Latest / Ramses the Great: Egypt's Most Powerful Pharaoh — Fexingo History / Ramses the Great's Son Khaemwaset: The First Egyptologist
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Ramses the Great himself — his wars, his temples, his wives. But one figure we haven't really touched on is his fourth son, Khaemwaset. And he's fascinating because he wasn't just a prince; he was the high priest of Ptah in Memphis, and he's often called the world's first Egyptologist. Lucas: Khaemwaset had a real passion for Egypt's past. He spent decades restoring ancient monuments — not just from the Old Kingdom but even earlier. He's the guy who restored the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, which was already over a thousand years old in his time. Luna: Wait — he restored the Step Pyramid? That's like us restoring Stonehenge, right? Lucas: Exactly right. And he didn't just clean it up. He left inscriptions on the pyramid saying he restored it, and he even added his own name to the monument. For Khaemwaset, the past was alive. He wanted to be part of it. Lucas: He was also deeply involved with the Serapeum — the burial place of the Apis bulls, which we covered in episode 20. As high priest of Ptah in Memphis, he oversaw the entire Apis cult. He even designed and built a new underground gallery for the bull burials, with massive granite sarcophagi. Luna: So he was both a restorer of old things and a builder of new ones. That's a rare combination. Lucas: It is. And his restoration work wasn't limited to Djoser. He also restored the pyramid of Unas — the last king of the Fifth Dynasty — and the pyramid of Userkaf, founder of the Fifth Dynasty. At each site, he left a 'restoration inscription' that reads almost like a modern archaeological report: 'This monument was found in a state of decay, and I, Khaemwaset, restored it.' Luna: He sounds like he genuinely cared about preserving history. Not just for his father's glory, but for its own sake. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why later Egyptians remembered him as a sage and a magician. There's a whole cycle of stories from the Ptolemaic period — hundreds of years after his death — called the 'Setne Khamwas' stories, where Khaemwaset is the hero who goes on magical adventures, reading ancient scrolls and battling ghosts. Lucas: In one famous story, he goes into a tomb to steal a magical book from a dead prince. It's the earliest example of a 'magician as protagonist' in world literature. Luna: So he became a legend in his own right. Did his father Ramses support all this restoration work? Lucas: Absolutely. Ramses was obsessed with his own legacy, but he also understood that tying himself to the great pharaohs of the past strengthened his own claim to power. Khaemwaset's work at Saqqara wasn't just antiquarian — it was political. By restoring the pyramids of the Old Kingdom, Ramses was saying, 'I am the heir to this glorious past.' Lucas: Khaemwaset also officiated at major festivals, including the Sed festival — the royal jubilee — and was instrumental in the cult of Ptah. He even built a new temple to Ptah at Memphis, with a statue of his father Ramses. Luna: But he was still a prince. Did he ever become pharaoh? Lucas: No, he didn't. He died before his father, around year 55 of Ramses' reign. The crown eventually passed to his younger brother Merenptah. But Khaemwaset's legacy as a scholar-priest outlasted many pharaohs. Lucas: And there's something poignant about it. He spent his life preserving the past, but his own tomb has never been found. We know he was buried in Memphis, probably in a tomb at Saqqara, but its location remains a mystery. Luna: So the first Egyptologist is himself lost to history. That's strangely poetic. Lucas: It is. But Khaemwaset's inscriptions survive. And the image we get from them is of a man who genuinely loved learning. In one inscription at Saqqara, he describes himself as 'the one who searches for the writings of the ancestors.' That's what he did — he searched, he restored, he recorded. Lucas: He also had a title that translates to 'The Greatest of Directors of Craftsmen' — which was the traditional title of the high priest of Ptah, but it also reflects his role as a builder and restorer. He oversaw workshops, sculptors, and stonemasons. Luna: So in a way, he was like a minister of culture for Ramses. But with a passion for archaeology. Lucas: Exactly. And Khaemwaset's story shows us something else about Ramses' Egypt: it wasn't just about conquest and monument building. There was a deep reverence for the past, and a desire to connect with it. The New Kingdom pharaohs didn't see themselves as starting from scratch — they saw themselves as continuing a tradition that went back to the gods. Lucas: Khaemwaset's work at the Step Pyramid is particularly interesting because Djoser was the pharaoh who built the first stone pyramid, and Imhotep was his architect. Imhotep was later deified as a god of medicine and wisdom. So by restoring Djoser's pyramid, Khaemwaset was also linking himself to Imhotep. Luna: Did he ever mention Imhotep in his inscriptions? Lucas: Not directly on the pyramid, but in later stories, Khaemwaset is often compared to Imhotep. Both were seen as wise men who understood the secrets of the past. And Khaemwaset's own tomb was probably near Imhotep's at Saqqara — though again, we haven't found it. Lucas: He also left a famous statue of himself kneeling beside a statue of his father Ramses, now in the British Museum. On it, he's depicted as a scribe — holding a papyrus, with a palette of ink. That's how he wanted to be remembered: as a literate man, a scholar. Luna: That's a striking image. Most princes would want to be shown as warriors. He chose scribe. Lucas: Exactly. And it's consistent with everything we know about him. Khaemwaset was the first person in history — that we know of — to systematically preserve ancient monuments. He's a bridge between the Old Kingdom and the New, and between ancient Egypt and our own fascination with its past. Lucas: When you walk through Saqqara today, you can still see the names of pharaohs like Unas and Djoser, and then you see Khaemwaset's restoration inscription. It's a direct line from the 3rd millennium BCE to the 13th century BCE — and then to us. Luna: It makes you wonder what else he would have restored if he'd lived longer. Or what he might have thought of the pyramids at Giza. Lucas: Well, he certainly knew about them. But Giza was still in use as a necropolis — there were active cults there. He may have left his mark there too, but if so, it hasn't survived. The Giza plateau was heavily reused in later periods. Lucas: Khaemwaset's work at Saqqara is better preserved because it was a more sacred, less disturbed area. The Serapeum, in particular, became a major pilgrimage site. Even after the cult of Apis declined, the underground galleries remained intact until the 19th century, when Auguste Mariette rediscovered them. Luna: And Mariette basically founded Egyptian archaeology. So there's a chain: Khaemwaset to Mariette to today's Egyptologists. Lucas: Absolutely. Khaemwaset's legacy is that he set a precedent. He showed that the past was worth preserving, not just for religious reasons but for its own value. And that idea — the preservation of cultural heritage — is something we still grapple with today. Lucas: So next time you see a restoration project at an ancient site, think of Khaemwaset. He was the first to do it, almost 3,200 years ago.