You're Dead to Me - Ramesses the Great

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

Greg Jenner and his guests lift the lid on one of Ancient Egypt's greatest rulers, Ramesses the Great. How did Ramesses acquire the nickname 'The Great'? What were the reasons for the adulation he received from his subjects? How long did he rule and how many temples were built in his honour? Greg discusses these questions and many more with his guests, the comedian and writer Sophie Duker and the historical expert Dr Campbell Price.Produced by Greg Jenner and Emma Nagouse

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. royalty to bring you a hilarious history lesson without the crippling student debt. And today we are grabbing our selfie sticks to go statue spotting in ancient Egypt as we lift the sarcophagus lid on one of the most renowned rulers of all time, Ramesses the Great. And it is actually our 50th episode, so it's a bit of a jubilee episode and Ramesses had quite a few jubilees, so pretty fitting. To help me talk about Ramesses, I'm joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, he's curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum. He's a fellow at the University of Liverpool and chair of the Egypt Exploration Society. I heartily recommend his book, Pocket Museum, Ancient Egypt. It's Dr Campbell Price. Hello, Campbell. How are you?

I'm fine. I'm absolutely thrilled to be here discussing Ramesses the Great. And in Comedy Corner, she's a comedian and writer who you'll know from loads of telly, including Frankie Boyle's New World Order, 8 Out of 10 Cats and Mock the Week. Her Edinburgh Fringe show, Venus, was nominated for Best Newcomer Award. And of course, you will remember her from her two starring roles on your Dead to Me episodes about Asante Garner and the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. It's Sophie Duker. Hi, Sophie. How are you? Hi, I'm so thrilled to be back. I really want a new like history bay that I can reference

because the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, I keep dropping him into conversations like it's ever relevant, which often I can make it be sort of tenuous. But I think having like an Egypt bay would be a real boost for my social life. I don know if ramses is a is a hottie oh i think he was sophie he was okay he's definitely he's got some bde some big dick energy i think is probably coming up with ramses look at those statues so i mean sophie when we did the asante ghana episode you were in ghana and when we did the Chevalier episode you spoke French so I mean I'm hoping you're in Egypt right now right so as research not only have I watched the DreamWorks documentary The Prince of Egypt but I have been on the Ramesses revenge ride at Chessington okay I think I'm a little more qualified Campbell to speak about so I'm dealing

with two experts here I mean do you know much about Ramesses? I'm not going to lie to you, because that would be unethical. I have been to Egypt, and I went while I was at university, and I saw a lot of sarcophaguses? Sarcophagi, possibly. Sarcophagi, yeah. Saw a lot of sarcophagi and sarcophagals. Saw a lot of statues. I don't feel like I focus on Ramses in particular.

So, what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what people at home might know about today's subject. People might know Ramses II or Ramses the Great from his role of bad guy in the Hebrew Bible. According to some scholars, not all, he is the pharaoh in the Book of Exodus. So he's the guy who sort of brings about the 10 plagues. Oh, he's the guy from The Prince of Egypt. I know loads about him. Exactly that. Prince of Egypt, which was the 90s animated movie with Ralph Fiennes, and then became a West End musical.

He's also in Civilization V, if you're a hardcore gamer. And if you're a hardcore poetry fan he's the famous Ozymandias from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem Ozymandias is his Greek name he also had a different Egyptian name which is Usamatra is that right Campbell? Yep that's acceptable Oh god that's low praise We don't know do you know Greg we don't know how any of those things are pronounced so don't be self-conscious it's all just a guess we know the consonants we don't really know any of those things are pronounced, so don't be self-conscious. It's all just a guess. We know the consonants.

We don't really know the vowels. So knock yourself out. All right. Usamatra. So he's got a lot of names, Sophie. He's Ramesses the Great, Ramesses II, Usamatra, Ozymandias. You missed out Meriamun. He's beloved of Amun lots of times.

Is he more like Snoop Dogg where he's gone through Snoop Lion? Yes, exactly, Sophie. He's the ancient Egyptian equivalentian equivalent of snoop dog people might know ramses the second or ramses the great who was he was he really the great and what can we know for sure about someone who lived so long ago so i mean campbell first things first ancient egyptian history is massive it's literally thousands of years so where in that timeline does rams go? And what do we call that period? We think of ancient Egypt as this big monolithic hole. And as you just said,

it's a long time. It's 3000 years of just pharaonic Egypt. He is the second of 11 kings called Ramesses. The later kings are called Ramesses because of him. He rules between around 1279 to 1213 BCE. He's part of the 19th dynasty and he's what Egyptologists call situated in the new kingdom. So we have the old, the middle and the new kingdom. To him the pyramids were already well over a thousand years old. So he very much looks back on his glorious history and he wants to outdo pretty much everyone who comes before him. So he's the new kingdom. Do we know what he was like as a new child? Do we have adorable stories of him pottering around or is it literally like he shows up age 24 and you're like, oh, this guy's a king now.

We know about him as a prince. So the interesting thing about Ramesses' family is they're kind of new kids on the block. There's a very interesting, tumultuous period of Egyptian history around the reign of Tutankhamen and Tutankhamen's weirdo dad. But then Ramesses' granddad is appointed by one of Tutankhamen's successors who doesn't have any kids of his own.

And the granddad already has a son and a grandson. So Ramesses is kind of already marked out for greatness, I guess. So he kind of shares the throne with his dad in a system we call a co-regency. But we know almost nothing about him as a kid. So he's been trained for power. We think he's about 24 when he becomes king. But Sophie, prior to that, he does have a coming-of-age party and he is given a coming-of-age gift.

