But if Hattusilis had been behind some of Mursilis’ early decisions, he might have pushed his luck in the end. By Hattusilis’ own account, Mursilis eventually stripped him of his territorial influence, restricting his power almost only to the city of Hakpissa in the north. The more experienced warrior and leader did not take this insult lightly. In Ramesses’ sixteenth year on the throne, aided by loyal nobles, Hattusilis assembled an army and captured and deposed Mursilis. He must still have had a soft spot for his nephew and former student, for instead of murdering Mursilis (a pretty common practice among rival Hittite royals), the newly crowned King Hattusilis III exiled him to Syria, awarding him control over a number of cities. But in doing so, Hattusilis underestimated the former king. Mursilis immediately plotted his return to power, reaching out to the kings of Babylon and Assyria in an effort to garner military support. Someone must have tipped off Hattusilis War and Trade with the Pharaohs.indd 116
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about his nephew’s activities, for he then sent Mursilis to a more distant land – either to Cyprus or somewhere along the Turkish coastline. But again, Mursilis refused to give up: this time, he fled to Egypt. And when Hattusilis wrote to Ramesses asking for his nephew’s extradition, the pharaoh refused.
Egypt’s relations with the Hittites had hit an all time low; a state of war still existed between them, and the Egyptians now harboured a former Hittite king in exile. But in choosing how to respond, Hattusilis had to take wider concerns into consideration. The Assyrians had expanded
their territory, swallowing the eastern Hittite territory of Hanigalbat (itself earlier the Mitanni homeland), pushing their border to Carchemish (today on the border between Syria and Turkey); Egypt continued to campaign
in the empire’s south, causing trouble in the Levant; and the Kingdom
of Ahhiyawa (part of the Mycenaean world) was destabilizing the west. It became prudent, for the good of the empire, for Hattusilis to open peace talks with someone.
Peace and ‘Friendship’
That someone turned out to be Ramesses II. Not wanting to deal with
Assyria – a rogue province from the Hittite perspective – Hattusilis could at least secure his southern border and end one war, and that meant approaching Egypt – the lesser of two evils. There’s no record of Ramesses’ thoughts on this development, but he probably recognized a propaganda coup – a
chance to present his foe as begging for peace. Immediately, envoys started travelling back and forward between the two empires, hammering out the
details of a treaty. By the twenty-second year of Ramesses’ reign, eighteen articles had been agreed, receiving the royal seals of both kings. Each kingdom kept an official version of the treaty on a silver tablet, both now lost, but three copies of the text still survive: two in Egyptian, at Karnak Temple and the Ramesseum, and one from Hattusa, written in cuneiform. Among
the clauses, the Hittites and Egyptians agreed to extradite refugees; to help each other in times of crisis; to return fugitives unharmed; and made a pact of non-aggression and mutual assistance. The Egyptians also accepted Hattusilis as the true king of the Hittites, rather than as a usurper (accusa-tions that seem to have particularly irked the Hittite king since his rise to power), and gave up any claim to Amurru and Qadesh, putting an end to a century of squabbling over this poor city.
The two warrior kings may have sealed a peace treaty, ending years of
hostility, but this didn’t mean that they’d put the past entirely behind them.
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About fifteen to twenty years after the Battle of Qadesh, Hattusilis complained to Ramesses about the pharaoh’s ‘account’ of the battle, questioning its veracity. In his reply, Ramesses simply explained how events had unfolded from his own perspective, repeating the ‘official’ version carved across Egypt’s temple walls. He particularly emphasized how he’d won the battle single-handedly, away from his chariots and troops. Given that Hattusilis was physically present at Qadesh, Ramesses’ reply can only have infuriated him further – perhaps this was the pharaoh’s intention. It shouldn’t be surprising then that this wasn’t the only exchange about the battle. In another letter, Hattusilis expressed disbelief about Ramesses’ claim to have fought alone, without his army and chariotry. Ramesses took offence, and insisted that it was the truth. One wonders, by this point, did Ramesses truly believe his own story? Or did he really just enjoy annoying Hattusilis.
