The
second name is called the nebty, or "Two Ladies"
name, for the images of a vulture and cobra, the goddesses Nekhbet
and Wajet, which precede it. He chose “Appearing as king
like Atum.” Atum was the creator god, the first consciousness
of the cosmos, the father of all the gods. By choosing this name,
Ramesses linked his enthronement with the first moment of creation
of the universe. He appeared as king like the very embodiment
of royalty, the first god, the first king. This name also promises
the dynasty to follow, just as Geb and Shu, Osiris and Horus followed
Atum. And sadly, Atum is often shown as an old god, the god of
sunsets. This was an appropriate image for a king who may have
been sixty years old.
Finally,
there was the Golden Horus name. “He who establishes truth
throughout the land.” This was a statement of fact, even
more than of intention. The new king had spent his youth and maturity
establishing ma'at, truth and justice throughout Egypt.
Every official who had ever met him or had to report to him—
and it would have been nearly every one in the country— knew
his quality. The title may also have been a last comment on the
old Amarna kings and the heresy, for Akhenaten had asserted that
he was 'living in truth.' The Golden Horus dismisses Akhenaten's
claim, even as Ramesses and his family would strive to erase the
heretic from history.
As
King, Ramesses continued the work of restoration and consolidation
he had shared with Horemheb, but also began to leave his own mark
upon the country. Stele and scattered inscriptions attest to an
ambitious building cam-paign. In the Sinai, he worked on the temples
of Hathor. On a stela now in Brussels he proclaimed that,
His
Father Atum brought him up while he was a child [to] act with
loving heart, renewing monuments that had gone to ruin, and
illuminating the name of 'his mother Hathor, Lad[y]. of Turquoise
- one who made a path to her, (something) not in others' minds.
The
attention to detail that had earned him promotions in his career
as soldier and civil servant, marked him as king. Having addressed
the goddess Hathor in the North, he turned his mind to Nubia,
and ensured the delivery of the proper offerings for Min-Amun
at Buhen. His Buhen stela continues the work of providing priests
and servants for this temple. He does not state the source of
the priests and prophets, but the workshops are to be filled with
“slaves, male and female, of the captures (made by) His Majesty…”
This same stele speaks of works done in Memphis:
Now,
His Majesty was in the city-quarter of Hatku[Ptah (in Memphis)
doing what pleas]ed his father Amen-Re, and Ptah South-of-his-Wall,
and all the gods of Nile-land,….
In
the Southern capital of Thebes, he began to transform Horemheb's
fore-court at Karnak into the Grand Hypostyle Hall in Karnak.
This work would be continued by his son and completed by his grandson.
Hathor, Ptah, Min-Amun and Amun-Re had received his attention.
Fragments from Abydos and Heliopolis show that buildings were
begun for Osiris, Re-Horakhty, and Atum. In the tradition of the
great kings of the Middle Kingdom and the XVIIIth Dynasty, he
erected an obelisk. Only fragments remain of the great works he
planned and undertook. In a reign of less than two years, Ramesses
I was unable to carry out his building program. His plans would
be completed by his son, Seti I.
During
his brief reign, the aging king relied on his strong son. A dedi-catory
stela made by Seti I for his father at Abydos gives a touching
glimpse into their relationship.
It
was he, indeed, who created my beauty; he made great my family
in (people's) minds. He gave me his counsels as my safeguard,
and his teaching was like a rampart in my heart. See, I am
a son useful to him who fashioned me, (I) keeping alive [the
name of my progenitor]. I [was perspicacious] and adept at
doing what(ever) he said.
Royal
stele are important documents which tell us where and what kings
built; it is rare for such personal, human feeling to appear on
them. Seti speaks of the time when he aided his father as Vizier
or co-regent:
I
(thus) speak out about what I did for him until I became Ruler
of the Two River-Banks. I came forth from the womb as a bull
(=guardian) of what was right (maat), I being already primed
with counsels of instruction. While he was (very) Re effulgent,
I was with him like a star at his side, . . .
During
the XVIIIth Dynasty, there seems to have been no consistent pattern
to the treatment and status of royal sons. Royal daughters can
be seen taking part in ceremonies as priestesses, but it is rare
to see the king's sons, or to know who among them was the 'crown
prince.' Amenhotep III, for example, sired many daughters during
his thirty-eight year reign, but we know of only two sons, Djehutymes
(who would have been Tuthmosis V, had he lived,) and a younger
brother who succeeded his father originally under the name Amenhotep
IV, and later as Akhenaten. Akhenaten portrayed his six daughters
by Great Royal Wife Nefertiti hundreds of times on monuments,
but we are left to infer that Tutankhamun was his son; no royal
princes were shown at Amarna.