A bit like a sort of bar mitzvah, I suppose. Do you want to guess what his big gift is from his dad? Is it a living thing? Yes. Yes. Does he get a snake? It's a lovely guess. No, it's wrong.

It's more cute. Less cute. More problematic, really. Oh, like a problematic living thing. Oh, does he get a wife? He gets a harem of women. Oh, no. I guess this is a standard thing, right, Campbell?

A harem of women, that's what you get on your birthday when you're a teenage boy? Not now, obviously. In ancient Egypt, if you're a prince, you do, yeah. But he is also given a wife. You were right, Sophie, actually. And this wife is the famous wife. Have you ever heard of Nefertari? It's not ringing specific bells.

Nefertari is an interesting person. It's worth saying that Ramsey's family are northerners. And because, as I say, they're very much new on the scene of the old pharaohing business, they need to shore up political support from the south of Egypt. So we tend to refer to the north of Egypt as Lower Egypt and the south of Egypt as Upper Egypt, confusingly, because of the way the Nile flows from south to north. So she is a southern belle, an Upper Egyptian princess,

and so it's politically expedient for Ramesses to get with Nefertari. And judging by the monuments dedicated to her, they do seem to be quite a winning match. We don't have a word for queen in ancient Egypt we just have the term king's great wife. There can be lots of wives but there's only one king's great wife and that is Nefertari for the first 20 odd years of Ramses reign. Sophie what would you have loved ideally as a coming of age gift if your parents had unlimited resources? What would be your dream teenage gift? And I can't have a Horeem. You can have a Horeem if you want, but they need to be all consenting adults. Yeah,

okay. I think I'd find that quite intimidating at 16. I think I'd want probably like a chariot. Obviously in ancient Egypt, I can't have like a motor. So I'd probably get some sort of really cool chariot to like ride around in and be flashy. Super sweet 16. If you'd asked me as a teenage boy, I would have just said a very large bouncy castle because I love bouncy castles. That tells you a lot about what I was like at 16.

And yeah, I think a harem would have terrified me. Anyway, Ramesses, presumably he's learning the ropes in terms of administration, in terms of war. Is Ramesses sensitive and a little bit, you know, he likes poetry and art, or is he like chariot monthly, loves a bit of rough and tumble, can't wait to get his bow and arrow out? Yeah, exactly. I think he's a speed junkie. He'd be on the chariot at the earliest possible age. And there's an expectation because his dad's a big warrior.

So he takes the son out on campaign. And it seems that later on in Seti's reign, when Ramesses is old enough, he gets to lead and be actively involved in military exercises. But we do get the sense he's settling down as well. Like he's not sort of, you know, the Chet Hanks of the family.

He's more of the Colin Hanks of the family. You know, he's married, he's settling in, he's doing admin, he's off to war. I get the sense here that he's kind of ready to step up and at 24 he does he becomes the king of Egypt I mean I'd say 24 is young you're a wise young person Sophie but at what age do you think someone is ready for leadership I don't think anyone under the age of 25 should actually count as like a human being so it's just like a mass of cells that's got quite an alarming amount of sentience i don't think being a counter argument sophie's i think marcus rashford could be king

and i'd be fine with that and he's in his 20s yeah that is true and he maybe he's like the reincarnation of ramses although ramsay sounds like he wasn't as dynamic and creative and lovely as marcus rashford i'm not concerned about free school meals, Sophie, I don't think. If Marcus Rashford starts building huge statues of himself at Old Trafford, we'll know. Am I right in thinking Nefertari and Ramesses have multiple children, but the main son is the heir to the throne, right? Yes, they have a son called Amun-Hirwen-em-eth who gets a kind of upgrade in his name. So Amun-her-wen-em-eth means the god Amun,

who's the chief big state god of all the Egyptian gods at that time. He changes his name or gets given another name to Amun-her-ke-pe-shef, which means Amun is his strong arm. So he goes from right hand to strong arm, very typical bombastic Ramesside thing to rename your son. My son is basically a human fist who's going to punch the Hittites in the face. Be afraid, be very afraid. So we have Ramesses II. He's on the throne.

He's got his son. He's got his wife. They've got a few kids. And now comes this sort of imperial phase. I don't know if that's quite fair. I know Egyptians and empire is not quite right, isn't it, Campbell? They're not really into empire. But this is him expanding, maybe? Yeah, I think the problem is we tend to look at ancient Egyptians through the lens of the British Empire. The ancient Egyptians don't want to expand their territory in the sense we might think of as as empire but they do want to have influence and they do want to have stuff and so there's an opportunity early in ramses reign to go and beat some people up and he takes it i love the justification for war uh they've got a lot of stuff and we want that stuff so let's get the

stuff who's with me please this is where we get to the very famous battle from history, Sophie. Have you ever heard of the Battle of Kadesh? No. The reason I'm bashful about it is I feel like someone will have mentioned the Battle of Kadesh and then I won't have retained it. Was it a good battle? Well, so it's a heroic victory. It's a triumph.

It's the greatest achievement of his career. He's going to stick it on all his walls. He loves it. The heroic battle of Kadesh in which he defeats the Hittites. Only there's one small thing about the battle of Kadesh, which is slightly odd. Do you want to guess what it is, Sophie? It's like a sort of ideological battle.

