Rameses the Great.
The peace of Egypt was not disturbed, although the direct succession again failed at the death of Horus. It is more than doubtful whether the soldier Rameses who now came to the front was of the royal line at all. He married his son Seti to a princess of the house of Pharaoh, and associated him with himself in the government. After a brief reign, of which next to nothing is recorded, he died, and left the crown to Seti. The wife of this sovereign was regarded with reverence as the descendant of the ancient line; and her claim to remembrance in after times was not so much that she was the wife of Seti, as that she was mother of Rameses ii., in whose person the direct line was again restored. The child was associated with his father from a very early age, so that at any rate the sanction of a true-born Pharaoh might be given, however nominally, to all that was done.
The reign of Seti i. was not long, but it was full of stirring events, which are recorded on a wall of the great temple at Karnak. Egypt had been absorbed in religious and domestic dissensions, and her claims to supremacy and empire in Asia had been allowed to lapse. Encouraged by this apparent indifference, the wandering Shasu tribes had ventured to cross the frontier, and had entered the Delta. Seti was a man of war, and was no doubt glad at heart to veil the obscurity of his birth and his doubtful right to the crown in a dazzling cloud of military triumph and renown. He marched against the intruding Shasu, and soon discomfited them. ‘The king was against them as a fierce lion; not one escaped to tell of his strength to the distant nations,’ it is said. Nevertheless, we find them soon after able to rally and make a stand upon Phœnician soil with the Phœnicians as allies. The king, whose horses on this occasion bore the name, ‘Amen gives him strength,’ again attacked and overthrew them; then, turning upon their allies, he defeated them also, the Egyptian chariots meeting the Phœnician in furious encounter. Afterwards he marched upon the Rutennu (Canaanites), and his horses were called ‘big with victory.’ So rapid was his success, that his approach took the great Syrian stronghold of Kadesh unawares. Herds and flocks were quietly pasturing under its walls when the Egyptian army appeared in sight. In hot haste herds and herdsmen fled within the city walls for shelter; the garrison forthwith made a sally, but Seti was too strong for them, and the fortress was stormed and captured.
A more formidable enemy remained. Northwards from Syria dwelt the powerful nation of the Kheta (or Hittites), who now appear upon the scene for the first time. Over their well-ordered hosts likewise Seti claims a victory. ‘As a jackal,’ say the inscriptions, ‘he rushes through the land and seeks after his prey—he is as a fierce lion that haunteth the most hidden paths in every land—as a mighty bull that hath whetted his horns for the strife. He hath smitten down the Asiatics, and thrown the Kheta to the ground; their princes hath he slain by the sword.’ It is quite plain, nevertheless, that the Egyptian monarch was glad enough to conclude a peace on equal terms with his brave opponents, and to return home again. On his way he visited the country of Limmanon (Lebanon) to procure cedar trees for the construction of a vessel to be used in the processions of Amen-Ra, and for the erection of the masts on the gate-towers of the temple. The people of that region received him with every mark of friendliness and respect; they are seen in the pictured story busily engaged in cutting down the tallest and finest of the trees for the service of the king.
Seti re-entered Egypt in triumph, laden with rich spoil; he was greeted with acclamations, and welcomed with peaceful offerings of fragrant flowers, songs of victory, and shouts of exultation. ‘Thou hast triumphed over thy foes, and hast quenched the fury of thy heart. Ra himself has established thy boundaries. His hand has protected thee when thy battle-axe was raised aloft above the heads of thine enemies; their kings fell by thy sword.’
No doubt in this blaze of glory and glitter of spoil all remaining misgivings as to the ‘right divine’ were dispelled and forgotten, especially as in a succeeding campaign the boy Rameses accompanied him. From his very birth this boy had been the object of regard and almost of devotion. He is seen in early infancy caressed by his mother and the ladies of the court. Later on he stands by his father’s side doing homage to his ancestors or to the gods in the temple of Abydos. On state occasions he occupied a prominent position, and was the central point of interest—the idol of his parents, and the hope of the nation, who cherished a real and most effective belief in the divine right of the god-descended race of their sovereigns. In a small Nubian temple is a sculpture, in which the youth is represented as returning from his first campaign, and receiving a loving welcome from his mother. She has noble features, as became her lineage, and there is a likeness between her and her son—so that although she is represented as a goddess, the face is no doubt intended as a portrait. The campaign from which she welcomes home her son, was against the Libyans, and, not unlikely, he stood by his father’s side when the chariot, drawn by horses called ‘Victorious is Amen,’ fell upon the foe. ‘He utterly destroyed them,’ it is said, ‘as they stood upon the field of battle; they could not hold their bows, and they remained hidden in their caves like foxes, for fear of the king.’
