What is deal with Ramses II? Isn't he called "the great" or smth. Like I'm curious since whenever someone is talking about ancient Egypt his name is brought up so i'm curious .. Did he like steal achievements of other pharaohs or smth

rudjedet:

weaselbey:

rudjedet:

Yeah pretty much lmao

The reason he’s called “the Great” is because when Egyptology as a field first emerged, we saw all the statues and monuments with his name on it, knew he’d reigned for a fuckass long time, so we just went “oh yeah that sounds like a pretty dope guy” and referred to him with that epithet.

But as the field grew we realised that a good number of monuments that bore his name, well, weren’t his. He just had the original names chiselled off or plastered over, and had his own recarved over it. Now I should point out here that this wasn’t super out of the ordinary for Egyptian rulers. A lot of them took monuments from their predecessors wholesale, or used them as stone quarries for their personal building works. Ramses II just lived for so fucking long that he could do it to an absolutely obscene degree. Like, I’m talking about even stealing a relief about a hippo hunt.

I’m talking carving his name so deeply that his successors couldn’t (or not easily) do the same thing to him.

And beyond that, just being an insecure little twat with a ridiculous amount of wives and kids because he was terrified of ending up without an heir. Couldn’t even win the Battle of Kadesh, either.

Who is out here cancelling Ramses!???? Adhkllhgffj