Thirteen years after agreeing their peace treaty, the Egyptians and
Hittites decided to solidify their relations further: one of Hattusilis’ daughters would marry Ramesses II. The event was meant to bring the two families closer together, but ended up reigniting tensions. Angry about delays caused by the Hittites, Ramesses wrote to Queen Pudukhepa, wife of Hattusilis, to enquire about the whereabouts of promised royal gifts that had failed to materialize. Unfazed, in her reply, she told the pharaoh about difficulties at the palace, including a fire, and how what had been left was donated to the gods by Urhi-Teshub (Mursilis – the deposed and exiled Hittite king). For confirmation, she suggested that Ramesses go ask Urhi-Teshub about it –
after all, he was there in Egypt!
Despite such arguments (and probable further digs about the Urhi-
Teshub/Mursilis incident), Ramesses married Hattusilis’ daughter as
planned. The princess and her entourage were escorted from Hittite ter-
ritory to Egypt by a high-level Egyptian charioteer (and later king’s son of Kush) named Hori, and after her arrival, she became known as Queen
Maathorneferure. She would go on to spend time at the royal harems in both Pi-Ramesses in the Delta, and Gurob in the Faiyum Oasis. At long last, a golden era of peaceful relations had truly begun – according to stelae erected by Ramesses to celebrate the marriage – when a person could travel through the Levant as far as the Hittite Empire without putting his life in danger.
Egypto-Hittite relations now blossomed, to the extent that sometime
between years thirty-six and thirty-eight of Ramesses II’s reign, the Hittite Crown Prince Hishmi-Sharrura (the future King Tudkhalia IV) visited
Egypt during the winter months. And it’s even possible that Hattusilis himself came to Egypt. Ramesses certainly invited him, offering to meet his War and Trade with the Pharaohs.indd 118
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‘brother’ in the southern Levant, but the Hittite king seems not to have made the journey. Hattusilis had suffered from health problems his entire life, particularly with his eyes, and had now apparently been overcome
by a condition known as ‘fire of the feet’ – some form of inflammation.
(Perhaps he just didn’t want to see the Qadesh battle scenes plastered across Ramesses’ temple walls.) Even though Hattusilis probably didn’t make it to Egypt in the end, it didn’t affect diplomatic ties between the two kingdoms, for sometime between years forty to forty-five of Ramesses’ reign, the pharaoh married a second Hittite princess.
Peace may have arrived, but key Egyptian garrisons continued to operate in the Levant, particularly those at Gaza, Dor, and Beth Shean, where soldiers lived in buildings constructed and decorated according to Egyptian architectural styles. There were Egyptian temples too, and hybrid temples that combined Egyptian and Levantine traditions. Soldiers created their own pottery anthropoid coffins, and some – perhaps even Asiatics – were mummified. Egyptians living in the Levant also married locals, adding to the mixing of cultures.
Egypt may have entered a new cosmopolitan age, with people freely
moving to the country, but slaves, both Asiatic and Nubian, still entered in large numbers, some sent by Egypt’s Asiatic vassals at the pharaoh’s command; a lawsuit from the reign of Ramesses
II mentions how one Egyptian paid four deben (about 91 g) and one qite (a tenth of a deben) of silver for a female slave; this slave girl, bought from merchants, was given the name Gemniherimentet, meaning ‘I found her on the West (of Thebes).’
Tourism in Ancient Egypt
Travel for pleasure is hard to trace in the Egyptian record before the New Kingdom. Certainly there was a lot of movement: people constantly travelled up and down the Nile on business, and messengers, traders, and soldiers frequently passed beyond Egypt’s borders. Such ancient travellers might have stopped at historic sites during their ‘business trips’ to marvel at the great monuments of the past as a perk of the job.
What could be called ‘religious tourism’ also existed; this is particularly noticeable in the Middle Kingdom, when people across the country hoped, at least once in their lives, to make the pilgrimage to Abydos and witness the annual festival of Osiris. By the early Middle Kingdom, the Egyptians regarded the 1st Dynasty tomb of King Djer at Abydos as the Tomb of
Osiris, and used it to mark the final stop in the Osiris procession (it can perhaps be regarded as an early ‘heritage attraction’).
