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00:01Ramses II, the most famous pharaoh of them all.
00:05Warrior king, master communicator, and builder of immense monuments,
00:11he also had a lesser-known side.
00:14That of a patriarch at the head of an extraordinary family
00:17that could rival today's best-selling dynasty series.
00:22This one king had more sons and daughters than a dozen pharaohs before him.
00:26Given the infant mortality rate in ancient Egypt,
00:30Ramses II must have made between 300 and 400 of them.
00:34But for some of them, they became something else.
00:37They became wives of their father.
00:41Married to more than 12 royal wives, including five of his own daughters,
00:46he gifted the mother of his first son with one of the finest monuments
00:50a queen could ever hope for.
00:52The temple and tomb of Nefertari fascinates visitors
00:55and provides an intimate portrait of the great ancient ruler.
01:01She's described as the one for whom the sun itself does shine.
01:06He's married literally to his ex-goddess.
01:10Trained from an early age to assume the highest offices,
01:13he devoted his life to training his heirs.
01:16But his first 12 sons died before he did.
01:21He was fated to see many, not just of his wives, but also many of his children
01:26and probably even grandchildren die before him.
01:29A natural colossus.
01:31A paragon of longevity and immortality
01:34who used the kingdom of Egypt as his family scrapbook.
01:39He appeared to be fond of his wives and children,
01:42but he must have been a bit of a pain to live with.
01:45Can you imagine being the child of God? I have no idea.
01:49Prepare yourselves to discover another side of Ramses II,
01:52the man behind the myth, the son, husband and father of an exceptional dynasty
01:57that left a lasting mark on history.
01:59This is a great living God.
02:04This is a great living God.
02:08Here I come.
02:15This is a great living God.
02:17This is a great living God.
02:25Abu Simbel, a thousand-year-old monument preserved
02:28from the ravages of time an extraordinary temple like no other a testament to the
02:33reign of history's most famous pharaoh Ramses the second
02:39Ramses name is emblematic of ancient Egypt
02:47of all the hundreds of pharaohs who ruled the country he is the one perhaps
02:53more than anybody else who embodies the idea of a great powerful ruler a military man a great builder
03:02Ramses the second was one of Egypt's most famous pharaohs even in ancient times because he was a
03:09great egoist and he made sure everyone knew about him I think he was a boring egotistical man whom I
03:18would have smacked if I'd met him but perhaps that does not go into a documentary
03:29built in 1260 BCE to celebrate his victory of the Battle of Kadesh this temple is also a shrine
03:37where Ramses appears as a god among the deities of the Egyptian pantheon although today the facade
03:46has lost some of its former splendor Egyptologists have succeeded in faithfully reconstructing its
03:52original appearance today when you see episode it looks golden like the mountain behind it like
04:00the sand in front of it but in ancient times it would have been in technicolor it would have
04:07sparkled in the Sun it would have caught the eye in this magnificent way you would go down along the
04:16curve
04:16of the river and suddenly boom you would see the images of the living god colossal monumental and painted
04:27on the facade of the huge temple are four large statues of a seated Ramses the second
04:35the impressive statue stand 20 meters high the same height as a six-story building
04:43the mythical pharaoh placed his titanic grandiose sculptures at the entrance to the Abu Simbel temple to send a
04:50strong message to travelers and locals alike it's Nubia which was conquered by the Egyptians when you're
05:00coming from the south this is the most visible sign now you are entering the realm of Pharaoh
05:09now you're entering Egypt this is the big man here and no one else though the impact of the great
05:18pharaoh's message is still felt some 33 centuries after his reign a part of it has been long forgotten
05:27it wasn't until 31 centuries later when Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs that it was revealed a
05:35powerful message that places him firmly at the pinnacle of the most astonishing monarchs in the
05:40history of civilization once they were able to enter the temple they see these huge images of the king
05:51all along the legs you can see a whole host of statues surrounding his majesty and unlike his predecessors
05:58who usually just had a queen standing next to them Ramses the second chose to showcase his family in