Oh, like a battle of ideas? What is one is like hearts and minds, but there's no bloodshed. Yeah, that's too subtle, Sophie, I'm afraid. He goes into battle, but he's't there's no like there's no bloodshed yeah that's too subtle sophie i'm afraid he goes into battle but he's dressed he's in drag oh i wish i don't know what the twist could be the twist is it's his greatest triumph it's the biggest win he puts it on all his walls problem is he loses so it's the first example in world history as far as we're aware of fake news of a king going to war, losing the battle and going, well, I won't tell anyone if you won't tell anyone and we'll just say I won.

And so it's Ramesses, the PR guru, right, Campbell? Yeah, this is something which he goes on and on and on and on about on temples and in other sources. So there are written papyrus copies of this account at this Battle of Kadesh and he will not shut up about it. But in fact, it seems to be at best a draw. So there's the Hittite leader, Muatali II. Ramses goes out with different divisions of his army

named after different gods like Seth and Ra and Amun. And they split up thinking they've got intelligence from two Hittites that they've captured but in fact they are spies so they confuse the Egyptians the Egyptians get ambushed and Ramesses basically says you guys have deserted me and then only the god Amun has come to my aid and then I single-handedly fought off all the Hittites. So it's kind of unbelievable from a general perspective, but it's really unusual that a pharaoh would admit that they didn't get something right or military intelligence was faulty and he blames his troops. Ramesses leaves. They kind of agree a truce there. Ramesses withdraws back to Egypt. No one in Egypt has been following 24-hour news.

No one's got the internet. No one's got a newspaper. No one in Egypt has been following 24-hour news. No one's got the internet. No one's got a newspaper. No one can challenge the living God's account of what has happened hundreds of miles away. So he says he beat everyone up and Egypt rules that part of the world now. So that's what's put on temple walls and temple walls are not art galleries, not just picture decoration. Whatever you carve in hieroglyphs, which the ancient Egyptian term for is the God's words, you are literally making true. So Ramesses claiming he's won the Battle of Kadesh is true because it's on an Egyptian temple wall, but in fact, it doesn't reflect political reality. So in that sense, yes, it is fake news.

Is that where the saying, picks or it didn't happen, came from? Glyphs or it didn't happen? G the saying picks or it didn't happen came from glyphs or it didn't happen glyphs if it didn't happen is nice send me a send me a glyph pick no it doesn't work it doesn't take it too far i love the idea that this was a war for stuff and presumably he didn't bring back any stuff because he he didn't win so how does he square that problem at one point we've got this big archive of written letters between the Egyptians and the Hittites, which show the kind of slightly more nuanced aspects of the story. And at one point, Ramesses is basically asking for stuff. When you think he's probably the richest man in the world, he's still kind of begging for stuff,

which maybe he's going to present as tribute from these people in the lands of the Hittites. Oh wow, he's doing shady dealings. Modern politics has a lot to learn from the Bronze Age. But he then does have this treaty with the Hittites and it's called the Eternal Treaty. It's the first treaty in history and they've gone big with the name. We've invented treaties and we'll never need them again. It's the eternal treaty. As you say, Campbell, this is him doing a deal with his former enemy. But we have these amazing letters. And we know that Nefertari is writing to the queen of the Hittites. So they're pen friends. They're having a nice chat. And then Ramesses is writing as well. He's quite blunt in some of his letters, isn't he, Campbell? Yes. We don't know who is doing the writing, if it's the king himself

or it's the queen. But still, there is this sense of communication. And so after the treaty in year 21 of Ramesses' reign, they sort of become friends, the Egyptians and the Hittites. And the Hittites ask Ramesses for the loan of a god statue and a doctor because the Egyptians are renowned healers in the ancient world. So Ramesses duly sends this medical help to the Hittites to help one of the queen's fertility, and they send him two wives back, recompense for the medical help. And in one of the letters, he's pretty brutal. The king is like, my sister, she'd like to have a baby. And Ramesses is like, she looks like she's 60. It's never going to happen. No doctor in the world can make her pregnant. It's like, really, it's like you could let her down more gently, Ramesses.

I am reminded, Sophie, you went viral a couple of years ago with a text message from a family member that was also fairly blunt. Do you want to tell us what the text message said? One morning when I was on the way to work, I got a text message from my auntie, which said, hello, Soph. How are you? Someone told me to tell you that they are madly in love with you so much. of how are you someone told me to tell you that they are madly in love with you so much and normally when my auntie sends me this text message i choose come and do not reply but this morning i decided to probe further into who could possibly have told my auntie that they were madly in love with me so much i sent a question mark she didn't reply i said the word who and then she replied with the word jesus love that rameses obviously is the great

conqueror who hasn't conquered this is also where he gets into his building phase yeah pharaohs are builders back in the old kingdom or the middle kingdom you'd build a pyramid but by the time rameses is on the throne your tomb is quite small it's hidden away in the Valley of the Kings, but you build Mahusiv temples and statues. And Ramesses just goes hell for leather on building statues. And it's not because his aunties text him and say, Jesus loves him, but because Amun-Ra, the king of the gods, loves him. And he needs to prove that relationship by building temples for Amun

and all the other gods and goddesses and it seems his father Seti I is a big builder also but he is totally eclipsed by his son who takes on a lot of the building projects his dad started and then basically repurposes them with his own name so big temples like Karnak one of the most incredible spaces in the whole world, my number one favourite monument is the Hypostyle Hall. So there's well over a hundred massive columns of stone there. That was started by Seti I. You don't see many of Seti's names on it because Ramesses changed them all to Ramesses II. Sophie, do you want to guess what he names the capital after?

Himself? Yeah, absolutely. Of course he does. Surprise! His favourite thing, he names the capital after himself. He can go inside himself. Yes, hopefully not like that, but yes. Do we call it Pyramis or Pyramises?