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In the New Kingdom, tourists particularly enjoyed visiting the Old
Kingdom pyramids – already over 1,000 years old by the time of Ramesses II. In year fifty of Ramesses II, a scribe named Ptahemwia left a graffito on the 5th Dynasty tomb of the Vizier Ptahshepses at Abu Sir, saying that he had travelled there with his father, the Scribe Yupa, ‘to see the shadow of the pyramids.’3 Similarly, the Scribe Aakheperkareseneb visited the Pyramid of Sneferu at Meidum in the forty-first year of Tuthmosis III’s reign, exclaiming that he found it as if heaven were within it. But perhaps the most popular tourist site of all was the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, where numerous people left graffiti in ink or hastily scratched into the walls. One such tourist, the Treasury Scribe Hednakht, arrived in year forty-seven of Ramesses II to ‘walk about, and amuse himself on the west of Memphis’4
and left a prayer to various gods.
A Cold Pint of Kizzuwatna in Pi-Ramesses?
Louis XIV had Versailles. Henry VIII loved Hampton Court. But for
Ramesses II, a simple (royal) palace would not be enough: he wanted to
build an entire city (and slap his name on it). Pi-Ramesses – ‘The House of Ramesses’ – was built over Ramesses’ hometown in the north-eastern
Delta. Scribes composed poems in honour of the new city’s splendours: it boasted beautiful balconies, they said; was filled with flourishes of lapis-lazuli and malachite; and everyone wanted to move there – in fact, given that the poems were composed under Ramesses II, it all feels a little like they were trying to convince people to relocate.
If true, it worked. Due to the city’s location, Pi-Ramesses quickly became a cultural melting pot, attracting traders from across the world. If you fan-cied some of that high-quality Amurru wine, it was the place to go. Tempted by the taste of Kizzuwatna’s famous beer? Head to Pi-Ramesses, people
would have told you. Pottery at Pi-Ramesses reflects the presence of traders or ambassadors from Cyprus, the Levant, and Anatolia. The chief of
Sidon – an Egyptian vassal – even had a house at the city. Mycenaeans were also present: archaeologists have found the remains of their vessels, used to transport expensive oils, as well as a scale from a boar tusk – part of a Mycenaean helmet. Exotic animals came to Pi-Ramesses too – either alive or dead – including giraffes and elephants.
This multiculturalism is reflected in the city’s main temples: according to Papyrus Anastasi III, the temple to Amun stood in the west; Seth in the south; Astarte (a Near Eastern goddess) in the east; and Wadjet in the north.
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A block from the temple of Astarte has been uncovered during excavations, as well as a door lintel bearing the name of the Near Eastern god of war, Reshef. This isn’t too surprising: Asiatic gods, such as Reshef, Baal, Hauron, Astarte, Anat, and Qadesh all started to be worshipped in Egypt during the New Kingdom. And with peace, this only increased; interestingly, their worship was not limited to the elite, for devotion to them is found at all levels in society. A northern suburb of Memphis even had a temple to Baal, and became an area where Canaanite merchants gathered.
Pi-Ramesses prospered for another reason too: with access to the
Mediterranean Sea via a Nile tributary and located only a short distance by land from the Levant, it became the port for Egypt’s military ships and a base for the army. This has dramatically been shown through excavations over the past thirty years at Qantir – the modern village now atop the remains of Pi-Ramesses. In one area, archaeologists revealed horse stables; these formed a massive structure, 15,000 metres squared, where the Egyptians kept at least 480 horses. Items of daily life, found in the stable areas, show that stable workers passed their time playing games. To the east of this area, the excavators uncovered an area of specialized workshops and a columned courtyard
– probably an exercise court that once resounded with the clip-clopping of hooves, given that hoof prints, preserved in the earth, were found there.