06:04order to emphasize the importance of his descendants we see uh nefertari the king's most favored wife
06:14we see the queen mother the widow of seti the first uh tuya and we also see two of ramsey's
06:22sons
06:23and uh a few of his daughters in all Ramses the second was accompanied by eight children but the
06:32archaeologists still had work to do as they gradually learned more about the heritage of the ancient
06:41egyptians and the legacy of Ramses the second they made an astonishing discovery a discovery that would
06:49contribute to the myth of the legendary pharaoh Ramses the second had all his children depicted on the walls of
06:57Ramses and his temples as we explore other temples we're in fact going to see that it wasn't just eight
07:05there were actually dozens of other children we don't have that for any other pharaoh
07:12Ramses the second this one king had more sons and daughters than a dozen pharaohs before him
07:20the walls of Ramses the second's family monuments list a staggering 101 children 48 sons and 53 daughters
07:30but according to some Egyptologists he may have had more given the infant mortality rate in ancient
07:38Egypt Ramses the second must have made between 300 and 400 of them of course this seems very unlikely or
07:50impossible with just one wife so we need to have a look at his family a closer how many wives
07:57did he
07:58actually have to produce so many sons and daughters why would Ramses have so many children and why would he
08:06advertise them to understand this we need to go back to 1303 BCE when the future Ramses the second was
08:16born
08:17a time when nothing predestined this son of a high-ranking egyptian army family to one day become pharaoh
08:26at a certain point early on in his childhood his grandfather became pharaoh
08:33and that's a massively significant moment not just for his grandfather Ramesses Ramesses the first
08:39but it's a massive moment for the whole family as well this is now the royal family of egypt
08:47when his grandfather died in 1294 BCE the future Ramses the second was just 10 years old
08:55when his father said he the first became pharaoh their dynasty had been in existence for less than two
09:01years and the reign of Ramses the first had already begun it succeeded the famous 18th dynasty that of
09:07Hatshetsu Amenhotep Tutankhamen and Nefertiti which ended in chaos following the political and religious
09:16upheavals of Akhenaten known to some as the heretic pharaoh
09:24but the brand new 19th dynasty was in danger
09:31there were many rivals and their rapid rise to prominence provoked all kinds of envy
09:37to bolster his fragile position Seti the first placed all his hopes in his son grooming him to become the
09:44future pharaoh he was starting to be educated in terms of religion and politics and war he was being
09:56trained as a soldier he was being trained in the arts of diplomacy we know Ramesses had at least one
10:04sister but she never could have become a pharaoh from that perspective however the future of the new 19th
10:12dynasty hung by a genetic thread although there were three previous cases of pharaoh queens it was not
10:21the norm in ancient Egypt therefore Ramesses was the last male heir in the family and the next king
10:33a huge responsibility both in life and in death where he had to ensure the stability and longevity of his
10:41kingdom if he and his father were to die without a direct descendant that would be the end of the
10:4819th dynasty
10:52in order to make sure that his dynasty survived he had to make sure that his son had a son
11:01before Ramesses even becomes king himself
11:05when the future Ramesses the second reached puberty his father said he the first was looking for the
11:10right woman to bear his son and ensure the future of their dynasty
11:16but Seti wasn't just looking for a wife
11:20a woman could have been infertile so it was important to have as many wives as possible at an early
11:26stage to
11:27have the chance to get as many children as possible we don't know exactly how many wives said he chose
11:34for Ramesses
11:38the work of Egyptologists has made it possible to find the names of at least two women chosen by
11:44Seti the first for his son both women had similar origins but very different faiths
11:52one of them is nefertari the other one is is this no threat
11:59they would both go on to occupy the role of sort of principal life their origins are shrouded in a
12:08certain amount of mystery they do not seem to have had any royal blood that they must have had some
12:14kind
12:14of high status good family and also were probably good political alliances
12:26I suspect there was something of the baby race as each of his new wives
