TV: Secrets of Egypt: Rameses

Sunday 25 January, 10:00am - 11:00am, Channel Five (UK)

Historical documentary series probing the secrets of Ancient Egypt. This edition charts the life of Rameses II, the longest-lived pharaoh who is widely regarded as Egypt's greatest ruler. New discoveries have shed more light on the king's successful reign, while Egyptologists continue to debate the nature of his character and achievements.

I very rarely watch television and therefore usually miss Egyptology documentaries, but I caught this one earlier this morning, quite by accident, so I typed the following as I was watching it. These are just notes taken during the show, not a formal review of it.

The opening lines asked the following question about the pharaoh: "He was depicted as a superman but who was he and did he really deserve to be called Ramesses the great?"

The documentary kicks off in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo with, inevitably, Zahi Hawass. Hawass introduces us to the mummy of Ramesses II of whom he says, amongst other things, "history should remember him". Analysis of the mummy revealed scars of battle, arthritis, and indicated that he was small man with a hooked nose - very different from the imposing image of a dominating figure that one sees on his monuments. The narrator asks if he was an egomaniac, a master of spin and propoganda or was he actually a great man?

By the time Ramesses came to the throne of Egypt the pyramids had been standing for over 1000 years and he had inherited, in the words of Kent Weeks, the most powerful nation in the ancient world. But hostile powers posed a threat - Nubians, Hittites and Libyans. Ramesses was around 25 when he came to the throne but already seemed to be an experienced leader. At Abydos there is an account at the temple of Seti I of Ramesses's childhood. Peter Brand describes how Ramesses was made a general of the army when he was 10 years old, and it appears from this inscription at Abydos that Seti was grooming his son to become the Pharaoh.

At Karnak in Luxor a relief shows Ramesses father Seti returning from battle with prisoners of war with a series of buildings in tbe background - forts, part of a defence netwrok across north Sinai connection Egypt to Asia. James Hoffmeier describes how the location of these forts had been a long-term puzzle. But the names of the forts are preserved and they were classed by types of fortification. Hoffmeir looked at the crocodiles and marine fish in the relief and suggested that the forts were located by the old coasline, some 30 miles inland from its present location. Looking at 1960s NASA images of Sinai desert which, unlike modern photos, don't have recent agriculture, roads and building, they were able to identify elements of a landscape of ancient Egypt. Using the Suez canal as a reference point they were able to identify the ancient river bed of the long-defunct Pelusiac branch of the Nile, and the location of former northern coast. Using the Pelusiac and the coastline as guidelines Hoffmeier was able to predict the location of a fort. His team found a fort at Tell el Habua near Kantara, just as Hoffmeier expected and hoped.

An SCA excavator shows how the exterior wall of the fort at Tell el Habua was constructed - mudprick walls layered and stepped to provide strength, and punctuated with square foundations of towers which would have been guarded by soldiers. Some excellent computer graphic were used to show what these walls would have looked like. One of the forts of Seti's relief indicate that the fort discovered was the one named Tjaru, which was a frontier town of Egypt. The programme shows the site during excavation, including the uncovering of a skeleton of an animal in a side room. Hoffmeier suggests that the burial of the ox was a sacrifice to placate a deity and protect its residents. Another alternative offered by the SCA official is that the ox was perhaps sacrificed to ask gods for victory. At the site a stone fragment was found containing the name of Ramesses II. Hoffmeier described the name of how it shows Ramesses asking for "Ma'at" (order). He says that this sense of order would have been disrupted with foreign invaders and Hoffmeier describes how a request for Ma'at was entirely consistent with Egyptian ideals. Ramesses was the top military person at Tjaru and Hoffmeier suggest that the family of Seti I may have come from northeastern Delta so it is possible that Ramesses had a personal interest in the site. Another excellent computer graphic was shown to indicate how Tjaru would have looked, building the reconstruction graphically from the ground-plan up - walls 20 acres and 30 ft tall with a temple in the centre. Hoffmeier says that this was a place where thousands of troops would have been based.

