litigation arose in subse quent generations. In the
time of Haremhab, the Great Court sitting the He liopolis and presided over by
the Vizier sent a commissioner the locali ty where the property was, whereupon
a lady named Wernero was appoint ed to cultivate the land as trustee for her
brothers and her sisters. Obje ction to this arrangement having been raised by
a sister named Takhar u, a new division was made whereby the estate, hitherto
indivisible, was p arceled out between the six heirs. Against this decision
Mose's father H uy appealed together with his mother Wernero, but Huy died at
this junctur e, and when his widow Nubnofre set about cultivating her
husband's inherit ance she was forcibly ejected by a man named Kha'y. As a
consequence Nubno fre brought an action, dated to year of 18 of Ramesses II,
went against h r, and it was only later that Mose, by this time presumably
grown to manho od, appealed for the verdict to be reversed. His deposition was
immediate ly followed by that of the defendant Kha'y, and it is from their
combin ed statements that we learn what had happened. When the Vizier came to
exa mine the title-deeds he could not fail to perceive that there had been for
gery on one side or the other. Nubnofre then proposed that a commission er
should be sent with Kha'y to consult the official records of Pharaoh 's
treasury and granary at the northern capital of Pi-Ra'messe. To her dis may
her husband's name was not found in the registers which the two, acti ng in
collusion, brought back with them, and accordingly the Vizier, aft er further
inquiry, gave judgment in favor of Kha'y, who received in conse quence 13
arouras of land. To Mose, determined to recover his rights, no a lternative
was now open but to establish with the help of sworn witness es the facts of
his descent from Neshi and of his father's having cultivat ed the estate year
by year and having paid the taxes on it. The testimo ny afforded by the men
and women cited by him, taken together with the wri tten evidence previously
used, no longer left any uncertainty as to the ri ghtness of his cause, and
though the end of the hieroglyphic inscripti on is lost we cannot doubt that
the Great Court together with the lesser o ne at Memphis delivered a final
verdict re-established Mose in his inherit ance. The colorful and vivid story
here told, though dealing with only a s mall estate and relatively unimportant
litigants, is so illuminating th at it cannot be studied with too great care.
One point of importance th at emerges is the equality of men and women as
regards both proprietorsh ip and competence in the law-courts.

The second half of Ramesses II's reign seems to have been free from maj or
wars. Khattusilis's son and successor Tudhaliyas IV was too much absorb ed
with his western frontier and with his religious duties to give contr ol to
any aggressive intentions, and indeed the once so powerful Hittite E mpire was
already moving towards it decline. However, in keeping the pea ce with Khatti
Egypt, was merely exchanging one adversary for another sti ll more formidable?
It was no longer a question of Egypt's upholding her s overeignty in a distant
province, now her own borders were seriously threa tened. It is unnecessary to
suppose that Sethos I's conflict with the Tjeh nu depicted as at Karnak was a
very big affair, but it foreshadowed the tr ouble which was to come from that
quarter before long. There is written ev idence that the north-west corner of
the Delta was protected from Libyan i nvasion by a chain of fortresses
extending along the Mediterranean coas t. Many stele of the time of Ramesses
II have come to light near El-'Alame in and others even still farther to the
west. At Es-Sebua' in Lower Nubi a, an inscription of year 44 tells of Tjemhu
captives employed in the buil ding of the temple there. It was in the fifth
year of Mereptah that the da nger came to a head, the ringleader being Maraye,
son of Did, the ki ng of that tribe of Libu (Libyans) which here makes its
first appearanc e. Among the allies of his won race were the already mentioned
Kehek and M eshwesh, but he had also summoned to his aid five 'peoples of the
sea'; fo rerunners of the great migratory movement about to descend on Egypt
and Pa lestine from north and west. The names of these confederates are of the
ut most interest since, like the Dardanians and Luka (Lycians) who support ed
the Hittites at the battle of Kadesh, they introduce us, or seem to int roduce
us, to racial groups familiar from the early Hellenic world. The Ak awasha
mentioned here but never again hereafter are as a rule confident ly equated
with the Achaeans of Mycenaean Greece, but the writing does n ot quite square
with that of the much disputed Ahhiyawa of the Hittite tab lets, who at all
events have an equal claim. The Luka appear to have play ed only a minor part,
and occur in the Egyptian records only once aga in in the name of a slave. To
identify the Tursha with the Tyrsenoi, oft en asserted to be the ancestors of
the Etruscans, is too tempting to be di smissed out of hand, like the Shekresh
or Sheklesh who so irresistibly rec all the name of the Sikeloi or Sicilians.
The presumption that some of t he Tursha and the Sheklesh fought on the side
of the Egyptians is certain ly due to a mistranslation. Unhappily there are no
reliefs to illustrate t he appearance of these enemies of Mereptah. The only
clue to their identit y, beyond their names, is the indication that the Libu
were uncircumcise d; therefore, they were made to suffer the dishonor of
having the genita ls of their slain piled up for presentation to the king. The
Sherden, Shek lesh, Akawasha and Tursha, being circumcised as the Egyptians
themselves h ad been from time immemorial, received only the lesser disgrace
of their h ands being cut off and presented instead. However, this indication
complic ates the problem rather than the reverse. We may perhaps sum up the
probab ilities regarding these 'peoples of the sea' by saying that since all
the ir names so readily find affinities in the Hellenic world, some at lea st
of the proposed identifications are likely to be correct. However, the re is
no guarantee that the tribes in question were already located in t he places
where they ultimately settled down.