What's the pronunciation? Yes, the Egyptian term is literally Pyramises, which means the house of Ramesses, but you could call it Ramesses City. It's pretty astonishing. It's a royal residence, although he moves around the country quite a lot to keep an eye on people and building projects. It's got lots of temples, a very important strategic location. So it's in the north of Egypt and it's from whence he launches military attacks. So he needs to have a lot of soldiers garrisoned there. So he's also got stables, foundry to make materials for warfare. He's got glaze works, a massive, massive industry hub. So friends,

colleagues, archaeologists have even found in the stables, toiletisterns whether they're for the horses or not toilet cisterns preserved i love the idea of a horse toilet yeah i love the idea of a horse using a toilet it's like you've got 500 horses and they're weeing everywhere like i will not stand for this i'm going to build horse toilet sophie if you were a mighty pharaoh what are you going to name your city i feel like it's quite juvenile to name a city out of yourself i'll be like welcome to duke of town i don't know i like it it actually now i've said it i can completely see why he's getting off on it yeah i think i'd name it something where people were like i have to go there hot and sexy people bill like the city of winners i think city of winners is good city of winneropolis yeah okay so rameses built the temple at abu simbel

which took a modest 35 years to put up famously it has two enormous statues of him greeting you on the way in not one of him and his wife but him times two which i love and they're 65 feet tall rameses does all sorts and i think it's worth thinking about the fact when he comes to the throne he doesn't know he's going to live to be 90. So he thinks, I need to make a mark in history. And he just goes at it early doors, like the clappers. So he takes over, like I say, projects and statues of his dad. But then he lives a bit longer and he just keeps going. He has the Paramses, the city we've been talking about.

There are at least 50 colossal statues so this is more than 10 meters tall and that's more statues than most other pharaohs you know complete in a lifetime ramses just as that for for one city you mentioned abu symbol so that's the temple down in the south of egypt towards modern sudan which has four rock cut statues so it's cut into the rock. And, you know, this is the kind of inspiration for that Iron Maiden album cover. But he does this because these statues have particular power. And if you want to see one, well, there's lots still in Egypt, but then there are lots that have been sent

under various circumstances to different parts of the world. Also at the British Museum, you can see what's called the Younger Memnon, part of this colossal statue set up at his temple to himself. Surprise, surprise, on the west bank of modern Luxor. And it's, you know, massive. When it was moved, when this chunk of statue, it's just the top part of the statue was moved, in 1815, it took 130 men to move it an inch.

Is he really rich? Or is it just that he's so powerful that he's able to get the manpower to make these statues? That's a good question. I think he does have material wealth because basically everyone is taxed. But he also is not opposed to forcibly moving people from other places and pressing them into service. So, you know, if you're a criminal, for example, you might get sent to the quarries rather than waste time in a prison. You know, you want to be useful to Ramses PR machine. That reminds me actually, Sophie, in terms of Winner City, your new city that you've built, what are you having on the way in? You know, when people come into the opening gates? I think it's actually quite funny that he's got himself greeting himself on the way in so I think I'd either do like a nod to maybe me cosplaying as

both like the lion and the unicorn or I think there needs to be some mystery maybe there's like a body of water that's like bounding it or maybe there's a big wall so maybe you have to go like straight into a mouth like a funhouse train no my head is like the entrance and my mouth's open real wide and you sort of like go into i think i might simply thinking of the roller coaster ramsay's revenge but i think yeah you're inside me even though i haven't explicitly named my city after me you're entering my domain i think you've missed your calling sophie i think you've been an excellent pharaoh there is a certain grandiosity to rameses's sort of statuary isn't there yeah you know egyptologists kind of joke that that rameses has this crude kind of wham bam thank you ram style to his carving he has a particular thing about colossal statues and this is something i've researched and published about in the past it really interests me that he hero worships an

earlier king amanhotep the third he's king tut's granddad great king rules for almost 40 years has lots of statues palaces temples and rameses emulates him by not just saying he's the son of a god like every king does he says i am an actual god and he creates these colossal statues that have their own names so it's his name rameses name and another name so they each have an individual identity so the statue kind of functions independently from the pharaoh so people come and they worship the statue as kind of a divine manifestation of the king and he even shows himself in wall reliefs and on stone tablets worshipping the statue so he's literally shown worshipping himself and you can even pick up souvenirs

with the names of the statues on them. So you could pick up a scarab with the name of the statue on it, which you could slip in your pocket and hopefully would bring you luck. He had merch. He had Desmeremes' merch. Sophie, I'm assuming in Winner City,

you're going to have to follow this model. I have to have statues of myself that people can worship. I think it's a bit creepy. I want them to worship me uniquely, but not be like, oh, this is just like Sophie, but it doesn't chat quite so much. And it's easier to maintain. I think you sort of make yourself a bit obsolete if you've got all these statues, you kind of don't need to be there. Did he hang around with actual people? Was there like a comic con where they could come and worship actual

rameses yes that's a great question because actually sophie there's a scene where you see him the living king standing on the lap of one of these massive 12 meters tall statues throwing out presents and rewards to people so it's kind of a weird situation where you would go and he would be performing live you could see the king so there's soldiers in front of him elite soldiers but he's sitting on a statue that people are also worshipping while he's still alive kind of reminds me of you know in the 2012 olympics where the Queen actually played herself in that James Bond skit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of like that.