Tjaru was one of a chain of forts now being discovered along this route, known as the Horus Way, which lead from Egypt across northern Sinai towards the eastern world. To the northeast of Tjaru the Hittite empire was located. Salima Ikram says that the Hittites had as much power and control as Egypt. Egypt had already been fighting the Hittites for 40 years and Ramesses to make a strategic attack on Qadesh. A series of giant reliefs he made at Karnak afterwards provide the main record of this battle. It shows the 400 mile march to Qadesh and what happened when Ramesses and his troops arrived. Peter Brand says that the Karnak relief breaks with tradition by showing Ramesses himself in fierce combat having been caught in an ambush, only just escaping with his life. Ramesses presents himself as a warrior hero but who only just survives the battle. Brand says that traditional view amongs Egyptologists is that the Karnak relief shows Ramesses as an incompetent military leader. Brand feels that that this is bad press, and that falling into an ambush was an easy enough error to make without the assistance of modern technology. Brand says that Ramesses never claims to have won the battle. The scene is unique because of this sense of jeopardy rather than the more conventional displays of undiluted triumph.

It was mentioned that Pi-Ramesse, which is now a mass of fragments scattered over fields, was once the jumping off point to Tjaru and was established as the royal residence under Ramesses II.

After the failure at Qadesh other strategies had to be employed and Karnak boasts another approach to a threat - a peace treaty. After 50 years of war this treaty represents a contract for mutual trade and co-operation. Brand says that it sounds like a very modern arrangement. The idea of mutual defence was built into it, with both empires agreeing to assist the other in times of military strife against outsiders. The removal of military struggle against the Hittites enabled the Pharaoh to transform his kingdom.

Kent Weeks says that although Ramesses was a small man, not physically imposing, he must have had "terrific presence" the sort of man who could "make you shake in your boots". He did what needed to be done.

Ramesses II headed some of his father Seti's projects so he already had experience with monumental building programmes. One of his first building projects, with his father Seti, was the addition of the hypostyle hall to the temple of Karnak. Peter Brand says that it should have been the 8th wonder of the ancient world. It's area covers 60,000 sq ft. and it consists of 134 columns in 16 rows, the central columns reaching 80ft tall. Mudbrick ramps still in situ at Karnak suggest to Brand that mudbrick ramps and platforms were the key to how the hypstyle hall was built and that this was a tool used by Ramesses on all future monuments. A computer reconstruction of the task shows what a staggering enterprise it would have been. When complete the whole hypostyle hall would have been contained within a vast mudbrick cake, thousands of tons of it, all of it having to be removed so that the columns could be revealed in all their glory.

When Ramesses was pharaoh in his own right his own building projects were far more massive and extensive than anything that had gone before. Salima Ikram says that each pharaoh tried to out-do the previous in terms of building projects, a sense of competition with the previous pharaohs' achievements. Ikram thinks that with Ramesses there is also an added motivation, a need to communicate that "I am more pious therefore the gods love me more". Weeks believes that this massive building plan was not a sign of egomania but that it would have been "remiss" of him not to show his love of the gods and his care for their wellbeing during a time of vast economic wealth.

The documentary asked how Ramesses could have financed his vast building programme. The answer is found at the Ramesseum, on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor. Long galleries with vaulted ceilings with mud brick arches make up rows of storage magazines. The commodities stored inside "financed Ramesses's dreams". Brand says that this site and its storage complexes were the "central banks" of ancient Egypt, enabling the redistribution of grain to his workforce as payment for their labours. He refers to the Ramessuem as "the central business district of Ramesside thebes".

Even the astonishing accomplishment represented by the hypostyle hall at Karnak was eclipsed by the temples that Ramesses built at Abu Simbel, which contain the largest colossi statues ever made by a pharaoh. Weeks explains that pharaoh was seen as part human and part divine, the living Horus. Brand explains that Ramesses moved this on a step. He shows a scene in one chamber at Abu Simbel which shows a unique god seated on a divine throne with rams horns curling around his face. The latter is is an aspect of Amun of Thebes. Above the figure is a sun disk, usually associated with senior deitites. The god's identity is identified by the accompanying hieroglyphs as Ramesses II, whose name is accompanied by the title "the great god". He is a "living incarnate god" in this scene - a fully fledged god. Brand says that the colossi are cult figures to encourage worship, part of a divine royal cult. Weeks says that the complexity of his role and his empire had led him to redefine himself in divine terms.

