🔹 Ramesses 🔹
The Ramesses era is considered one of the most important periods in ancient Egypt, as it includes the 19th and 20th families.
The name of Ramesses is because many of the kings of that period bore the name “Ramses”, which is considered in hieroglyphics “Ra Miss Sis” and means “Ra” born of God.
Horemheb died without having any sons, and he had appointed his leader, “Ramses”, as heir to the throne after him, and married his daughter, “Tui”, to Ibn Ramses, who took the throne after that in the name of “Siti I.”
– Ramses I was a sick old man who ruled the country for only three years, and the only work that counts for him during his reign is the project of the huge hall of legends in the Karnak Temple, which was built by his son and then his grandson.
🔹 Seti I completed what Horemheb had started and launched a series of military campaigns to secure the borders. In the third year of his reign, he launched another military campaign against the Hittites. Still, the imbalance of forces on the battlefield forced the enemies not to continue fighting, and thus Seti was able to dedicate himself entirely to internal economic reforms.
– He was also interested in restoring many temples from the Nile Delta to Nubia, on which it was written, “Seti did the restoration.”
– He also built the Hall of Legends in Karnak Temple, which his father planned. It is a huge building with more than five thousand square meters, inside which one hundred and thirty-four cylinders were built.
The tallest of them is located in the middle, and its length is twenty-five meters.
After the death of “Siti,” his eighteen-year-old son ascended the throne, “Ramses II,” whose reign is one of the longest and most successful periods in the history of Egypt.
– “Ramses II” led many successful military campaigns, the most prominent of which was the campaign he launched against the Hittites, the permanent enemy of the Egyptians, and its most important sites were in “Kadesh”, which was mentioned in the famous poem “Pentawar” relative to the writer whose name appeared on one of the papyri. This poem is one of the most important examples of ancient Egyptian stories. The fierce war against the Egyptians ended in the twenty-second year of the reign of King Ramses II with the signing of a treaty between the two parties, “the Egyptians and the Hittites.”
During his reign, which extended for many years, “Ramses II” built many temples, the most famous of which is the temple of “Abu Simbel”.
For the sake of history, it is necessary to mention this incredible adventure. Its heroes were “Bochart” in 1813 and “Giovan Battista Belzoni”, who in 1817, was able to enter the temple from a very small opening. Still, because of large piles of sand, he could only see A small part of the Great Temple, which is evident in one of the paintings by the artist “David Roberts” in 1836 (almost twenty years after the event).
🔹 In the sixties of the last century, the Egyptian government decided to build a dam on the Nile at the top of the first waterfall on the southern border of the Nubian country and established Lake Nasser, which is one of the largest industrial basins in the world, its width ranges between 20 to 30 km, and its length is 500 meters. However, there are currently differing opinions about the benefits of this lake, it was certainly an important economic step for the country, but the waters of this basin covered many important archaeological sites, including the Abu Simbel Temple and the Philae Temple; This has caused severe damage to the world cultural heritage that cannot be cured.
Egypt, which paid great attention to the matter, was able to mobilize public opinion. With the participation of UNESCO, it prepared a large archaeological and architectural campaign that succeeded in preparing lists of the sunken antiquities, then cutting them into stones and transferring about fourteen temples to safe sites. One of these temples was donated to the Italian government and is currently preserved in Turin’s Egyptian Museum.
The rocky block in which the Temple of Abu Simbel was excavated was rebuilt with a reinforced concrete structure (it cannot be seen at all). A thousand five hundred tons of stones were placed on top of each other in the form of a giant triangular.
The facade of the Temple of “Abu Simbel” is adorned with four official statues of Ramses II, each twenty meters high. When rebuilding, it was decided to preserve the shape of the temple before the “transfer” process. The statue that was destroyed by the earthquake was not rebuilt inside the Great Hall Temple. There is a copy of the poem “Pentaur”, Which recounts the Battle of Kadesh between the Egyptians led by Ramses II and the Hittites led by King “Muwatali”.
Inside the great temple, where the Holy of Holies is located, we see four life-size statues representing three gods and the king. !
To the right of the great temple dedicated to King Ramses, the small temple is dedicated to his wife Queen “Nefertari” and the goddess “Hathor.” Kings were not accustomed to allocating temples to their wives due to the strict religious beliefs of the Egyptians. Two statues of the king surround huge statues in a standing position and the queen, and “Nefertari” was depicted in the form of the goddess “Hathor”, and she was similar to her. With this depiction, the king could allocate the temple without prejudice to the Egyptian customs, which sees her pharaoh as only the living God.
To preserve the city of Thebes and its position as the political and religious capital of the country, Ramses ordered the transfer of the administrative centre of his rule to another new city located in the delta near “Tanis”, which took the name “Bar-Ramses”.
Ramses II died after seventy-six years of rule, putting an end to the rule of the nineteenth dynasty, which enjoyed short periods of rule that did not bring anything new to the history of Egypt. Few women were among the Egyptian rulers.The rule of the twentieth dynasty with “Set Nakht”, who succeeded in reunifying the country and suppressing rebellions, after him came his son Ramses, the last great pharaoh of Egypt, and he re-secured the borders and militarily confronted the invasion attempts by the Sea Peoples in the year 1190 BC. These peoples tried to invade the delta, but they were defeated. They were forced to flee. The kings who followed his reign – and they all had the same name – did not achieve any achievements to be reckoned with them, but what is worth mentioning is one of the valuable literary texts during the reign of King Ramses IX, the text of the journey of “One Amun” which tells the story of one of Thebes priests Who was sent to “Byblos” on the mission of obtaining wood for the sacred boat. This literary text is a document through which a reliable historical assessment can be made of the state of the Egyptian provinces at the time.

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