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Ramesses
the Great ruled Egypt for 66 years and won peace with the Hittites.
Ramesses II (also known as Ramesses the Great and alternatively
transcribed as Ramses and Rameses) was an Egyptian pharaoh. He lived
from about 1314 BC to 1224 BC and reigned from 1290 BC to 1224 BC.
He ruled for a total of 66 years, becoming pharaoh at the age of
24 and dying in his 90th year.
He fought and won a peace treaty with the Hittites. He built extensively.
Abu Simbel is his most famous monument.
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| Portrait
by
Winifred Brunton |
He was the third king of the 19th dynasty, and the son of
Seti I and his Queen Tuya. The most memorable of Ramesses' wives was
Nefertari. Others among his wives were Isisnofret and Maathorneferure,
Princess of Hatti.
He is thought to have had 90 children. His children
include Bintah (Bintanath) (princess and her father's wife), Setakht (Sethnakhte),
the Pharaoh Merneptah (who succeeded him), and prince Khaemweset.
Ramesses led several expeditions north into the lands east of the Mediterranean
(modern Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria). At the Battle of Kadesh
in the fourth year of his reign (1286 BC), Egyptian forces under Ramesses
engaged the forces of Muwatallis, king of the Hittites. Over the following
years, neither power could effectively defeat the other, so in the 21st
year of his reign (1269 BC), Ramesses concluded an agreement with Hattusilis
III, the earliest known surviving peace treaty, believed to have been
drawn up in 1271 BC.
Ramesses also campaigned south of the first cataract into Nubia. He constructed
many impressive monuments such as Abu
Simbel, and more statues of him exist than of any other Egyptian pharaoh:
Ramesses indeed provided the artisans who lived in
Deir el Medina with plenty of work. His Morturary temple is the Rameseum
at Luxor.
He was buried in the Valley of the Kings, in KV7, but his mummy was later
moved to the mummy cache at Deir el-Bahri, where it was found in 1881
and placed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo five years later, where it
is still exhibited with pride by the Egyptian people.
His successor was his son Merneptah.
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