12:32vied to become the first to deliver a healthy baby boy who would then become the future pharaoh's future heir
12:43is is no fret seems to have been the first to become pregnant by the future ramses the second then
12:48aged 15
12:52news that must have been celebrated by both father and son
12:56but unfortunately for her the baby was a girl
13:03who knows what would have become of is is no fret had she given birth to a son
13:09in any case she was there to witness nefertari's triumph
13:17nefertari gave him his first son amun herhepeshev with a moon on his left arm and a moon on his
13:23left
13:23leg so this was the future so to speak of the monarchy's bloodline
13:30he's now the crown prince he is the dauphin he is the one who will be taking over
13:38setty the first and the young ramses could rest easy their new dynasty was assured
13:45but they knew they needed to prepare this child to rule
13:50of course there's no great certainty around when the king is going to die preparations therefore would
13:56have begun quite early and the young crown prince the s the throne would have been trained
14:03in all the most important aspects of the role of the king it would be statecraft it would be military
14:10it
14:11would be also being before the public in a very present way so he was a king or a princeling
14:19who
14:20was very conscious of his destiny we can imagine that ramses was especially attentive to ensuring that
14:28his future heir would be fully capable of wielding power this is demonstrated by an extraordinary image
14:35in the abidus temple located 150 kilometers north of luxor the ancient city of thebes the temple of abidus
14:45is the funerary temple of seti the first considered one of the best preserved monuments in ancient egypt
14:51its thousand-year-old walls have preserved traces of ramses ii educating his son amun herhepeshev
15:00there's a depiction of ramses standing with his legs spread as if he's running
15:08holding a large lasso in his hand with a wild bull running in front of him
15:15and just in front of ramses is amun herhepeshev grasping the bull's tail he too is about to
15:21overpower it we can imagine a father teaching his son to hunt but the image of the bull is in
15:29fact the
15:30image of royalty so this scene should also be understood in a more symbolic sense ramses is
15:35giving his son the chance to seize power himself on another wall of the abidus temple amun herhepeshev
15:45is depicted as the worthy heir to ramses the second and seti the first a future king with a glorious
15:52destiny nurtured by his father a prince and his grandfather a pharaoh
16:02but sadly ramses could hardly have known that his son would never reign
16:10even if there was a son who was the designated heir and successor the one that everybody expects to
16:16become the pharaoh it doesn't mean that in the event that actually happens and there needs to be kind
16:21of backup options this is probably why ramses ii had more children with his
16:27two wives nefertari gave him at least five sons and four daughters compared with three sons and
16:34three daughters from isis nefret 15 children who grew up in the best of circumstances until
16:40tragedy struck the young father's family
16:46the year was 1280 bce in thebes
16:51to everyone's amazement his father seti the first died after reigning for just 12 years
16:57when we look at his very well preserved mummy it's almost as if seti were just fallen asleep
17:05this must have come as a great shock to ramses when suddenly his whole world changed and he found
17:11himself alone on the throne the young ramses was then aged between 20 and 25 he became ramses ii
17:31his father had prepared him well trained him in all the duties of kingship and in fact he may have
17:39been one of the best trained and well prepared uh future pharaohs that ever came to the throne of egypt
17:47he didn't know it yet but his destiny was going to be as glorious as it was tragic
17:56despite becoming pharaoh ramses never neglected the fact that he was also a father after five years of
18:03ruling he traveled to kadesh in modern day syria to reclaim an ancient fortress from the hittites
18:09forerunners of the turks there he did something astounding thanks to kadesh we know that part of the
18:18royal family is here we see them pictured with him in the battle of kadesh and various other places so
18:23these boys were loyal to their father and it really was a family concern
18:31it wasn't just the princes who were fit to fight you can sense that they were wives ladies-in-waiting
18:38people we can hardly imagine on a battlefield
18:43we have to understand that this wasn't just a battle or a military campaign
18:49these military expeditions were also a kind of court ceremony