At the workshops, chariots, and items used by charioteers, were produced and repaired. Like an assembly line, each workshop had a particular specialization: bronze casting, leatherwork, wood-working. One even created equipment from bone, such as arrowheads. Pi-Ramesses had faience facto-ries, and glass-making and glass colouring workshops too. Excavations have revealed pieces of chariots, including a bronze nave cap, nails for holding chariots together, decorative elements, and even a bronze horse bit. There were also weapons, among them: bronze short swords, bronze lance-tips,
and projectiles used to split open metal armour. Scales from armour were also found, some made of bone, others of yellow-glazed and red-glazed pottery. Egyptians, Hittites, and Mycenaeans were present in these workshops, probably putting their expertise to work.
One curious discovery at Pi-Ramesses was that the Egyptians were pro-
ducing Hittite shields. Excavators found moulds for the bronze fittings of these shields, including a variation with a stylized bull’s head as decoration; this was a symbol of the Hittite weather god. Why were the Egyptians producing Hittite military equipment? It’s possible that a Hittite garrison was based at Pi-Ramesses, perhaps as a show of cooperation, but they may also have been troops serving the Hittite princess that had married Ramesses II.
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Ramesses in Nubia: Divinity and War
In Nubia, Ramesses II initiated an ambitious construction campaign, creating seven new temples over the course of his life. His aim there, like Amenhotep III before him, was to present himself as a divinity to the Nubian people. At his temple at Wadi es-Sebua, Ramesses is depicted worshipping himself among the gods; and similarly, at the Great Temple at Abu Simbel, he offers to a divine image of himself and sits among the gods in the temple’s sanctuary.
The two temples at Abu Simbel – the Great and Small Temples – were
Ramesses’ greatest monuments in Nubia; their location, close to the river, meant that all ships would see the four colossi of the king, carved into the rock, when sailing by. These temples were constructed using slave labour, brought from ‘all foreign countries,’ we’re told, and people from Syria worked the temple land. Scenes of Nubian war decorate the interior of the Great Temple. Ramesses returned to Egypt from this campaign with prisoners (and brought his pet lion along too), sending captured Nubians north, Asiatics south, Shasu-Bedouin west, and Libyans to the hilltops, taking each group as far from their homelands as possible. At the temple of Derr, a further Nubian campaign is depicted, fo
ught in the region of Irem sometime between Ramesses’ years fifteen to twenty as king.
Many king’s sons of Kush served during the long reign of Ramesses
II. Among them was Paser, who restored Abu Simbel after an earthquake
struck; although he repaired the interior of the Great Temple, and fixed one of the arms of a colossus outside, he was unable to rejoin the upper half of another colossus, which had fallen to the floor. The King’s Son of Kush Setau, Paser’s successor, is also well-known, mainly because he left many inscribed monuments in Nubia, including a stele from Wadi es-Sebua that mentions that he served as army commander during Ramesses’ campaign in
Irem. He also built Ramesses’ temple at Wadi es-Sebua, using slaves captured in Libya (as reported on a stele belonging to an officer named Ramose).
The Reign of Merenptah
By the time of Ramesses II’s death, Merenptah, the oldest surviving royal prince (the thirteenth!), was sixty to seventy years old, yet he still managed to reign for about twelve years. Although peace with the Hittites continued, fresh problems emerged to challenge the aging pharaoh. In particular, early in his reign, Merenptah was forced to send his army to quell rebellions at War and Trade with the Pharaohs.indd 122
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Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yenoam in the Levant, fighting groups including the Shasu and the Israelites (their first mention on an Egyptian monument).
Meanwhile, the Hittites were experiencing a period of decline; there was instability on the fringes of their territory and widespread famine, forcing them to turn to the Egyptians for help. And so, following the terms of the peace treaty sealed by his father, Merenptah sent ships filled with grain to the Hittite Empire.
There was also trouble with Libya. Egypt’s relations with the people to its west had become increasingly tense since the start of the 19th Dynasty, when Seti I had campaigned in the region. Ramesses II witnessed this campaign firsthand, and during his own reign, aware of the growing threat, had constructed a series of fortresses, stretching from the western Delta at Kom el-Hisn, all the way to the coastline at Mersa Matruh, a distance of about 200
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