The details of Merenptah's great victory over the invaders were recount ed in
a long inscription carved on a wall of the temple of Karnak. The top most
blocks of the vertical columns of hieroglyphs having disappeared, n ot enough
remains to slake our curiosity; nor is the situation remedi ed by some equally
defective narratives from elsewhere. What we do glea n, however, is highly
interesting. It was no mere excursion in quest of pl under that had been
attempted, but permanent settlement in a new home. Mar aye and his allies had
brought their women and children with them, as we ll as cattle and a wealth of
weapons and utensils which were subsequent ly captured. Yet, it was want that
had prompted them to this venture.

Such was the nature of the Libyans as it appeared to Merenptah on heari ng of
the graver attack that now confronted him. The attack must have co me from
pretty far west, from Cyrenaica or even beyond, since Maraye's fir st move was
to descend upon and occupy the land of Tjehnu. It was not lo ng before they
had plundered the frontier fortresses, and some of them h ad even penetrated
to the oasis of Farafra. The Great River or Canopic bra nch of the Nile
marked, however, the limit of their advance, and the decis ive battle, when it
came, seems to have been at an unidentified locality n amed Pi-yer, doubtless
well within the Delta. It is plain that Merenptah h imself took no part in the
struggle. He must have been already an old m an when he came to the throne.
Still the victory was naturally credited hi m, after he had seen in a dream a
great image of the god Ptah who handed h im a scimitar saying 'Take hold here
and put off the faint heart from thee '. Six hours of fighting sufficed to
rout the enemy, the wretched Maraye e scaping capture by fleeing homeward at
dead of night. The total of Libya ns killed exceeded 6,000, not counting many
hundreds of the allies, a nd of prisoners taken there seem to have been more
than 9,000. These at le ast are the figures which emerge form the two damaged
sources at our dispo sal, but of course we must make allowance for the usual
exaggeration.

The mention of Israel in Egyptian writing is unique, and could not fa il to be
disturbing to scholars who at the time of the discovery in 1896 m ostly
believed Merenptah to have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus. The expla nations
now given are numerous. Actually, the name does not occur aga in in
non-Biblical sources until after the middle of the ninth century B C, when
Mesha King of Moab is said to have fought with Israel. That Merenp tah
actually did put forth some military activity in Palestine is confirm ed by
the epithet 'reducer of Gezer' which he receives in an inscripti on at Amada.
Otherwise, conditions on the north-eastern front appear to ha ve remained
peaceful and normal. Extracts from the journal of a border off icial, dated in
Merenptah's year 3, enumerate the successive sendings of d ispatches to
different garrison-commanders and other persons, among them t he prince of
Tyre. A literary papyrus, probably written in Merenptah's rei gn, contains a
composition which is as instructive as it is amusing. Th is professes to be
the reply by a scribe, Hori, to a letter just receiv ed from his friend the
scribe Amenemope. After the elaborate greetings a nd compliments, Hori
expresses his disappointment and then launches o ut on a long ironic
demonstration of Amenemope's incompetence. The helper s, whom he has called to
his aid, have not improved matters. Various situa tions are cited in proof of
the criticisms: Amenemope has failed in his ta sks of supplying the troops
with rations, of building a ramp, of erecti ng a colossal statue, and so
forth. But it is his ignorance of northern Sy ria which comes in for the
severest condemnation. Many well-known places a re named which this pretender
to the rank of maher has never visited or wh ere some trouble or other has
befallen him. He has never reached Beis an or crossed the Jordan. He knows
nothing about Byblos or Tyre. His hor se has run away and his chariot has been
smashed. Even towns as near at ha nd as Raphia and Gaza are unknown to him.
Needless to say, one of the chi ef reasons for writing this strange work has
been to give the author the c hance of airing his own knowledge. Historically
the text is enlightened in asmuch as there must have been a class of able
scribes who had an intima te acquaintance with Palestine and Syria and were
accustomed to travel the re without mishap.

