Ramses the Great

He was still a young boy when his father became pharaoh. His father loaded him with tales of war and exposed him into the battlefield at a very young age. Their greatest aspiration was to reclaim the land lost to the Hittites and to build gigantic statues to their own godliness in the style of great kings of earlier dynasties. He stood five feet eight inches in height, had a strong jaw, a beaked nose, and a long thin face. His physical features can indicate such tyranny and egotism. But there's more to the "King of Kings" than meets the eye.

In just his 20s, Ramses the Great inherited the ruling seat as pharaoh when his father, Seti I, died at around age 50. The new successor also took over the place as god to the Egyptians.

His foremost duty was to cross the waterways going to Thebes in the month of September to take part in the festival of Opet. This festival mainly occurs at whatever time of the year god Amun is dying. Ramses led secret ceremonies of renewals. The rites made on those ceremonies reiterated the pharaoh's authority as ruler and mediator between the gods and humanity. Ramses mastered the rituals and he managed to save the world from chaos for countless times.

After finishing his first duty, he then sailed north going to the sacred city of Abydos to check the temple his father had been building before he died. He was appalled to find the temple unfinished and just went on putting his own name and image everywhere in the place.

Ramses was never satisfied, so he built this own temple there at Abydos, too. And just after another, he also built a great city in the Nile Delta. He raised numerous temples in nearly every important Egyptian city. And after much of his own creations, he ordered his workers to chisel out his predecessors names in any structures, and asked them to etch his name on them.

Marking his fifth year, Ramses decided to take over the city of Kadesh. Having an army comprising 20,000 men, he marched northeast into Syria, provoking a showdown with the king of the Hittites, Muwatallis. Ramses, together with his army, nearly lost the battle. But a battalion of Egyptian reinforcements came and Muwatallis' soldiers fled. Ramses declared a great glory and went back home.

There were a lot of queens in Ramses' life. His principal wife was Nefertiti, known for his