Ramesses the Great

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Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to Dead Funny History. I'm Greg Jenner.
I'm a historian and I want to tell you about someone cool, Ramesses the second.

Speaker 1 Now you may know him as the ancient Egyptian pharaoh who was mean to Moses in the Prince of Egypt movie. Or you may know him as Ramesses the Great.
And he did do a lot of great stuff.

Speaker 1 That's right, Greg. I was one of the most successful pharaohs of ancient Egypt.

Speaker 1 A brilliant warrior, a magnificent ruler, a builder of glittering cities, father of a fantastic legacy that spans millennia.

Speaker 1 Yeah, at least that's what he'd like you to think. As we'll discover, this guy had very good PR, so you can't necessarily trust everything you hear about Pharaoh Ramesses II.

Speaker 1 For one thing, he actually had five royal names and was probably known to ancient Egyptians by his throne name, which was Usamatra Setapenra. Bit of a mouthful.

Speaker 1 We'll just call him Ramesses to keep things simple. So, Ramesses II ruled in a period known to us as the New Kingdom.
That's right, because it was very modern and very hip.

Speaker 1 Well, that's all relative. Keep in mind that this was over 3,200 years ago, so we're stretching the meaning of new quite a bit.
Alright, there's no need to be rude.

Speaker 1 Moving on. Now, we don't know loads about his childhood, but Ramesses was probably aged about 24 when he became king, in the year 1279 BCE.

Speaker 1 Actually, Greg, we Egyptians counted years from the start of a king's reign, and when a new king came to power, it reset. So it wasn't 1279 BCE to us, It was year one.
Use that instead.

Speaker 1 Trust me, it's simpler. Plus, it makes everything more about the best person in the world.
Aka me.

Speaker 1 Fine. In year one, when Ramesses became king, he already had a kid and a wife called Nefertari.

Speaker 1 We don't know much about Nefertari because her tomb was so badly robbed that all that was left were some shin bones that may have been hers.

Speaker 1 Why didn't robbers want my shins? I have great shins. Ramesses was from a family of soldiers and had already done work experience in the Egyptian army.

Speaker 1 As the new king, he wanted to make Egypt a massive military power. So in year two of his reign, he caught some pirates

Speaker 1 and he made them work for him. Permission to your majesty.
The crowning glory of Ramesses' rule was a huge victory against Egypt's fiercest rivals, the Hittites. It was known as the Battle of Kadesh.

Speaker 1 It was here where I proved my might as a warrior.

Speaker 1 Who actually won the battle, dear?

Speaker 1 Oh, uh, who won?

Speaker 1 I mean, what a question. Oh, I just answered the question.

Speaker 1 No, I am answering. I'm just saying there are two sides.
Oh, don't be shy. Tell the people at home.
No, I'm saying that I.

Speaker 1 I mean, I just. Okay, the Hittites won.
You happy now, dear?

Speaker 1 Yeah, Ramesses' troops were ambushed when he fell for a Hittite trick. Ramesses retreated, and the Hittites grabbed the land.
But that is not how Ramesses told it. My men scattered, but I stepped up.

Speaker 1 The Hittites, when they saw me in all my glory, quaked with fear so much that they couldn't shoot their arrows. That's not what happened, sir.
You didn't win that battle.

Speaker 1 Well, not with that attitude, I didn't. Ramesses had loads of depictions of him winning the battle carved onto temple walls, probably to try and impress the gods.

Speaker 1 And he kept beefing with the Hittites for 15 more years. But eventually, he signed the world's first known written peace treaty with them.

Speaker 1 So Ramesses may have messed up the Battle of Kadesh, but he was properly good at buildings. He began constructing a new capital city pretty much as soon as he became king.

Speaker 1 And it was called Pi Ramesses. That means house of Ramesses.
It wasn't someone offering him lunch at a bake sale. Pi Ramses?

Speaker 1 Oh, go on, then. And Pi Ramesses was a grand design.
Welcome back to a place in another civilization. Pi Ramses.