It is under Ramesses II, at latest, that an entirely different source of c
ultural and historical information begins to assume outstanding importanc e.
Whether or not the Pharaoh now lived at and governed from one or oth er of the
Delta capitals, he always aspired to burial in the ancestral nec ropolis of
skilled workmen was continuously engaged upon the excavation a nd decoration
of his tomb in the Biban el-Moluk. These men and their famil ies formed a
special community dwelling in the village of Der el-Medina hi gh up in the
desert above the great funerary temple of Amenophis III and e very aspect of
their lives and interests is revealed in the writings fou nd either here or in
the actual place of their daily work. Papyrus being c omparatively rare,
expensive and perishable, most of what has surviv ed is inscribed on the
scraps of limestone and the pot-shreds which l ay on the ground only asking to
be used and which Egyptologists known und er the somewhat inappropriate name
of 'ostraca'. Thousands have been publi shed and thousands more await
publication in our museums or in private han ds. Besides literary, religious,
and magical fragments there are recor ds of barter, payment of wages in corn
or copper, hire of donkeys for agri cultural purposes, lawsuits, attendance at
and absences from work, visi ts of high officials, model and actual letters,
in fact memoranda of eve ry kind. No synthesis can be here attempted, but it
was necessary to menti on a mass of material through which a restricted, but
not significant, pic ture of Ramesside life can be brought before the eyes of
the modern reader .

Merenptah was an old man when he died, bald and obese. His end may have be en
thought to be approaching as early as his eighth year, when the prepara tions
for his funeral were being actively pursued. Nevertheless, he linger ed on for
two years more. No doubt he was buried in the granite sarcophag us of which
the beautiful lid is still to be seen in this tomb in the Bib an el-Moluk, but
at some later period his mummy was moved to the tomb of A menophis II, where
Loret discovered it in 1898. With his death, we enter u pon a series of rather
short reigns, the sequence of which has been much d ebated. The problem is of
the kind at once the joy and the torment of Egyp tologists. Prominent here
again is the question of superimposed cartouche s, another royal name being
substituted for one that has been chiseled ou t. Arguments based upon this
procedure are, as has been already said, high ly uncertain. Apart from the
difficulty of deciding which name lies upperm ost, there always remains the
possibility that this belonged to the earli er of the two kings, having been
restored as the result of some loyal ty or animosity which cannot now be
understood. Here the reader must re st content with a bare statement of what
seems the most probable cour se of events. There is little doubt but that
Merenptah was followed by h is son SetI-merenptah, mostly known as Sethos II.
Memoranda on ostraca men tion both the date of his accession and that of his
death, this latter occ urring in his sixth year. In the meantime, a certain
Neferhotep, one of t he two chief workmen of the necropolis, had been replaced
by another nam ed Pneb, against whom many crimes were alleged by Neferhotep's
brother Ame nnakhte in a violently worded indictment preserved in a papyrus in
the Bri tish Museum. If Amennakhte can be trusted, Pneb had stolen stone for
the e mbellishment of his own tomb from that of Sethos II still in course of
com pletion, besides purloining or damaging other property belonging to that m
onarch. Also he had tried to kill Neferhotep in spite of having been educa ted
by him, and after the chief workman had been killed by 'the enemy' h ad bribed
the vizier Pra'emhab in order to usurp his place. Whatever the t ruth of these
accusations, it is clear that Thebes was going through ve ry troubled times.
There are references elsewhere to a 'war' that had occu rred during these
years, but it is obscure to what this word alludes, perh aps to no more than
internal disturbances and discontent. Neferhotep had c omplained of the
attacks upon himself to the vizier Amenmose, presumab ly a predecessor of
Pra'emhab, whereupon Amenmose had punished Pneb. Th is trouble-maker had then
brought a complaint before 'Mose', who had depos ed the vizier from his
office. Evidently this 'Mose' must have been a pers onage of the most exalted
station, and it seems inevitable to identify h im with an ephemeral king
Amenmesse whose brief reign may have fallen eith er before or within that of
Sethos II. A tomb belonging to Amenmesse exis ts in the Biban el-Moluk, but it
is a relatively poor affair in which mo st of the decorations have been
erased, though enough of the inscriptio ns remains to furnish us with the name
of his mother Takha'e, possibly a d aughter of Ramesses II. The monument of
Sethos II are scanty, the most imp osing being a small temple in the forecourt
at Karnak, and nothing mo re is known about the events of his reign. In his
well-decorated tomb h is cartouches have been erased and later replaced, the
erasure being perha ps the handiwork of Amenmesse. Elliot Smith, describing
his mummy fou nd in the tomb of Amenophis II, speaks of him as a young or
middle-aged ma n.