Abu Simbel also shows a personal side. A second temple was created in the honour of the wife who died long before him, Nefertari "the most beautiful of them all", his "great royal wife". Nefertari shared the temple with the deity Hathor. The interior shows her exalted status. Brand describes a scene which shows her with two goddesses who are reaching out to adjusting Nertari's crown, a scene usually reserved for Pharaohs. Another scene shows Nefertari making offerings to the Hathor cow. Again it is rare for the Queen to be making this particular temple ritual. Brsnd says it shows her ideological significance in 19th Dynasty Egypt. Brand believes that the loss of Nefertari touched Ramesses in a very personal way and that he grieved for her.

The next site to be considered is the tomb of Nefertari in the Valley of the Queens at the west bank at Luxor. Dr Melinda Hartwig describes it as one of the most exquisite of all of the tombs. There is amazing detail in even the smallest of the hierglyphs. She points out how the skin of Nefertari's face has been painted to show the blush on her cheeks. She says "It makes me realize that Ramesses II valued his wife . . . and that this is an everlasting monument to his love for her".

After ruling for 60 years, having defended the Egyptian empire, built massive temples and monuments and having declared himself a living god, the reality of advancing years began to hit him. Around 1213BC the man who fathered in the region of 100 children died. Salima Ikram says that over the course of three or four generations Ramesses had been the only king that anyone had known and it must have been a huge shock to the nation that he should have died. His tomb had been started in second year of reign and this was intended to be the most magnificent tomb ever built. Damaged and pillaged over the centuries it is now more like a cave than a tomb. Shown on the programme it looked so very sad, absolutely ravaged, with the burial chamber held together by scaffolding. Hartwig suggests that flood damge was probably part of the problem. Hartwig says that the inscriptions that survive show that tremendous detail was incorporated into the carving and that it was all very fine. She can pick out scenes from the Book of Gates, in which demons ask questions to which the king must know the answers to gain entrance to the afterlife. The programme then showed Tutankhamun's gravegoods to illustrate what sort of contents the tomb wold have held. A computer reconstruction of what the tomb might have looked like was shown.

The show concluded that over a period of perhaps seven decades Ramesses II had redefined both Egypt and the position of Pharaoh. His rule became a blueprint for following rulers. Hoffmeier, Brand, Weeks and Hawass all believe that he truly was great and earns the sobriquet "Ramesses The Great"



Good things about the programme

• The use of very articulate experts to explain some of the data and the sources used, and to offer educated opinions
  
• Excellent footage of monuments and the scenes which archaeologists used to get closer to the reign of Ramesses
  
• It looks at several aspects of the reign of Ramesses, giving some idea of the complexity of Egypt at that time
  
• There was only one of those awful elaborate dramatised reconstructions using actors
  
• Maps were used to show where sites and empires were located
  
• Computer graphics were employed very well and only when needed to clarify the subject
• The programme answered its opening question convincingly
• It was entertaining and managed to fit quite a lot into an hour
  

Not so good things

• The use of one of those elaborate dramatised reconstructions - in this case showing actors representing Ramesses and Nefertari drooling over each other
• Lake Nasser was shown on the maps (yes, nit-picking I know!)
• There was no attempt to compare the reign of Ramesses with any other pharaoh's in order to indicate why he was greater than the nearest comparable pharaoh
  
• There was nothing about what happened in the immediately subsequent reigns (e.g. economic status, religious status of the pharaoh, foreign affairs etc). It means that the programme offered more of snapshot of Egypt in the 19th Dynasty rather than providing a contextualized historical narrative.
• There was no sense of what Egypt was like under the rule of Ramesses, no idea of what the hierarchy beneath him was like.
• The battle of Qadesh was only one component in a much more complicated history of military disharmony between the Hitties and Egyptians. The battle of Qadesh really needed to be put into a much more detailed context so that it could be understood.
  
• There is an early mention of Libyans and Nubians but there is nothing said about what Ramesside policy was with respect to them. For example, the importance of Abu Simbel as an indication that Ramesses had promoted himself to a full deity is highlighted, but nothing is said about the significance of the location of the site at the borders of Nubia on the banks of the former Nile channel.
• Nothing was said about how the mummy of Ramesses II survived so perfectly when the the tomb was so badly damaged
• Apart from a very short piece of footage, no details were given about the role of the town of Pi-Ramesse

Most of the ommissions mentioned above were probably due to time constraints. There's nothing very new about this show, but it does a very good job of introducing viewers to a truly great pharaoh.