Seti again celebrated a triumph, and dedicated his spoil to Amen-Ra, together with the prisoners, whom he gave to the service of the temple, both as men and women servants. ‘The kings of the nations that did not know Egypt,’ so they sang on the occasion, ‘are brought by Pharaoh. They magnify his mighty deeds, saying: “Hail to thee, King of Egypt! Mighty is thy name. Happy is the people that is subject to thy will, but he who oversteppeth thy boundaries shall appear led in chains as a prisoner. We did not know Egypt; our fathers had not entered it. Grant us freedom out of thy hand.”’
The events of Seti’s campaigns are sculptured on the north wall of his Hall of Columns at Karnak. He is spoken of there as taking an intense and ferocious delight in battle. ‘Dear to him is the fray! his delight is to dash therein; his heart is satisfied when he beholds streams of blood gush forth, and strikes off the heads of his enemies. One moment of the strife of men is more precious to him than a whole day of pleasure. With one stroke he smiteth down the foe and spareth none, and whosoever is left alive he carrieth down into Egypt alive as a prisoner.’ So keen and savage a delight in bloodshed has confirmed some writers in the idea that Seti came of some alien race, as it is out of harmony with the mildness and humanity that characterised the Egyptian character. His name is considered as probably showing a close connection with the Delta, where Set was worshipped, chiefly by the foreign settlers; whilst the name of that god was so hateful in Egyptian eyes that it was chiselled away from the monuments, both during Seti’s life and after his death, even though it occurred as part of the royal name, and the king himself appears frequently to have changed his own objectionable name for that of Osiris. It may also be noted that the type of face of the sovereigns of the nineteenth dynasty is different from that of the preceding kings, and is decidedly of a more Semitic cast.
Although Seti had reconquered Syria, and possibly the adjacent lands, it does not seem that the stream of tribute flowed in such abundance as during the reign of Thothmes the Great. Treasure, however, was required, and the king resolved to have the valley of Hammamat thoroughly explored and worked. He went there himself in the ninth year of his reign, for, as the inscription says, ‘his heart wished to see the mines whence the gold is brought.’ Water was, of course, the first necessity as of old in the days of the eleventh dynasty, and Seti visited the hills in company with those who knew most about the water-courses. The desolation of the hot waterless valleys struck the king. After a journey of some miles he is said to have halted to meditate quietly, and he ‘said within himself, “If the road be without water the wayfarers must perish; they die of parching thirst. Where shall I find a place where the burning thirst may be quenched? Vast is this region, and far does it extend. He who is here overtaken by thirst will cry out, ‘O this land of perdition!’ Those who come hither will come to perform their obligations towards me; I must do that which will enable them to live. Thus shall my name be venerated throughout future generations.”’ When the king had said thus within himself he went up into the hills to found there a sanctuary wherein prayer might be offered to the god. After that it pleased him to assemble workmen to quarry the stone, and to form a reservoir there amongst the hills for the purpose of sustaining the fainting by giving him fresh water in the time of the summer heat. And the water came in great abundance, like the waters of the Nile at Abu. The king spake and said, ‘The god has heard my prayer; the water has come forth abundantly out of the rocks; the road that had no water has been made good under my reign. The shepherds shall have pasture for their flocks.’
A town was afterwards built at this new centre of industry, and a temple erected where Seti offered worship ‘to his fathers the gods.’ Guards were appointed to protect the convoyers of the precious metal, which was largely used by the king in adorning both temples and statues of the gods. Indeed, all the works ascribed to this reign are remarkable for their beauty and perfect finish, so that Seti i. can hardly be looked upon, after all, as nothing more than a man of blood and a lover of the fray. The chief of his works is a grand Hall of Columns that he added to the Great Temple at Karnak, founded so long before by Amenemhat i. It contained 134 immense columns of massive proportions, but, like his other undertakings, it had to be left incomplete, as his reign was not of long duration. In one of the corridors of his beautiful temple at Abydos was found the famous ‘Tablet,’ so invaluable to students of Egyptian history. It contained the names of 76 royal ancestors of Rameses ii., going back to King Mena himself; and the young Rameses is seen standing by his father and offering homage to their memories; on the opposite wall are inscribed the names of the Egyptian gods and goddesses, and a beautifully executed bas-relief represents the prince, under his father’s direction, pouring out in honour of the deities a libation, which is received into a vessel full of flowers.