Latest / Ramses the Great: Egypt's Most Powerful Pharaoh — Fexingo History / Ramses the Great's 67-Year Reign: What Made It Last
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, we've talked about a lot of angles on Ramses the Great — his wives, his battles, his building projects, his diplomacy. But there's one thing that underpins all of it: the sheer length of his reign. He was pharaoh for sixty-seven years. Luna: That's extraordinary, especially for the time. Lucas: It is. In the New Kingdom, most pharaohs reigned twenty to thirty years if they were lucky. Ramses came to the throne as a teenager — around age fourteen or fifteen — and died in his early nineties. That's not just longevity; that's a strategic asset. He outlived his rivals, his sons, even some of his grandchildren. And that gave him the time to reshape Egypt in his image. Luna: So how did he actually hold onto power for that long? I mean, there must have been threats, plots, challenges. Lucas: Yeah, and surviving them required a combination of ruthlessness, diplomacy, and sheer institutional control. One of the key things he did was manage the priesthood — especially the cult of Amun-Re at Karnak, which by the 19th Dynasty was staggeringly wealthy and politically powerful. Previous pharaohs, like Akhenaten, had tried to suppress it and failed catastrophically. Ramses took a different approach: he co-opted them. Lucas: He appointed loyalists — often his own sons — as high priests of Amun. His son Khaemwaset, whom we've talked about before, became High Priest of Ptah at Memphis, but other sons held key priestly positions across the country. By putting family members in charge of the temples, he ensured their wealth and influence served the crown rather than competing with it. Luna: So it's like he created a family monopoly on religious power. Lucas: Essentially, yes. But he also balanced that with the military. The army was another power center. Ramses had commanded troops as a prince alongside his father Seti I, and he built personal loyalty among the officer corps. He promoted men from non-aristocratic backgrounds, men who owed their positions entirely to him, rather than to old noble families. Lucas: And then there was his building program. By modern estimates, he commissioned more monuments than any other Egyptian pharaoh — temples, statues, obelisks, entire cities like Per-Ramesses in the Delta. That wasn't just vanity. It created jobs for tens of thousands of workers — quarrymen, stonecutters, sculptors, painters, scribes. It pumped wealth into the economy and tied local elites to the success of his projects. Luna: It also projected his image everywhere. You couldn't travel through Egypt without seeing his name on every temple. Lucas: Exactly. Propaganda was part of it — but not just propaganda. The building program was a massive economic stimulus. And it was funded by the gold from Nubia, which we covered in a previous episode. As long as the gold kept flowing, the temples and workers were paid, and the priesthood and military stayed loyal. Luna: But what about the people — the common Egyptians? Did they ever rebel? Lucas: They did. There's a famous incident in Year 29 of his reign — a strike by the workmen at Deir el-Medina, the village that built the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The workers hadn't been paid their grain rations for months, so they downed tools and marched to the Ramesseum to protest. It's the earliest recorded labor strike in history. Luna: Wait — recorded? As in, we have the actual documents? Lucas: We do. The strike is recorded in the Turin Strike Papyrus. It describes how the workers sat down outside the temple and refused to work until they were paid. Ramses's officials eventually gave in and distributed the grain. And the pharaoh himself wasn't blamed — the local administrators took the fall. That's smart leadership: keep the king's image untarnished, even when things go wrong. Luna: So he deflected blame downward. That's a classic move. Lucas: It is. And it worked because the system was set up that way. The pharaoh was divine, so he couldn't be seen as failing. The failures were always the fault of corrupt or incompetent officials. Ramses maintained that fiction brilliantly. Luna: If today was actually useful to you, the way these stay ad-free is listener support — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, exactly. And it really does make a difference. So back to Ramses — one of the most delicate challenges he faced was the succession. He outlived at least twelve of his sons, including his designated heir, Crown Prince Ramses, who died around Year 50. By the time Ramses finally passed away, the next in line was his thirteenth son, Merenptah, who was already in his sixties. Lucas: It was. And Merenptah had to deal with invasions and internal instability almost immediately. But Ramses had prepared the ground. He had given Merenptah important military commands and administrative roles in the latter decades of his reign, so he wasn't inexperienced. And by then, Ramses had already secured peace with the Hittites through the treaty and marriage alliance we discussed in episode 93 and 94. Luna: So the diplomatic groundwork helped smooth the transition. Lucas: It did. The Hittite peace treaty meant Egypt didn't have a major external threat when Ramses died. That gave Merenptah breathing room to deal with the Sea Peoples and Libyan incursions. If Ramses had died earlier, with the Hittite wars still ongoing, the succession could have been much more chaotic. Luna: So part of his long reign was just good timing — he lived long enough to see his policies bear fruit. Lucas: Partly. But he also actively shaped that timing. He chose his battles carefully. After Kadesh — which was more of a draw than a victory, despite the propaganda — he didn't pursue further major wars against the Hittites. He negotiated. He knew when to stop fighting and start building alliances. That pragmatism is what kept Egypt stable for nearly seven decades. Lucas: And there's another factor: his own health. We have his mummy, discovered in the Deir el-Bahri cache. He lived into his nineties, but he suffered from arthritis, dental problems, and arterial issues. He was in pain for much of his later life. But he kept ruling. That shows immense personal discipline, or at least a strong will to maintain power. Luna: Do we know if there were any assassination attempts or coups? Lucas: There's no direct evidence of a successful plot against him. But there are hints of tension. For example, his son Khaemwaset was extremely popular — a scholar, a priest, a magician in the popular imagination. He could have been seen as a rival, but he died before Ramses, in Year 55 or so. And there's some speculation that Merenptah may have been involved in a power struggle with Khaemwaset, but we don't have proof. Luna: So the succession was managed, but not without potential drama. Lucas: Exactly. The key point is that Ramses kept the royal family united — at least publicly. He gave his sons titles and responsibilities, but he never let any one of them accumulate enough independent power to challenge him. Khaemwaset was High Priest of Ptah, but he was based in Memphis, far from the administrative capital Per-Ramesses. Merenptah was given military commands, but he was always under the pharaoh's oversight. Lucas: And Ramses himself remained the central figure. Even in his old age, he continued to appear in public ceremonies, to issue decrees, to oversee building projects. The last known dated inscription from his reign is from Year 67 — the year he died. He was active until the very end. Luna: That's incredible. He really was the face of Egypt for almost seventy years. Lucas: He was. And that's why he's remembered as Ramses the Great. Not because he was the most skilled general or the most innovative builder — but because he held it all together for longer than anyone else. He created a stable, prosperous, and powerful Egypt that outlasted him, at least for a while. Merenptah held the line, but within a few generations, the 19th Dynasty collapsed into civil war and decline. Luna: So his long reign actually masked structural problems that emerged later. Lucas: Exactly. The cracks were there — the priestly power, the economic dependence on gold, the overcentralization of authority. But Ramses's personal authority papered over them. Once he was gone, the system started to fray. It's a reminder that even the most powerful pharaohs couldn't defy the long-term trends of history. Luna: It makes you wonder what Egypt would have looked like if he'd died twenty years earlier. Lucas: It's a fascinating counterfactual. Maybe the Hittite war would have reignited, maybe the building projects would have stalled, maybe a different son would have taken the throne. But as it was, his sixty-seven-year reign gave Egypt a stability that allowed the New Kingdom to continue for another century. And that's a legacy worth remembering.