Famous Pharaohs: 2009-03-01

Monuments of Ramses II

This is the king who above all others bears the name of honor of A-nakhtu "the Conqueror", and whom the monuments and the rolls of the books often designate by his popular names of Ses, Sestesu, Setesu, or Sestura, that is, the "Sethosis, who is also called Ramesses" of the Manethonian record, and the renowned legendary conqueror Sesostris of the Greek historians. The number of his monuments, which still to the present day cover the soil of Egypt and Nubia in almost countless numbers, as the ruined remnants of a glorious past, or are daily brought to light from their concealment, is so great and almost countless, that the historian of his life and deeds finds himself in a difficulty where to begin, how to spin together the principal threads, and where to end his work. If to honor the memory of his father be the chief duty and the first work of a dutiful son, and we shall see that this was the persuasion of Ramses II, the beginning is made easy for us, and we shall honor the king's memory in the worthiest manner by using the very words of the great Sesostris about his first acts on entering upon his sole reign. Temple of Ramses II in Abydos: King Seti had died. The temple of Abydus stood half finished. The first royal care of Ramses was to complete the work, and in a long inscription on the left wall of the entrance, to record the intention with which his heart was charged, for the imitation of his contemporaries and of posterity. The lord of the land arose as king, to show honor to his father, in his first year, on his first journey to Thebes.

He had caused likenesses of his father, who was King Seti I, to be sculptured, the one in Thebes, the other in Memphis at the entrance gate, which he had executed for himself, besides those which were in Nifur, the necropolis of Abydus. Thus he fulfilled the wish which moved his heart, since he had been on earth, on the ground of the god Unnofer. He renewed the remembrance of his father, and of those who rest in the under world, in that he made his name to live, and caused his portraits to be made, and fixed the revenues set apart for his venerated person, and filled his house and richly decked out his altars. The walls were rebuilt, which had become old in his favorite house, the halls in his temple were rebuilt, its walls were covered, its gates were raised up; whatever had fallen into decay in the burial place of his father in the Necropolis was restored, and the works of art which had been carried away were brought back into the interior. All this did the Conquering King Ramses II for his father Seti I. He established for him the sacrifices in rich profusion, in his name and in that of the earlier kings. His breast had a tender feeling towards his parent, and his heart beat for him who brought him up.

Menkaure (2532–2504 B.C.)

After Khafra's passage home to the realm of the dead, where the king of the gods, Osiris, held the sceptre, Men-kau-ra (Menkaure), Mencheres, ascended the throne. This is the Mykerinos, Mencherinos, about whom the Greek authors relate that he erected the third pyramid as a memorial of honour. It is called in the texts by the name of hir, that is, "the high one". When Colonel Vyse found his way to the middle of the chamber of the dead and entered into the silent space of "Eternity", his eye discerned, as the last trace of Menkaura's place of burial, the wooden cover of the sarcophagus, and the stone coffin hewn out of one hard block, beautifully adorned outside in the style of a temple, according to the fashion of the masters of the old empire. The sarcophagus rests now at the bottom of the Mediterranean, the English vessel which was conveying it having been wrecked near Gibraltar. The cover, which was saved, thanks to the material of which it was composed, is now exhibited in the gallery of Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum.