Speaker 1 Four square miles of everything you could wish for.

Speaker 1 Six temples, massive stables, a fully functioning military outpost,

Speaker 1 and of course, it also has

Speaker 1 a zoo.

Speaker 1 It's so state-of-the-art, the stables have toilet systems. All you need now is someone to toilet train your horse.

Speaker 1 Ramesses also completed a huge temple complex at Abu Sembel and then thought to himself,

Speaker 1 It's missing something. Oh, how about four massive statues of me staring down at the visitors that enter to give the impression that I'm some kind of demigod?

Speaker 1 Awesome, nice Deccan. No, no, my idea is better.
He also made his own temple at Thebes, now known to us as the Ramesium, which is definitely better than the name he gave it.

Speaker 1 The house of millions of years of Usamatra Setapenro that unites with Thebes, the city in the domain of Ammon.

Speaker 1 That's a bit of a long name, Majesty. It's fine, it will fit on one of my massive statues.
Ramesses loved getting statues of himself made.

Speaker 1 But not just any statues. Ah, needs to be bigger than that.

Speaker 1 Bigger,

Speaker 1 so the people at the back can see.

Speaker 1 Please, Majesty, this thing's 70 foot tie now. It's not big enough.
Oh, I'll tell you when it's big enough. These massive statues are called colossi.

Speaker 1 In Pyramesses alone, there were at least 50 of them, and the biggest was a whopping 70 feet tall. That's around the height of Forton Service Station on the M6.
Really makes you think.

Speaker 1 Some colossi still exist, and back in the day, they would have been painted bright colours. Think more Disneyland than British Museum.

Speaker 1 Ma'am, can we go back to the 70-foot statue of Ramesses II every year?

Speaker 1 But Ramesses wasn't just a mighty king and a brilliant liar, he was also a big family man.

Speaker 1 Which I mean he had a big family. About a hundred children.

Speaker 1 He also had a pet lion, because that's really what you need in a palace filled with 100 small children. Hey, honey, guess what I got?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 is it something to help us look after the literally hundreds of children you have? Oh,

Speaker 1 not

Speaker 1 really.

Speaker 1 Look, it was either this or another massive statue of me. Alright?

Speaker 1 Now, if that sounds like too many kids for one mum to have, you are right. Ramesses had loads of wives.
There were two principal wives, Nefertari

Speaker 1 and Iset Nofret. Iset no fret by name, but a lot of fret by nature.

Speaker 1 That's what being around 100 children will do to you. Plus, Ramesses also had a bunch of Hittite brides to seal the deal on that peace treaty.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Ramesses' best frenemy, the Hittite king, kept giving him wives. It's like when your aunt once gave you a gift you liked, and so she keeps giving you the same thing every year.

Speaker 1 And that's how I've ended up with five air friars. Anyway, Ramesses' firstborn son was called Amen Hiwenemef.
He became the crown prince, but sadly died quite young.

Speaker 1 But Kayyem Waset, Waset, his son with Iset Nofret, became the high priest of Tar in Memphis, a top job which meant looking after the Apis Bull. What's the Apis Bull? Oh, I am so glad you asked.

Speaker 1 This was a sacred, fortune-telling bull that would live as a god and answer questions about the future by eating food or kicking over a bucket. Sort of like a careers advisor, but with more cowpoo.

Speaker 1 So, post-TSEs, should I be thinking apprenticeship or art college?

Speaker 1 Art school, it is. And the Apis Ball also got a whole load of cow wives.

Speaker 1 They were said to be specially selected for their cow beauty. I wish we knew how that happened.
Welcome back to Miss Mooniverse, where we crown the most beautiful cow in Egypt.

Speaker 1 Here's Miss Memphis, wearing a lovely bovine bikini. Her hobbies are chewing cud, mowing and belly.

Speaker 1 Prince Kayen Wasset also helped organize something very important for ramping up Ramesses' reputation. Welcome to the Said Festival! What?