It's like Ramesses is playing the role of this legendary... God, it's very weird. I think it's kind of like say he's like a big like celebrity chef. Like he's got like his restaurant

but he's not actually always in the kitchen. So like you could just go and be like, oh, we like, yeah, like we went to Gordon's or Jamie's or like Ramesses.

It was great. But like sometimes he'll actually be there and everyone will be like, whoa, my God, he's here. Whoa. Gordon Ramsey now needs to do a Gordon Ramsey's restaurant. Yeah. Yes. We've already mentioned his first queen, Nefertari. People have often said that she's the only love of his life,

which I don't know if that's sort of Victorian propaganda or that's a bit of Hollywood romance. Certainly she seems to have been esteemed. She gets her own temple, but she does die before him. She does. She gets her own temple at Abu Simbel. So this is the rock cut ones in the very south of Egypt. And it's kind of his and hers temples. He's got one, but she's got one as well because he's a god, she's a goddess. Therefore, she dies many years before he does she has this beautiful tomb in the valley of the queens so we have the valley of the kings there's also the valley of the queens not much left in it it was pillaged in antiquity there's a little furniture knob which has the name of an earlier king that maybe is one of her relatives so lots

of speculation about her family and where she came from and very sad there are remains of the knees and shins of a body no one else seems to have been buried in the tomb so that's presumably nefertari's knees we're well used to finding the mummified bodies of pharaohs and queens but just the knees and shins feels a bit weird and a bit gothic is that because the rest of her body was taken somewhere yeah because it was smashed up to get jewelry probably that's why it's such a miracle that ramsey's body and other king's bodies have survived the depredations of tomb robbery and obviously their son whose name i'm going to completely mangle here but i'm going to go with uh hamen here 1mf i think that's vaguely

where you went with so their son also dies relatively young as well you You know, he's the crown prince, he's the heir, he's meant to be next in line, but he seems to go in his 20s. And so Rameses marries again. Now, we don't know whether he promotes one of his existing wives into the top job, like, you know, whether you're sort of promoting internally from the organisation or whether if he marries a new. But the new wife, Iset Nufret, is that right?

Yes, Iset Nufret, that's right. I thought you were asking if it was Nufret, but that's just the full name, right? No, sorry, her name is Isit Nufret. You're like, Isit Nufret. Yes, it's Nufret. No, Isit Nufret. Yes, it's Nufret.

So Isit Nufret is the second great wife. You know, there are other wives. We know he's got Hittite brides. And she has her own child as well another heir to the throne so he sort of replaces one heir with a new heir yeah because the kids are dying off because you know you were you were doing well in ancient egypt if you made it to 30 so so he keeps going so isit nofra as you say becomes the second great wife but she's intriguing because she seems to be unlike nefertari from a northern part of egypt and we don't have her tomb we've never found her body so she's still

alive possibly who knows cryogenically frozen and no i think she we would probably have some remains of the tomb because we know so much about Nefertari's tomb we don't have it so that may be one of the tombs to be discovered in the future so we're talking here about Ramesses's family so the ram fam let's call them that he's got obviously numerous wives there's the harem he got two Hittite wives in the the deal he's swapping for a doctor so Sophie do you want to guess how many children Ramesses the Great has? I'm going to say 50? Go bigger. 150? Yes, 100.

Wow. As far as we can tell, 52 boys, 48 girls or something like that. There's a lot of kids running about. One of the weirdest things, I suppose, about ancient Egyptian culture is that you would get marriages between a father and a daughter. So Ramesses marries four of his daughters and they're called Bintanath, Meritamen, Nebetawi and Henutmire I think. Correct that's good pronunciation. Hooray I'm getting better this is a custom right this is not creepy it's just a kind of dynastic thing. Yeah with Ramesses. It's creepy to us. Like can it be though? yes it's all relative cultural culturally

relative these are not necessarily sexual relationships these are ritual relationships because they are keeping it in the family in the sense that they are daughters of important women so they are they are qualified if you like to accompany their father in certain ways but it doesn't mean necessarily they had a sexual relationship ramesses seems to be quite a proud dad as well as putting up 50 colossal statues in pyramids and also just statues of himself everywhere he does put pictures of his kids up i mean they're not on the fridge they are up on temple walls and all over the place which suggests that actually he's quite happy to name check other

people as long as they've got the Ramesses pedigree. Oh yeah, yeah. These are just the official children we know about from the kosher legitimate royal wives. There may be other royal children we don't know about, but I suspect if you were actually fathered by Ramesses II, you would feel there was some kind of at least semi-divine blood flowing in your veins so that's quite a kind of a leg up in life in an elite society and it's unusual really before that period to have any royal children named at all i mean occasionally royal daughters appear for ritual reasons but it seems that that Ramses really just wants to demonstrate his virility, his divinity, and his royal lineage.

So Ramses' second wife is at Nofret, and they have another son who's going to become the crown prince. And his name is Kaemwaset. Yeah, that's good. Kaemwaset, yeah. He's an interesting guy because he's not quite so roughy-toughy like Dad. He's not punching leopards. I don't know if ramsay's punched leopards i'm imagined he did he's a bit more cultured he's a bit more of

administrator he's got a job doing a bit of archaeology he's restoring pyramids and tombs but he's also got a job as a deputy to the high priest in memphis well he's got a specific gig sophie cam was it's job is looking after the apis bull. What is the apis bull? The apis bull is a maybe some sort of like sacred cow like the kind that you shouldn't topple so it's like an untoppable ancient Egyptian cow. It's like a strange animal friend so Kayan Wasit is like really gentle and sensitive and he has this animal friend and they just like wander around the temples very much like wander around the temples. Very much like a relationship of equals.