18:57when not at war the royal family lived in thebes and in the brand new capital of pyramises in the
19:03nile
19:03delta which ramses ii commissioned during his reign while he lived in his royal palace his family did not
19:13his wives and children lived in an institution that egyptologists call a harem
19:25so it's important to go beyond the cliched image of an eastern harem with half-dressed young women waiting on
19:32their gentlemen
19:35this was a family house really so this is where the female family members the children all lived
19:42and where the king carried out his domestic life often and so this is more the comfort zone
19:51but the harem was more than just that it was also an independent economic structure
19:58there were several types of production including fabrics and we know that in ramses's time fabric
20:05orders were processed through this harem in fact they produce a grade or a quality of linen that was known
20:11as royal linen
20:12and so as a result royal linen the linen produced by this royal industrial environment ends up becoming
20:19some of the most sought after uh not only in egypt but also abroad a special place where nefertari
20:27is is no fret and their children were forced to live side by side but they weren't alone despite these
20:34two women both achieving the supreme rank of royal wife when ramses ii descended the throne of egypt
20:40the pharaoh had other companions and other children so we have a series of the vast majority of ramses
20:51children who are almost nothing but names to us and their mothers are complete ciphers to us
21:01we can only know that they must have existed because certainly nefertari and is it no fret didn't give
21:08birth to 50 children each all these women were probably not friends and even though for the time of
21:17ramses ii we don't really know about such problems but it was most likely also a place of conflicts of
21:25mothers who wanted to bring their children in the best position to advance their children probably to
21:32become the next king of egypt but ramses ii was a wise man while his dozens of children could be
21:44considered an achilles heel he turned them into a strength instead of being threatened by his sons
21:52he uses them as part of his bureaucracy his military his control over the country he really ruled by using
22:01his family
22:04there was one person he used more than any other one person without whom he couldn't be a pharaoh worthy
22:11of the name his great royal wife and the mother of his crown prince nefertari
22:24she's described as the one for whom the sun itself does shine and so was this a love match there's
22:32this
22:32narrative that since she gave him his firstborn child that therefore they sort of fell deeply in
22:38love and that there was this connection between them and that led to her being elevated whether
22:44this is all true we don't really know we don't have the love letters of ramses to nefertari or vice
22:50versa
22:52what we do know is that she was no ordinary royal wife
23:00egyptologists have found letters written by nefertari
23:03that proves she had a special role within ramses ii's royal administration she even appears to have
23:10played a role in the signing of a peace treaty between egypt and the hittites in year 21 of her
23:15husband's reign we have a letter that queen nefertari wrote to the hittite queen a greeting letter where she
23:24greets her royal counterpart and so here we see the queen playing a kind of diplomatic role
23:32by comparison with other kings and their great royal wives it seems that nefertari enjoys an unusual
23:38prominence this is probably most strikingly shown by the fact that at abu symbol there's not just one
23:46temple but there are two
23:52this is the second temple
23:55located just a few dozen meters from the less imposing but equally colossal temple of ramses ii
24:02it was built in honor of nefertari wife of the legendary pharaoh and mother of his crown prince
24:08but above all to honor nefertari the goddess
24:14she is not just his earthly wife but she is the king's divine wife so it's a tremendous statement
24:20of not just ramesses power and his own divinity but it's a great statement as well that the king's
24:27great royal wife is also a god alongside him
24:33if the king was the living embodiment of the god horus this very masculine god then the queen
24:42was the incarnation of the goddess hathor the god of beauty and love and sexual reproduction
24:51she is a nurturer of children and a good mother she's all about love and
24:59uh passion and excitement one of her other titles is the lady of drunkenness
25:09hathor is one of the most popular goddesses of ancient egypt
25:14she was revered by the royal family and the egyptian people alike