Its outside is adorned with a short text conceived in the following terms: "Osiris, who hast become king of Egypt, Menkaura hving eternally, child of Olympus, son of Urania, heir of Kronos, over thee may she stretch herself and cover thee, thy divine mother, Urania, in her name as mystery of heaven. May she grant that thou shouldest be like God, free from all evils, King Menkaura, living eternally". This prayer is of very ancient origin, for there are examples of it found on the covers of sarcophagi belonging to the dynasties of the ancient empire. The sense of it is full of significance. Delivered from mortal matter, the soul of the defunct king passes through the immense space of heaven to imite itself with God, after having overcome the evil which opposed it during its life on its terrestrial journey. According to classic traditions King Mencheres enjoyed a very good reputation among pharaonic ancestors. He is described as a man distinguished for his justice and kindness, as also for his piety in regard to all that concerned the worship of the gods. For this reason the Egyptians after his death accorded him the honors of a god, by establishing a special worship dedicated to his memory. I do not know if we ought to attribute a great importance to this worship. The Egyptians rendered him the same honor which the kings, his predecessors, enjoyed after their decease. For the monuments of the time of the building of the pyramids mention priests and prophets which were devoted to the service of Kheops, Chabryes, and other rulers, and who oflfered them sacrifices and attended to their service, after the "lord of the world" had left the hght and descended to the depth of his grave. As to the religious sentiments which we attribute to the Pharaoh Mencheres, it seems in fact that Mencheres Pius occupied himself during his Ufe by a certain predilection with sacred literature. The book called Pirem-lieru, the so-called "departure from day", recalls his memory particularly in gate 64. According to the words of the text the author finishes the gate with this remark: "This gate was discovered in the town of Hermopolis, engraved on a block of alabaster, and painted in blue color under the feet of this god. It was discovered at the epoch of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Mencheres the defunct, by the prince his son, Hortotef, when he undertook a journey to inspect the temples of Egypt. He brought it as a wonderful thing to the king, after having recognized the contents full of mystery".

Queen Nofretari

The name of the architect Ahmose has not been perpetuated on the walls of the Theban temples, but the rock tablets of Maassara down to the present hour have in the inscriptions preserved the memorial of him, and by the side of him the remembrance of his consort, the great heiress-queen NOFRET-ARI-AHMOSE, that is, "the beautiful companion of Ahmose." Not only the rocky caverns of Toora and Maassara, within sight of Memphis, the capital of the oldest dynasties, but also a number of public monuments in the interior of the dark chambers of the tombs of the Theban Necropolis, have clearly preserved the name of this queen, surrounded by laudatory inscriptions. Long after her decease this great ancestress of the new empire was venerated as a divine being, and her image was placed as an equal among the eternal inhabitants of the Egyptian heaven. In the united assembly of the sainted first kings of the new empire, Nofert-ari-Ahmose, the divine spouse of Ahmose, sits enthroned at the head of all the Pharaonio pairs, and before all the royal children of their race, as the specially venerated ancestress and founder of the eighteenth dynasty. As such she was called "the daughter, sister, wife, and mother of a king," besides her title of "wife of the God Amon," which expression designated the chief priestess of the tutelary God of Thebes (but not more than that).

On several monuments the beautiful companion of Ahmose is represented with a black skin, and the conclusion has hence been drawn that she had to boast or to be ashamed of a negro origin. In spite of the intelligent surmises which have been put forward, on the side of the learned, to discover high state reasons from the color of her skin, namely, that a treaty concluded by the Pharaoh Ahmose with the neighbouring negro peoples for a common effort to drive out the shepherd kings was sealed by this marriage, it seems to me that, in this supposition, two points of view have been entirely neglected. First, the dark color is found not infrequently employed in the paintings in the tombs of the kings at Thebes, so as to offer by the side of the other brightly coloured pictures of the Pharaohs an evident allusion to their stay in the dark night of the grave. This intention of the painter would appear all the more probable in the case of our raven-coloured queen, as she is not on every occasion represented black, but sometimes she appears on the walls of the tombs at Thebes with a yellow color to her skin like all Egyptian women. In the second place, the negroes with their queen, allied to them (as is said) in race, owed small thanks to the house of Egypt, since Ahmose, after conquering his enemies in the north, immediately turned his arms against the brethren and the people of his own wife, by whose help alone, it is supposed, he had been able to obtain a victory over his hereditary enemy. We must therefore consider, and for the sake of King Ahmose we must wish it to be so, that Nofretari, belonging to the Egyptian stock, represented an heiress, to whom had descended by birth and by law the right of succession to" the Theban throne. As the husband of such an heiress Ahmose only occupied the second place by her side, and it was reserved to the son of them both, according to the laws of the Egyptian succession, to bear the sceptre as the legitimate full king over both the great divisions of the empire.

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Monuments of Ramses II

Menkaure (2532–2504 B.C.)

Queen Nofretari