It's adorable. It's like a Pixar movie. Yeah. Well, Kam Wasit, yeah, fourth son of Ramses II. He is sometimes shown in kind of military outfit, but he seems to be more of a scholar. He is sometimes called the first ever Egyptologist because he goes around digging stuff up and restoring stuff at the same time as slapping his dad's name on lots of old pyramids and temples that people might have forgotten. But he has this special role. He actually becomes the high priest of Ptah at Memphis, capital city in the north. And the big industry there is care for and celebration of

the Apis bull. It is the sacred fortune-telling bull as an incarnation of the god Ptah, and it is believed that some gods, like Ptah, can become manifest on earth in the form of animals. So it's a relatively rare case of an animal that is kind of like the Dalai Lama. There's only one alive at a certain time and when one dies a new one has to be found. And in the case of the Apes Bull it's based on distinctive skin markings and it's really identified as a god whom can be asked questions. So people could go to the bull and say, you know, dead Nefertiti down the road, steal my underwear. And you would look at the bull and say, okay, a little to the left, the answer is yes. A little to the right, the answer is no. And when it dies, oh gosh, the bull is mummified like an elite human

being and it's put in a massive sarcophagus sometimes almost a hundred tons in weight but the bull is also given bling and jewelry it's treated like a god right i mean this is a holy sacred cow so khan was it's job is i love your idea of living the best life the two of them on the road but actually he's he's looking after a god it just so happens it's god moose do the apis bull get a toilet or is that just the horses i'm sure it had a very nicely appointed set of facilities it also has a harem full of attractive lady cows yes just occurred to me when you said the dalai lama on earth i suddenly now in my head i'm thinking of a Dalai actual Lama. And speaking of animals, Ramses also has a pet.

He's got an adorable good boy who follows him around the palace. Do you want to guess what it was, Sophie? I mean, the fact that you said adorable good boy makes me think it's a dog. I was going to say a cat, but has he got a little Ramses rover? You were right with your first thingling on cats. Pet lion. He's got a lot of big dick energy. But I also think like a family man. I think he's like the rock. Yeah, he's like an alpha male.

But at the same time, he's a sort of sweet dude who takes care of people. There's some other sacred stuff we should talk about, actually, in terms of Ramses. There was a very famous, important festival or a jubilee called the Sed Festival, S-E-D. And this was held for a king after they had ruled for 30 years. So it's quite a rare festival. Not many kings get that long. How many do you think Ramesses had, Sophie? Well, he ruled for 66 years.

So he's going to have had at least two. Wait, it's after 30 years you get it. I think he maybe had like five to 10. That's a really good guess. He went with 14.'s after 30 years you get it i think he maybe had like five to ten that's a really good guess he went with 14 one after 30 years and then standard practice was there you'd have uh another one every four years and then by the end of his life he was doing them like every year every two years for that sort of rejuvenation boost do you want to guess what the festival involved sophie it's a bit of physical activity uh wrestling it's a bit more jogging really isn't

it campbell i mean now we're talking here he had to circumnavigate the palace right? Yeah we've got scenes that show this but you're never sure if what is on the temple wall is actually what people did and at 90 years old I doubt he was actually running around doing this ritual jog. You run around these two markers which seem to represent the boundaries of Egypt. That could be one interpretation. And the fact that you're running around them, encircling them means you control them and you are master of them. And it also proves you're physically fit to rule. So yeah, the Heb Sed was also

about confirming the king's divinity. And sometimes some kings used it to upgrade their divinity. And that seems to be what happens with Ramesses. He really says around year 30, okay, now I'm extra specially divine. And then he keeps having them, yeah, every three or four years.

I think we should do it with the queen. Yeah, platinum jubilee next year. Yeah, you know, get to jog around Buckingham Palace. You've got Prince William shouting, giving her encouragement. That'd be great. It seems quite weird to like like, give yourself, like, the equivalent of the bleep test every four years.

Yeah. And Cam Wasett, like his other elder brother, also did not outlive his dad, right? Ramesses the Great outlived almost all of his children, didn't he, Campbell? Yeah, it's his 13th son that eventually succeeds him Kamwasa is is pepped to be the next king and who knows I often wonder what Egyptian history might have been like if this kind of scholarly apis bull fancier had become become the pharaoh of Egypt but I think there's there's something you know very human about that if you imagine in a culture

where people don't make it into what we would call middle age much he really was saying he was a god and he just wasn't dying so people would think gosh he really is a god ramsey's the second or ramsey's the great does eventually die at age we think about 90 he presumably wasn't in in peak physical condition yeah this is the funny thing about having the the mummified remains of ancient Egyptian kings. We tend to kind of characterize them in terms of the mummy because we have this medical curiosity

and voyeurism, which I don't think is terribly healthy, actually. Ramesses would want us to remember the athletic statues. But in museums, often you go, if you see an Egyptian mummy, how did they die? What medical conditions did they have?

Yes, he was an old man. He had he had yeah abscesses in his his gums and arthritis and he would be stooped over but then you know that's that's just human life so and people say lots of things about maybe he had red hair we don't know if he actually had red hair it might have been dyed by the mummification process the mummification process you've mentionedmification process, you've mentioned that. Something goes a bit wrong with it. Sophie, do you want to have a quick guess of what blunder was done by the embalming team? Oh, so I've not mummified anything. But I imagine... Not recently.