Speaker 1 He said the Said Festival. It was a bit like the Royal Jubilee.
They were big celebrations that took place after 30 years of rule and then every three or four years after that.

Speaker 1 So how many did you have, Ram? 14! I do love a fuss. These festivals could last for two months and included a reenactment of Ramesses' coronation.

Speaker 1 And the best bit was the ceremonial race designed to test the king's ongoing fitness to rule. It was basically the ancient Egyptian bleep test, and Ramesses was not allowed to lose.

Speaker 1 And what a surprise. All the athletes have stopped, letting themselves get overtaken once again by an 89-year-old man

Speaker 1 have thought Ramesses wins again. Now say what you like about Ramesses' military skill and ego, and we have, but you can't deny that he lived for a really, really long time.

Speaker 1 He outlived most of his wives. Bye Nefertari, by Isset, no fret, by

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 oh, I want to say Julie. That right?

Speaker 1 Jenny.

Speaker 1 Jackie, that's the one. And he even outlived a lot of his kids.
We know that in old age, Ramesses would have had sore teeth, he would have walked with a stoop, and had bad arthritis.

Speaker 1 When Ramesses eventually died, his body was mummified. Although years later, an x-ray examination showed that peppercorns had been shoved up his nose.
Peppercorns? Yeah.

Speaker 1 To help keep his nose in shape under all those bandages. I can't have pepper up my nose for 32 centuries.
I'll...

Speaker 1 It's...

Speaker 1 Bless you. In the afterlife, I guess he was less Ramesses, more

Speaker 1 Ramesnes. If

Speaker 1 there was an Egyptian god for bad

Speaker 1 puns, I would set them on you, Greg Jare!

Speaker 1 Ramesnese rested in the Valley of the Kings for 200 years, but was then moved by a priest to protect him from ancient grave robbers.

Speaker 1 His tomb was later discovered with loads of other mummified kings and queens in the 1800s. The story goes that a guy called Ahmed El-Razul found him in 1871 while looking for a lost goat.

Speaker 1 What's that? Little Ramesses the Great is stuck down a hole?

Speaker 1 Whoa,

Speaker 1 you truly are a Z-goat. Apparently, Ahmed didn't tell anyone about his discovery for 10 years, and instead sold valuables from the tomb on the quiet.

Speaker 1 Poor Ramesses the Great, gone from godlike king to a scavenged ruin in the desert. That's the sort of thing you could write a poem about.

Speaker 1 Me?

Speaker 1 I wrote a really famous poem in 1818 about Ramesses' legacy crumbling away.

Speaker 1 I met a traveller from an antique. Sorry, we don't have time for you, Percy Byss-Shelley, because it's the end of the show.
Oh,

Speaker 1 fooy. So, how much do you remember from today's speedy history lesson? Let's find out.
Pencils ready. Question one.

Speaker 1 Name one of Ramesses the Great's two principal wives.

Speaker 1 Nefertari or Isetnofrat.

Speaker 1 Question two. What was a bit funny about Ramesses the Great's famous victory at the Battle of Kadesh?

Speaker 1 He didn't actually win. Question three.

Speaker 1 What is the delicious sounding name of the new capital Ramesses the Great built, which was full of giant statues of himself, plus horses, zoos and temples?

Speaker 1 Boy Ramesses!

Speaker 1 Well done. Join us next time for another snappy history lesson.
And if you're a grown-up and want to learn more about Ramesses the Great, listen to our episode of You're Dead to Me with Dr.

Speaker 1 Campbell Price. Thanks for listening.
Bye! This was a BBC Studios audio production for Radio 4. Dead Funny History was written by Jack Bernhardt, Gabby Hutchinson Crouch and Dr.
Emma Nagoose.

Speaker 1 It was hosted by me, Greg Jenner, and performed by Malianne Reese and Richard David Kane. The script consultant was Dr.
Campbell Price.

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