Ramesses II Ascends: Egypt Enters Its Golden Age

A prince barely into his twenties inherited the most powerful throne on Earth and held it for 66 years. Ramesses II ascended as pharaoh of Egypt around 1279 BC and proceeded to build, conquer, and procreate on a scale that no ruler before or since has matched, earning the title "Ramesses the Great" and becoming the standard against which all subsequent pharaohs were measured. Ramesses was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty, son of Seti I, and he had been groomed for power from childhood, accompanying his father on military campaigns in Libya and Nubia. He took the throne confident and ambitious, immediately launching construction projects across Egypt and asserting military dominance over neighboring kingdoms. His most famous military engagement was the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC against the Hittite Empire, fought in present-day Syria. Ramesses nearly lost the battle when Hittite chariots ambushed his camp, but he rallied his personal guard and fought his way out. Egyptian inscriptions portray the battle as a great victory. Hittite records suggest otherwise. The resulting stalemate led to the earliest known peace treaty between major powers, signed around 1258 BC, a copy of which hangs in the United Nations headquarters. Ramesses built obsessively. Abu Simbel, the rock-cut temple complex in southern Egypt, features four colossal seated statues of the pharaoh, each 66 feet tall. The Ramesseum, his mortuary temple at Thebes, and massive additions to the temples at Karnak and Luxor advertised his power across the kingdom. He fathered an estimated 100 children with multiple wives and outlived many of them. He died around age 90, an extraordinary lifespan for the ancient world, and was buried in the Valley of the Kings. His mummy, discovered in 1881, was issued a modern Egyptian passport in 1974 for transport to Paris, listing his occupation as "King (deceased)." Ramesses' reign defined Egypt's last great imperial age. Within a century of his death, the New Kingdom began its long decline.