Dynasty
XIX, by contrast, would come close to the pattern of Dynasty XII
of the Middle Kingdom. A crown prince would be acknowledged who
would assist his father in governing the country. Seti appears
to have shared power with Ramesses II, as the latter, in his old
age, relied upon his thirteenth son, Merenptah. Ramesses II had
gloried in his many sons; we know the names of many of the successive
crown princes who predeceased their father. Merenptah would rely
on Seti II. Even into Dynasty XX, Ramesses III would depict his
many sons on the walls of his temples. The pattern had been set
by Ramesses I and Seti I, whose pride in their human family with
its Northern, military heritage, played a large part in their
lives.
Did
Seti act as Vizier or co-regent for his father? The late Bill
Murnane addressed this issue in Ancient Egyptian Co-regencies
(University of Chicago, Oriental Institute, Studies in Ancient
Oriental Civilization, No. 40, 1977). Murnane concluded that the
evidence that father and son ruled together as kings is mildly
ambiguous, but "very attractive." The most powerful
piece of evidence is a statue base from Medamud with two symmetrically
carved inscrip-tions. On the right side, Ramesses I is referred
to as "the Good God, the likeness of Re who shines on the
Two Lands like the Horizon-dweller; . . . Menpehtyre." The
other side reads in part, "the Good God, the star of the
land, at whose appearance everyone lives. . . Menmaatre "
- the throne name of Seti I. This suggests that the two ruled
together, with Seti as the jun-ior partner, the 'star' to his
father's 'sun.' This is the same language used in Seti's memorial
chapel inscription from Abydos already quoted: "I was with
him, like a star at his side."
Whether
formally as co-regent or as Vizier, Seti assisted his father,
par-ticularly in the military sphere. The Abydos stele continued:
I
subdued for him the lands of the Fenkhu, and I repulsed for
him dissi-dents from the desert, (so that) I might protect
Egypt for him at this wish, and I organized his kingship for
him there, like Horus on the throne of Wenennufer. I chose
Truth for him every day, and I wore it.
I
mustered his army and gave it unity of purpose. I sought out
for him the condition of the Two Lands, and I wielded for
him my strong right arm as his 'Bodily Protection' in foreign
lands whose names were hitherto unknown. I was a valiant hero
before him.
These
wars would have been the source of the slaves that Ramesses I
dedi-cated in the Temple of Buhen.
Now
his Majesty, the King of S & N Egypt, Menpeh(ty)re, given
life, de-creed the establishment of sacred offerings for his
father, Min-Amun residing in [Buhen]:
.
. . Likewise, [this temple] was filled with prophets and priests;
and his workshops filled with slaves, male and female, of
the captures (made by) his Majesty, . . .Menpeh(ty)re.
As
an older man, with only a year or so left to live, it's unlikely,
though possible, that Ramesses himself went into battle. It seems
much more reasonable to assume that the captures were actually
made by Seti.
What
were these wars, and why were they fought? It may seem strange
that Ramesses began his short reign with battles or raids into
Western Asia, and that Seti, and later Ramesses II, would spend
so many years campaigning there. Had Horemheb been content to
let things slide in the Levant, choosing instead to consolidate
his borders and his power at home? Or were the rela-tions between
the two 'superpowers' Egypt and Hatti such that Egyptian armies
could not freely move into Palestine or Syria to quell rebellions
and safe-guard trade roads? The records of Murshili, a Hittite
king contemporary with Ay and Horemheb, do not speak of armed
conflicts after his seventh year. Bill Murane suggested that this
silence might be interpreted as "resumption of diplomatic
relations."
That
there was indeed a treaty between the Hittite Empire and Egypt
signed during the reign of Ramesses I (or possibly during the
last years of Horem-heb) is suggested by a reference to an 'earlier
treaty' by the King Hattu-shili III. Such a treaty would have
freed Ramesses and Seti to pursue the usual Egyptian strategy
in West Asia: to protect Egyptian interests by main-taining the
stability of the small kingdoms of the area. A more effective
Egyptian control of their sphere of influence in West Asia would
lead eventu-ally to direct conflict between Egypt and Hatti as
the two manoeuvred for po-sition. During the reign of Seti, the
conflict finally broke out over Kadesh, a town made famous by
a later battle of Ramesses II.
As
vizier to Horemheb, Ramesses' duties had been outside of the military.
Now, with his son, he set about reforming the army, preparing
it to restore Egyptian power and influence in West Asia. The glorious
days of Tuthmosis III and Amenhotep III would return and trade
goods from the East would flow again into Egypt.. By the end of
Ramesses' life, Seti had begun to restore normal military and
commercial operations by putting down a rebellion in the Shasu
Lands, not because the rebels themselves were any threat to Egypt,
but because "the hills of the rebels, they could not be passed
on account of the Shasu enemies who were attacking …"
But
by now Ramesses was dying. If he had been born in the last years
of Amenhotep III, he would have been at least sixty, a good though
not re-markable old age for an ancient Egyptian. There are no
accounts of his death, and the mummy tentatively identified as
his shows no overt signs of illness or injury, He was succeeded,
as planned by the able Seti:
He
went to heaven. Then I arose upon his throne. It is I who
keep his name alive, I being like Re at the dawn since I assumed
my father's regalia. See, I am now king on the seat which
he has enlarged, on the throne that he occupied. This land
belongs to me as it did to my father.