25:19once a year she was honored during the festival of drunkenness
25:23the entire objective of the festival of drunkenness is to achieve such a state of joy
25:32both through interaction with your fellow human
25:36and also by drinking to excess and having fun and having as much joy as possible that you will
25:43have a vision of the goddess
25:53he's married literally to a sex goddess
25:55i mean literally that's who hathor is she's a sex goddess that's her job
26:04though the choice of portraying his royal consort as a sex goddess may offend certain sensibilities today
26:12it was perfectly normal in the minds of the ancient egyptians
26:16during the time of ramses ii relationships towards the human body were very different from what they
26:22are today we today have erased sexuality from our religion from our way of life we see it as
26:30something dirty as something embarrassing the egyptians they were not embarrassed by the function
26:35of the body in fact quite the opposite they celebrated it the ancient egyptians were perfectly normal
26:43and would have had sex not just because they wanted to have children but because they enjoyed it
26:50on the contrary if ramses ii associated his wife with the goddess of sex he was doing her a great
26:57honor
26:58his wife was represented as a creative and nurturing goddess who would help pharaonic civilization to endure
27:04her at least that's the image we like to project onto their relationship
27:10not to be too cynical i doubted that he hated her but on the other hand this is a lot
27:17of
27:19pr what the real relationship between ramses and nefertari was
27:25we will never know but certainly the official version is that they were madly in love
27:35what we know for sure is that no pharaoh before him had built such a temple to celebrate his wife
27:44whether proof of love or simply a propaganda tool this was not the only notable construction
27:50ramses the great commission for nefertari
27:57not all sources agree on the date but most egyptologists fix it around 1255 bce
28:07nefertari the great royal wife of pharaoh ramses ii and the mother of his crown prince passed away
28:17she probably died around the age of 50 and yet she was a particularly important figure for ramses
28:24as his first major queen she was the one who accompanied him during the very first part of his reign
28:31given what we know about the way she is shown he must have been quite saddened and even devastated at
28:40her death
28:41if this vision of nefertari has made it to the present day
28:44it's thanks not only to the bas-reliefs in her temple at abu simbol
28:48but also to one of the best preserved wonders of the pharaonic civilization
28:53located in the valley of the queens near luxor nefertari's tomb is a poignant testament to the wife of ramses
29:00ii
29:06it was sealed up so well that it never got flooded by the various different rainfalls and it was never
29:12disturbed
29:14the decoration is beautifully preserved it's by far one of the most stunning tombs in all of egypt
29:23this is probably the most fantastic beautiful and well-preserved tomb of a female member of the royal
29:31family it's an absolutely remarkable treasure to set foot in it is almost like getting slapped in the
29:37face it's just so perfect every detail every hieroglyph is a masterpiece in itself
29:45a unique sanctuary the tomb's thousand-year-old paintings contain a secret message about the wife of ramses ii
29:55they reveal not only an extraordinary portrait of nefertari
29:59but also precious clues to the personality of the famous pharaoh
30:06ramses is not represented anywhere in nefertari's tomb he is never named he is never pictured
30:13it's just about the queen and this is something that is also totally unusual
30:20how could this king of communication who placed his cartouche and his face on all the monuments of
30:26ancient egypt leave his wife's tomb untouched by his presence
30:32was this a sign of love on the part of ramses ii or could nefertari have chosen the decoration of
30:38her eternal home while she was still alive
30:46if we imagine the king setting aside his ego and letting his wife be alone as the most important
30:52subject of the tomb it's a mark of esteem and respect that should be emphasized
31:00it's impossible i think to overstate how rich and overwhelming the decoration is
31:06the substance of it um it is nefertari's journey to the next life journey to the afterlife
31:14the afterlife a paradise that every king must reach after a long journey fraught with obstacles
31:21battling many enemies including the terrible and evil serpent a pep
31:29it's also a sacred land that ancient egyptians including their queens strive for after death