His immediate successor was a son who was at first given the name Ra'messe
-Siptah, but who for some mysterious reason changed it to Merenptah-Sipt ah
before the third year of his reign. He is closely associated in mo st of his
few inscriptions with an important functionary named bay, who bo asts of
having been 'the great chancellor of the entire land'. There is go od reason
for thinking that Bay was a Syrian by birth, possibly one of tho se court
officials who in this age frequently rose to power by the royal f avor. In two
graffitis, he receives the highly significant epithet 'who es tablished the
king upon the seat of his father' and it is almost certain t hat he was in
fact the actual 'king-maker'. The epithet in question impli es that Siptah was
a son of Sethos II, but it is unknown of his accessi on since he was still
young when he died after a reign of perhaps not mo re than six years. There
now comes upon the scene a remarkable woman of t he name of Twosre. Jewelry
discovered by Theodore Davis in a nameless cac he of the Biban el-Moluk shows
her to have been Sethos II's principal wif e. A silver bracelet depicts her
standing before her husband and pouring w ine into his outstretched goblet. It
is a strange and unprecedented thi ng that three contemporaries should all
have possessed tombs in the Vall ey of the Tombs of the Kings. The tomb of Bay
is small and unadorned, b ut still its location testifies to the power which
he must have exercise d. Siptah's tomb, in which his mummy doubtless lay until
shifted to th at of Amenophis II, is much more imposing, but the cartouches on
its wal ls have been cut out and later replaced, like those in the tomb of
Seth os II. Twosre's tomb is even more intriguing. Here she bears the title
Kin g's Great Wife by virtue of her marriage to Sethos II, but an isolated sce
ne shows her standing behind Siptah who is offering to the earth-god. Sipt
ah's name has been destroyed and that of Sethos II substituted for it. Sin ce
there are excellent reasons for thinking that Sethos was the earli er of the
two kings, this replacement must have been due to Twosre's lat er preference
to be depicted with the king who had been her actual husban d. Subsequently
Sethnakhte, the founder of Dyn. XX, took possession and po ssibly destroyed
Twosre's mummy, after someone had removed, to a pla ce of safety, the jewelry
above mentioned. The sole hypothesis, which see ms to account for these
complicated facts, supposes that when Bay forced t he youthful Siptah onto the
throne, Twosre was compelled to accept the sit uation. She still retained
sufficient power to insist on having her own to mb in the Valley, an honor
previously accorded to only one other royal ty of female sex, namely
Hashepsowe, Tuthmosis III's aunt. Like Hashepsow e, Twosre ultimately assumed
the titles of a Pharaoh and possibly reign ed alone for a few years. Siptah
had caused a small funerary temp le to be built for himself to the north of
the Ramesseum at Thebes, and he re the name of Bay figures with his own on the
foundation deposits, a star tling fact that goes far towards demonstrating the
interpretation here giv en. Of Twosre only one stray intrusive scarab was
found there. Twosre's se parate funerary sanctuary to the south of the
Ramesseum may have been beg un at the same time or else may be somewhat later.
Here she assumed a seco nd cartouche which is also found combined with the
first on a plaque sa id to come from Kantir in the Delta, and there are a few
more traces of h er reign in the north, and even at the turquoise mines of
Sinai. Manetho e nds Dyn. XIX with a king Thuoris said to have reigned seven
years, and the re can be but little doubt that the distorted name and
erroneous sex reca ll the existence of the third woman in Egyptian history who
had possess ed ability enough to wrest to herself the Double Crown, but whose
power h ad been insufficient to secure the perpetuation of her dynastic line.