Seti
buried his father in the Valley of the Kings, and dedicated a
portion of his own mortuary temple at Gurna to his father's memory.
Though Ramesses would have begun work on his own tomb immediately
upon his accession, his short reign forced a change of plan. According
to Reeves and Wilkinson in The Complete Valley of the Kings,
.
. . the first corridor is the most abbreviated of any royal
tomb in the valley, the two niches at the sides of the second
stairway are only half exe-cuted, and the improvised burial
chamber was cut immediately at the foot of this stairway.
Nevertheless,
the colourful burial chamber is filled with energetic images undoubtedly
drawn and coloured by the same workers who had decorated the tomb
of Horemheb, - the artists of the Village at Deir el Medina who
had been re-organized and revitalized by the peace, order, and
good government that the two old friends had provided. Images
of the king meeting the gods of the Af-terlife, and scenes from
the Book of Gates are drawn on the same blue-grey background,
and vividly coloured. The images are clear, well drawn, and traditional.
We see the King kneeling between two figures who represent the
'souls of Nekhen and Pe' -ancient images for the Northern and
Southern Egypt, - an image of balance and unity.
His
sarcophagus was to have been as fine as any, hewn from a huge
slab of red granite. But there was no time to carve the texts
on it, so they were hastily drawn in yellow paint to represent
gold. Life sized wooden guardian figures, (such as Howard Carter
would find in the tomb of Tutankhamun,) and other wooden deities
have survived three thousand years of robbery, stripped of the
gold that once embellished them. The king's original coffins,
very likely of cedar covered in thick gold leaf, like the second
and third coffins of Tutankhamun, have not survived.
Sometime in the twentieth dynasty, he was removed from KV 16 and
housed in the replacement coffin found in 1881 in the cache of
Deir el Bahri DB 320. Was he then taken from that broken box and
placed in the simple black coffin that found its way to the Niagara
Falls Museum, and later to Atlanta, Geor-gia? If so, he has made
his way home again, and rests as of this writing (December 2003)
in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, only a few miles from his old
residence at Memphis.
"Many have passed since the time of the god - and next morning,
their very names are forgotten."
Ramesses
I, until his recent rediscovery, has been one of the lesser-known
kings of Egypt. In a Life and Times of Ramesses I, the times are
easy to de-scribe, but his own life often seems to elude us. He
slips from us as he works his way through piles of scrolls, hurries
off to listen to legal cases, catches the boat for one more tour
of inspection, or sits with Horemheb and Seti in late night counsel
meetings. It's easy to imagine him as a quiet, effective bureaucrat,
a colourless functionary, like those whose tombs fill the cliffs
at Gurna, and whose pensive statues fill the shelves of museums.
Yet one eye-witness has left his observations and his feelings
about the sol-dier who became a king. He has even described the
funeral of a man who was deeply loved:
the
mourning women surrounded him with litanies. Their hands struck
their faces for him. His children's children remember his
goodness. Lamentation will be made for him, generation upon
generation.
These
are the words of Seti I, in his great dedicatory stele for his
fa-ther at Abydos. At this holiest of Egyptian cities, Seti built
a temple for his father's memory.
My
will has spurred me on, during the work. His temple is well
set up in the eternal place. . . . I have spoken with my own
mouth - my mind was set on constructing his eternal temple
with such works that I might honour his bod-ily form which
is in the temple. I made for him a chapel for his spirit,
drawn in outline and engraved with the chisel, with the figures
of him who created me, made just like him.
On
the walls of his tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Ramesses is
seen in company of the gods, but in Abydos, the Ramesside sense
of family prevails:
It
is his mother who is beside him, inseparably. Those who have
gone on before him are assembled before him; and the beloved
brother of the king is opposite him. I am his son who keeps
alive his name. The God's Mother, her arms embrace him like
Isis, she has joined with her father. All his broth-ers and
sisters are in their proper places. Because his people surround
him, he rejoices.
We
see Ramesses most clearly through the eyes of the son, who knew
and loved him. Perhaps the soldier and Vizier Pa-Ramessu, and
the King Ramesses Menpehtyre, are difficult for the modern mind
to grasp because he was so en-tirely a man of Ancient Egypt. In
the tombs of the workers at Deir el Me-dina, he was remembered
alongside the deified Amenhotep I and Ahmes-Nefertiri as one of
the powerful spirits who would watch over and guard the artists
who worked in the Valley of the Kings. His life seems to have
embodied the advice of the Sage Ptahhotep, who had held the office
of Vizier a thousand years before:
If
you are a man who leads,
Who controls the affairs of the many,
Seek out every beneficent deed,
That your conduct may be blameless.
Great is justice, lasting in effect,
Unchallenged since the time of Osiris.
