The Ramesside Period: Dynasties 19-20 (c. 1300-1070 BC)

Tony Leahy

Restoration and obliteration

Amarna kings omitted

Hatshepsut omitted

Abydos king list

Karnak obelisk Name of Amun restored

What was it all about?

Personal piety?

The ex-general Horemheb as king before Amun

The shift of political power to the north Memphis, Piramesse, Tanis and Sais

Piramesse is same site as

Avaris

A warrior line: the records of Seti I proclaim military success

North exterior wall of the hypostyle hall at Karnak

• Ramses II (‘the great’), 67 year reign • Sealed peace with Hittites • Extensive temple building (Abu Simbel above) • Successful propaganda – ten later kings given his name • Construction of West Delta forts to combat threat from Libya

Ozymandias, or Ramses II

• I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed, And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

• -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

The Valley of the Kings

• Discreet burial place of the kings (and a few non-kings) of Dynasties 18, 19 and 20

• Cut deep into the bedrock, some over 100 metres

• Mortuary temples on the riverside of the Valley, facing east

• Ramesside tombs larger and more elaborate than those of the 18th Dynasty

Burial chamber of Amenhotep II:

The Book of Amduat

The Book of the Dead: judgement for non-royals

The Valley of Kings: Tutankhamun

The entrance to the burial chamber

Gilded shrine to golden mask

The burial and the succession Ay ‘opens the mouth’ of Tutankhamun

Unique scenes for a royal tomb

The king joins the journey of the sun: increased grandeur in royal burial post-Amarna

The west bank at Thebes, looking east. Location of Deir el-Medina in relation to VK and

mortuary temples

Ramesseum

Deir el-Medina

To Valley of Kings

Medinet Habu

The village of Deir el-Medina and the temple of Medinet Habu from the west

Key points on Deir el-Medina

• Village constructed to house VK workforce

• Occupied from early 18th to end 20th Dynasty (with break Amarna Period?).

• Housed an average community of 60 workmen and their families, so c. 600 people.

• Village has survived well physically with a large archive of papyri and ostraca (mostly Ramesside)

• Invaluable source for law, economy and religion in the lives of ‘ordinary’ people

Families and their lives

Concept of ‘sin’

• ‘I am a man who swore falsely by Ptah, lord of Maat, and he made me see darkness by day.’

• ‘I did wrong against the Peak and she taught me a lesson…she was merciful to me…she made my malady forgotten.’

• From stelae of the workman Neferabu in the British Museum and Turin

The deified Amenhotep I was venerated as village patron long after his death

Redemption for the penitent Nebre gives thanks to Amun

• ‘I made supplications before him (Amun) in the presence of the whole land, on behalf of the draughtsman Nakhtamun, who lay sick unto death, in the power of Amun through his sin. I found the lord of gods coming as the northwind …he saved Amun’s draughtsman Nakhtamun.’

The ‘Contendings’ of Horus and Seth

Statue group of Ramesses III, endorsed by Horus and Seth

Papyrus Chester Beatty I, in the British Museum: a different, and disrespectful, view of the gods

Salaries and strikes, quarrels and litigation

Prolonged series of strikes in year 29 Ramesses III

The tomb robberies of the late Twentieth Dynasty

Papyrus recording investigation into robbery

from royal tombs

Royal bodies saved

For much more on the Valley of the Kings and the West Bank at Luxor, visit http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/

Invasions from the west…

…beginning under Merenptah, c. 1200 BC, continuing intermittently for at least 50-100 years

Battles against Libyans and ‘Sea-Peoples’ on the walls of Medinet Habu,

mortuary temple of Ramses III

The wealth of the priesthood of Amun

the high priest of Amun Amenhotep, on a wall at Karnak

Late Twentieth Dynasty

P. Harris I Ramses III/IV

The end of the New Kingdom c. 1070 BC

• Division of the country between high-priests of Amun, based at Thebes, ruling most of the Valley, and the kings of the Twenty-first Dynasty ruling the Delta

• Shift of northern capital from Piramesse to nearby new city of Tanis

• Abandonment of Valley of Kings tradition and end of Deir el-Medina community – new type of royal burial at Tanis