Born/Died ca. 1304-1212 BCE At age 96. Buried: Valley of the Kings, Luxo r,
Egypt
His rulingname was "Usermaetre-Setpenre" and he was the Pharoah of Egypt ( XIX
Dynasty) from about 1279 to 1212 BCE. Because of the widespread looti ng of
tombs during the 21st Dynasty the priests removed Ramesses body a nd took it
to a holding area where the valuable materials such, as gold-le af and
semi-precious inlays, were removed. The body was then rewrapped a nd taken to
the tomb of an 18th Dynasty queen, Inhapi. The bodies of Rames ses I and Seti
I were done in like fashion and all ended up at the same pl ace. Amenhotep I's
body had been placed there as well at an earlier tim e. Seventy-two hours
later, all of the bodies were again moved, this ti me to the Royal Cache that
was inside the tomb of High Priest Pinudjem I I. The priests documented all of
this on the linen that covered the bodie s. This "systematic" looting by the
priests was done in the guise of prote cting the bodies from the "common"
thieves
Sources:
1. Stuart, R.W. "Royalty for Commoners", line 425.
2.  Edwards, I.E.S., Gadd, C.J., Hammond, N.G.L. and Sollberger, E. (eds .)
"The Cambridge Ancient History" 3rd Ed., Vol.II, #2A, pp.225-232.
3. Dodson, A. "Monarchs of the Nile" pp.209

The son of Seti I and Queen Tuya was the third king of the 19th Dynasty. C
alled Ramesses the Great, he lived to be 96 years old, had 200 wives and c
oncubines, 96 sons and 60 daughters. One son, Prince Khaemwese, was a hi gh
priest of Ptah, governor of Memphis, and was in charge of the restorati on of
the Pyramid of Unas. This son was buried in The Serapeum. Ramess es II
outlived the first thirteen of his heirs. Ramesses was named co-rul er with
his father, Seti I, early in his life. He accompanied his fath er on numerous
campaigns in Libya and Nubia. At the age of 22 Ramesses we nt on a campaign in
Nubia with two of his own sons. Seti I and Ramesses bu ilt a palace in Avaris
where Ramesses I had started a new capital. When Se ti I died in 1290 B.C.,
Ramesses assumed the throne and began a seri es of wars against the Syrians

Additional Information:
Ramses II (reigned 1279-1212 BCE), ancient Egyptian king, third ruler of t he
19th Dynasty. During his early reign Ramses fought a long war against t he
Hittites to regain former Egyptian territories in Africa and western As ia. In
1258 BCE a treaty was signed whereby the contested lands were divid ed and
Ramses agreed to marry the daughter of the Hittite king. The remain ing years
of his rule were distinguished by the construction of great monu ments.

Source: Free Concise Encyclopedia Article
The Battle of Kadesh, Egyptian Accounts 1294 BCE

Beginning of the victory of King Usermare-Setepnere Ramses II, who is giv en
life, forever, which he achieved in the land of Kheta and Naharin, in t he
land of Arvad, in Pedes, in the Derden, in the land of Mesa, in the la nd of
Kelekesh, Carchemish, Kode, the land of Kadesh, in the land of Ekere th, and
Mesheneth.

Behold, his majesty prepared his infantry and his chariotry, the Sherd en of
the captivity of his majesty from the victories of his word - they g ave the
plan of battle. His majesty proceeded northward, his infantry a nd his
chariotry being with him. He began the goodly way to march. Ye ar 5, the
second month of the third season tenth month, on the ninth da y, his majesty
passed the fortress of Tharu, like Montu when he goes fort h. Every country
trembled before him, fear was in their hearts; all the re bels came bowing
down for fear of the fame of his majesty, when his army c ame upon the narrow
road, being like one who is upon the highway.