Not recently. But I imagine that it's kind of like papier-mâché. So if they made it, if they're like mixture of, I want to say resin, but I know that's not right. Whatever they sort of... Resin, resin, yeah. Maybe they made it, if the mixture of, I want to say resin, but I know that's not right, whatever they sort of... Resin, resin, yeah. Maybe they made it too sticky. That's nice. I like the idea of a sticky Ramesses.

I feel like maybe they mixed it a little bit wrong. I'm really fascinated by what you think mummification is, because I'm now seeing a priest whose hand is glued, super glued to the king, going, uh-oh. Oh no! Oh no! It's not quite right. Cambor, they removed the wrong organ, right? And then they were like, oops. And then they tried to put it back in,

and they used golden thread, and that's how we know. Is that right? Well, I'm not sure it is, Greg. Oh, okay, hang on. Sorry. We tend to teach in primary schools, and Egyptian mummification,

brain is removed through the nose, hook goes up the nose, spin it out through the nostrils, lovely. And then your internal organs are removed, your liver, your lungs, your intestines and your stomach. And we're fascinated to see if people in ancient Egypt did it right or wrong. So the idea seems to be that you keep your heart intact because your heart is needed in the afterlife because it's going to be weighed on a set of scales against a feather. So if in modern CT scans, Egyptian mummies look like they don't have the heart in the right place,

we think they did it wrong. But that's the typically Western culturally patronising attitude we have to other cultures. It probably wasn't that important. What's important is drying the body out. So you have to remove the organs which are wet to dry the body with a sodium compound called natron. And in Ramsey's case, they reattached the heart, it seems, using gold thread. They also stuck peppercorns up his nose, not to make him but just to give him you know a nose okay so the golden thread maybe is a nice touch because he's ruled for so long well presumably he got a solid

gold coffin as well he must have paid into his pension scheme for a long time there must be a really great payout at the end there but also you say presumably he had a golden sarcophagus but we don't know that because he didn't get buried where we found him he was buried in the valley of the kings but then that's not where he was found sophie do you want to guess who or what found his body and i say what as in it's an animal i want it to be like a callback to his pet lion but i think he was probably found long after that lion had passed on to Pride Rock in the sky. He was found in 1871. I think maybe it was like a little dog, maybe like a little lap dog.

It's a runaway goat. A runaway goat! I know this story is slightly embellished and romanticised, but there is a story to tell. Yeah, there is. There always is. And it's usually a bloody goat or a donkey that finds the tomb. In 1881, there is an official discovery of this tomb, which is chock full of coffins with kings, queens, elite people.

It's like an ancient Egyptian hello magazine come to life under the ground. But this tomb has been discovered up to 10 years before by local people the abdul rasul family and they've thought wow there's a tomb full of nice stuff we'll start selling some of the stuff as you would but archaeologists see these things appearing on the art market and think hang on that's got names of kings and queens we don't have the tombs of we think there has been a discovery somewhere and they go down and the european authorities in charge of the egyptian antiquity service use a bit of torture and they

get the story out of the abdul rasul brothers of where the tomb is and they go and they find it and basically overnight they ship out dozens of coffins from from this tomb in luxor in the south of egypt back to cairo and among them probably the most famous king of ancient egypt is rameses the second and the discovery had been made by a runaway goat that one of the brothers had been chasing after and the goat had tumbled headfirst into a treasure trove of the bronze age and the goat was like it's a bit sort of scooby-doo isn't it it's a bit sort of lassie what have you found goatee i found ramesses sophie what's the best thing you've ever found while chasing a runaway goat oh i actually have chased quite a few goats back in ghana okay i used to go to a lady down the road to braid my hair

and she had lots of goats so I maybe I would like have found a goat that had run off with like some hair extensions because they always used to like watch me while my hair was getting braided and then I'd run out like they might just be like goats in toupees goats in like little an amazing weave. Yeah, goats and weaves and raster hats just being like, yeah, we live here too. There are some perks. But why is he in a different tomb, Campbell?

Yeah, it's interesting. So Tutankhamen is not normal because he was actually found where he was buried. Most of the other Egyptian royals have either been damaged, destroyed like poor old Nefertari with her knees, or they had been gathered, as Ramesses was, and put in a royal cache. At the end of the new kingdom, when Ramesses ruled, there were economic problems. There was a spate of tomb robberies. And so the authorities in Egypt, a couple of hundred years after Ramesses had died, thought they had to gather up all the kings together and bury them in one safe place. Ramesses dies aged 90, he's buried, he's reburied and then

he's discovered again in the 1870s slash 80s depending on whether we believe the goat story. Does that turn Ramesses into Glamisys? Definitely. When the body resurfaces he's known you know unlike Tutankhamen who no one knew about before they discovered the golden boy. Ramesses is well known because it's assumed he's the king that drives the Israelites out of Egypt in Exodus. So he is famous. Absolutely. The nuance window! Well, that brings us on to the nuance window. This is where Sophie and I take a little break and we allow our expert, Dr. Campbell, to talk for two uninterrupted minutes about whatever he needs us to hear.