Now, after many days after this, behold, his majesty was in Usermare-Meria
mon, the city of cedar. His majesty proceeded northward, and he then arriv ed
at the highland of Kadesh. Then his majesty marched before, like his fa ther,
Montu lord of Thebes, and crossed over the channel of the Orontes, t here
being with him the first division of Amon named: "Victory-of-King-Use
rmare-Setepnere."

When his majesty reached the city, behold, the wretched, vanquished chi ef of
Kheta had come, having gathered together all countries from the en ds of the
sea to the land of Kheta, which came entire: the Naharin likewis e, and Arvad,
Mesa, Keshkesh, Kelekesh, Luka, Kezweden, Carchemish, Ekeret h, Kode, the
entire land of Nuges, Mesheneth, and Kadesh. He left not a co untry which was
not brought together with their chiefs who were with hi m, every man bringing
his chariotry, an exceeding great multitude, witho ut its like. They covered
the mountains and the valleys; they were like gr asshoppers with their
multitudes. He left not silver nor gold in his la nd but he plundered it of
all its possessions and gave to every countr y, in order to bring them with
him to battle.

Behold, the wretched, vanquished chief of Kheta, together with numerous al
lied countries, were stationed in battle array, concealed on the northwe st of
the city of Kadesh, while his majesty was alone by himself, with h is
bodyguard, and the division of Amon was marching behind him. The divisi on of
Re crossed over the river-bed on the south side of the town of Shabt una, at
the distance of an iter from the division of Amon; the divisi on of Ptah was
on the south of the city of Aranami; and the division of Su tekh was marching
upon the road. His majesty had formed the first ra nk of all the leaders of
his army, while they were on the shore in the la nd of the Amor. Behold, the
wretched vanquished chief of Kheta was station ed in the midst of the infantry
which was with him, and he came not o ut to fight, for fear of his majesty.
Then he made to go the people of t he chariotry, an exceedingly numerous
multitude like the sand, being thr ee people to each span. Now, they had made
their combinations thus: amo ng every three youths was one man of the
vanquished of Kheta, equipped wi th all the weapons of battle. Lo, they had
stationed them in battle arra y, concealed on the northwet the city of Kadesh.

They came forth from the southern side of Kadesh, and they cut through t he
division of Re in its middle, while they were marching without knowi ng and
without being drawn up for battle. The infantry and chariotry of h is majesty
retreated before them. Now, his majesty had halted on the nor th of the city
of Kadesh, on the western side of the Orontes. Then came o ne to tell it to
his majesty

His majesty shone like his father Montu, when he took the adornments of wa r;
as he seized his coat of mail, he was like Baal in his hour. The gre at span
which bore his majesty called: "Victory-in-Tebes," from the gre at stables of
Ramses II, was in the midst of the leaders. His majesty halt ed in the rout;
then he charged into the foe, the vanquished of Kheta, bei ng alone by himself
and none other with him. When his majesty went to lo ok behind him, he found
2,500 chariotry surrounding him, in his way out, b eing all the youth of the
wretched Kheta, together with its numerous alli ed countries: from Arvad, from
Mesa, from Pedes, from Keshkesh, from Erwen et, from Kezweden, from Aleppo,
Eketeri, Kadesh, and Luka, being three m en to a span, acting in unison.

Year 5, third month of the third season, day 9; under the majesty of Horu s:
Mighty Bull, Beloved of Truth; King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Usermare-
Setepnere; Son of Re; Ramses-Meriamon, given life forever.

Lo, his majesty was in Zahi on his second victorious campaign. The good ly
watch in life, prosperity and health, in the tent of his majesty, w as on the
highland south of Kadesh.

When his majesty appeared like the rising of Re, he assumed the adornmen ts of
his father, Montu. When the king proceeded northward, and his majes ty had
arrived at the locality south of the town of Shabtuna, there came t wo Shasu,
to speak to his majesty as follows: "Our brethren, who belo ng to the greatest
of the families with the vanquished chief of Kheta, ha ve made us come to his
majesty, to say: 'We will be subjects of Pharaoh a nd we will flee from the
vanquished chief of Kheta; for the vanquished chi ef of Kheta sits in the land
of Aleppo, on the north of Tunip. He fears be cause of Pharaoh to come
southward.'" Now, these Shasu spake these word s, which they spake to his
majesty, falsely, for the vanquished chief of K heta made them come to spy
where his majesty was, in order to cause the ar my of his majesty not to draw
up for fighting him, to battle with the vanq uished chief of Kheta.

Lo, the vanquished chief of Kheta came with every chief of every countr y,
their infantry and their chariotry, which he had brought with him by fo rce,
and stood, equipped, drawn up in line of battle behind Kadesh the Dec eitful,
while his majesty knew it not. Then his majesty proceeded northwa rd and
arrived on the northwest of Kadesh; and the army of his majesty ma de camp
there.

Then, as his majesty sat upon a throne of gold, there arrived a scout w ho was
in the following of his majesty, and he brought two scouts of the v anquished
chief of Kheta. They were conducted into the presence, and his m ajesty said
to them: "What are ye?" They said: "As for us, the vanquish ed chief of the
Kheta has caused that we should come to spy out where h is majesty is." Said
his majesty to them: "He! Where is he, the vanquish ed chief of Kheta? Behold,
I have heard, saying: 'He is in the land of Ale ppo,'" Said they: "See, the
vanquished chief of Kheta is stationed, togeth er with many countries, which
he has brought with him by force, being eve ry country which is in the
districts of the land of Kheta, the land of Nah arin, and all Kode. They are
equipped with infantry and chariotry, beari ng their weapons; more numerous
are they than the sand of the shore. Se e, they are standing, drawn up for
battle, behind Kadesh the Deceitful."

Then his majesty had the princes called into the presence, and had them he ar
every word which the two scouts of the vanquished chief of Kheta, who w ere in
the presence, had spoken. Said his majesty to them: "See ye the man ner
wherewith the chiefs of the peasantry and the officials under wh om is the
land of Pharaoh have stood, daily, saying to the Pharaoh: 'The v anquished
chief of Kheta is in the land of Aleppo; he has fled before h is majesty,
since hearing that, behold, he came.' So spake they to his maj esty daily. But
see, I have held a hearing in this very hour, with the t wo scouts of the
vanquished chief of Kheta, to the effect that the vanquis hed chief of Kheta
is coming, together with the numerous countries that a re with him, being
people and horses, like the multitudes of the sand. Th ey are stationed behind
Kadesh the Deceitful. But the governors of the cou ntries and the officials
under whose authority is the land of Pharaoh we re not able to tell it to us."

Said the princes who were in the presence of his majesty: "It is a great f
ault, which the governors of the countries and the officials of Pharaoh ha ve
committed in not informing that the vanquished chief of Kheta was ne ar the
king; and in that they told his report to his majesty daily."

Then the vizier was ordered to hasten the army of his majesty, while th ey
were marching on the south of Shabtuna, in order to bring them to the p lace
where his majesty was.

Lo, while his majesty sat talking with the princes, the vanquished chi ef of
Kheta came, and the numerous countries, which were with him. They cr ossed
over the channel on the south of Kadesh, and charged into the ar my of his
majesty while they were marching, and not expecting it. Then t he infantry and
chariotry of his majesty retreated before them, northwa rd to the place where
his majesty was. Lo, the foes of the vanquished chi ef of Kheta surrounded the
bodyguard of his majesty, who were by his side.

When his majesty saw them, he was enraged against them, like his father, M
ontu, lord of Thebes. He seized the adornments of battle, and arrayed hims elf
in his coat of mail. He was like Baal in his hour. Then he betook hims elf to
his horses, and led quickly on, being alone by himself. He charg ed into the
foes of the vanquished chief of Kheta, and the numerous countr ies which were
with him. His majesty was like Sutekh, the great in strengt h, smiting and
slaying among them; his majesty hurled them headlong, one u pon another into
the water of the Orontes.

"I charged all countries, while I was alone, my infantry and my chariot ry
having forsaken me. Not one among them stood to turn about. I swea r, as Re
loves me, as my father, Atum, favors me, that, as for every matt er which his
majesty has stated, I did it in truth, in the presen ce of my infantry and my
chariotry."

Source: James Henry Brested, Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Document s.
(Chicago: 1906), III:136-147