Campbell, you're going to talk about Ramesses' penchant for propaganda. Maybe that's not the right word. OK, I'm getting my stopwatch up. Here we go. Three, two, one, the nuance window. I think because we know or think we know so much about someone called rameses the great we tend to make a lot of assumptions he's famous for being bombastic and and boastful particularly with the case of the battle of kadesh but we tend to when we're describing that talk about propaganda and we use that term with a modern understanding of political propaganda and what you have to

understand with rameses is he's living in the 1200s bce when there isn't an alternative to autocratic monarchy it's not like there are political parties he's not appealing to a general public he is the the divine king so when he's building colossal statues i i wonder it's not that they're propaganda because the general mass of people fundamentally do not matter to the elite he is more likely to be advertising to the gods because he sees the gods as his peers and so he sees himself in that keeping that that society for eternity. So when we see a colossal statue, we instantly think autocratic, oriental despot. That's what they're like in Egypt. They have these despotic rulers. And it's fundamentally judgmental, prejudiced, racist

attitude, which we project back into the past. But I think Ramesses is as much advertising to the gods and he's also advertising to himself. He's going into the temples and he's seeing these huge colossal statues of himself and thinking, do you know what? Maybe I am a king. I am a god and I can do this job. So it's kind of positive self-affirmation on a different scale and i think we misunderstand ramesses if we use the modern term the loaded modern term propaganda amazing thank you so much sophie any thoughts on that i love because i did think when you like he keeps making statues he can't stop making statues i was thinking of like some of my friends who get like candle making sets and then they're just constantly doing it but it is it is just a form of self-care

like all the ticket subs and all the stuff you do you're like yeah i am that bitch i'm i'm the pharaoh sometimes viola davis needs something to remind her that she's viola davis so she can be viola davis for everyone else exactly so what do you know now So what do you know now? It's time now for the So what do you know now? And this is where we put our comedian Sophie Duker to the test to see how much she can remember. How are you feeling? Are you feeling confident?

I'm feeling confident. Good, good. Possibly my hardest challenge yet, but I'm ready for it. Okay, fingers crossed. Three, two, one. Ancient Egypt covers a very, very, very long period. Which era or kingdom was Ramesses II a part of? The New Kingdom.

Very good. Off to a good, strong start. OK, question two. What gift was given to Ramesses by his father when he came of age? He got a harem. He did, a harem of ladies. Ramesses' fake news victory at the Battle of Kadesh eventually led to history's first ever what with the Hittites?

The first ever treaty called the Eternal Treaty. Look at you with your knowledge. The Eternal Peace Treaty. Question four. What did Ramesses name his brand new capital city in complete with the horse toilets? He called it Pair Ramesses. Ramesses City.

Four out of four. you're doing really well. This is the fifth question. Roughly how many colossal statues were there in Per Ramses City? Oh, there were roughly 65. It's 50. They're 65 feet tall, which is why you remember that. 65 feet tall, yeah. I'm going to give you half a mark for that because that's good remembering of a fact.

Question six. Name one of Ramses' principal great wives. Nefertari. I'm going to give you half a mark for that because that's good remembering of a fact Question 6 Name one of Ramesses' principal great wives Nefertari Is it Nofret? You're just nailing this Question 7 Ramesses' son Kaimwaset restored the pyramids, did some archaeology

was in charge of Jubilee parties and was responsible for which sacred animal? The Apis Bull. Question eight. Ramses the Great lived until the age of 90, but how long did he reign for? He reigned for... I think if it was 69, I would have remembered it because it was funny. I think it was 66 years.

It is 66 years. Question nine. It is 66 years. Question nine. What potential blunder, but according to Campbell, not blunder, did Ramsey's embalmers do when mummifying him? I think this feels like a blunder. I feel like it feels like it's elegantly covered up,

but they got gold thread in his heart. They did. Question 10. This for nine and a half out of 10, which, to be honest, you've given us extra answers. So, frankly, this for a perfect round. Ramsey's body was potentially found in 1871, but not in its original location. Where had he originally been buried? Okay, so I'm going to work that because he was in this, like, cache,

like in the safety deposit box for all the kings. Yeah. And he was originally buried... In the Valley of... In the Valley of the Kings. Yay! It felt too easy. That's why I was freaking out. He's the Valley of the Kings. Yay! It felt too easy. That's why I was freaking out.

He's the Valley of the Kings. I'm giving you full marks. I don't care. So frankly, a perfect score. Yes! Once again, Sophie Duker, the quiz queen. Egyptologist extraordinaire. Exactly.

But you've taught her very well as well. So both of you have done very, very exemplary work. Thank you, Campbell. Yeah, I couldn't have done it without you. Ah, well done, Sophie. But that's basically it for our show. So if you want to hear more of Sophie Duker, of course you do, then check out our episodes on the marvellous French musician, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and the episode on Asante Ghana.

And of course, if you want to hear more about Egypt, then you can listen to our episode on the pyramids with Professor Sarah Parkak and Maria Shahata. Remember, if you've had a laugh and learned some stuff, please share this podcast with your friends or leave a review online. And make sure to subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. All that's left for me to do is to say massive, colossus thank you to our two wonderful guests.

In History Corner, we've had the wonderful Dr Campbell Price from Manchester Museum. Thank you, Campbell. Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Sophie. And in Comedy Corner, the returning hero, the quiz queen, the sensational Sophie Duker. Thank you, Sophie. Thank you so much, Greg. Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Sophie. And in Comedy Corner, the returning hero, the quiz queen, the sensational Sophie Duker. Thank you, Sophie.

Thank you so much, Greg. Thank you, Campbell. I just want to say in the words of Mariah Carey, who provided a song for the soundtrack to The Prince of Egypt, there can be miracles when you believe. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time for some more historical hijinks. But for now, I'm off to go and carve a 65-foot statue of myself and plonk it outside BBC Broadcasting House. Classy. Bye! Your Dead to Me was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4. The research was by Rosanna Evans, the script was by Rosanna Evans, Emma Neguse and me, the project manager was Saifah Mio and the edit producer was Cornelius Mendez. Stopping climate change is a tough job,

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