31:38and as such nefertari was accorded a magnificent post-mortem journey
31:44her tomb is much more than a burial place it's a vessel destined to transport her to her destiny
31:54she's experiencing a journey in the afterlife with just about every god one of the many different
32:00deities that she will come face to face with is the god capri
32:07capri is uh the god who is sort of the child's son
32:12this beetle-headed god represents daybreak and rebirth
32:19his role is deeply symbolic
32:24the god capri is based on the dung beetle dung beetles collect dung and form it into a perfect ball
32:33and they lay their eggs within this ball and so they push the ball around with them and then the
32:40young
32:40are born out of this ball the egyptians saw this process this becomes this wonderful symbol of
32:49resurrection for them
32:51in the same way the god capri gave nefertari access to the afterlife
32:59this is how ramses ii's queen was welcomed back to her family
33:03for a life that the ancient egyptians imagined would last forever
33:10she makes this journey by herself and hopefully was reunited with ramses in the afterlife
33:18but ramses was not about to join nefertari in the afterlife
33:23little did he know he would live another 40 years before finally passing on
33:31he found himself in a predicament
33:34for a pharaoh is not complete without a royal wife
33:38there's a pressing need for ramesses ii to have a new
33:43great royal wife to fulfill that role the obvious candidate for that is isis nofret
33:50sources differ but it is possible that isis nofret outlived nefertari
33:55and became the only great royal wife at his side when the latter died
34:03she was always very unassuming isis nofret was never in first place she was really crushed by nefertari
34:11she must have kind of replaced nefertari but still she didn't get a temple like i was symbol
34:16so maybe her status was somewhat different and we are missing something we are missing her too
34:24although she remained in the shadows of history and lost the battle for the baby to nefertari
34:29a sudden event propelled her into the spotlight
34:38in 1259 bce the pharaoh's eldest son amin herkhepsev the crown prince on whom his father and grandfather
34:47had pinned all their hopes for the future of their dynasty in egypt died throwing the royal family further
34:54into disarray amin herkhepsev died shortly after ramses celebrated his 21st year as pharaoh he would
35:05have been in his early to mid 40s when amin herkhepsev died unfortunately we have no record of what
35:14happened when amin herkhepsev died although we imagine that for ramses it must have been absolutely
35:19terrible like any loss of a child but ramses ii couldn't afford to let it get him down he knew
35:28that the future of his dynasty hung by a thread he named his second son ramses jr as heir to
35:35the throne
35:36long in his older brother's shadow it was he who was to succeed his father as pharaoh
35:44his mother is his no fret was delighted but she would not live to see the day
35:56sources are rather vague about the circumstances and date of her death
36:01but without a royal wife at his side ramses ii had to find a replacement
36:08in year 34 there is something that is being kind of described as a wonder
36:16this beauty was a young hittite princess the daughter of his longtime rival 15 years after the
36:24battle of kadesh faced with the rise of new empires in the region the egyptian and hittite kingdoms
36:30decided to join forces in peace when the hittite princess reaches the border of the egyptian empire
36:41the egyptian text mentions a wonder days of winter becomes summer
36:50a poetic vision that represented the importance of the arrival of this foreign princess
36:56her father offered her to the great ramses ii as a new wife to cement the alliance
37:03the hittite princess is arriving in p ramses in the palace of ramses ii together with a huge
37:12hittite delegation and an incredible dowry and we don't know her hittite name but we know her egyptian
37:19name she was baptized matt tornaferro she saw the beauty of horus the beauties of ra and she was going
37:29to have a little girl with ramses the union and the birth of a child were the best guarantees of
37:38certain
37:38peace between the two kingdoms although ramses ii was often associated with a label of warrior
37:46he should also be seen as a peacemaker and in this respect diplomatic marriages played a key role
37:54letters exchanged between the pharaoh and the mother of his new royal bride
37:58the hittite queen revealed that this was not the only foreigner he was going to marry
38:05within those letters there are suggestions to indicate that he
38:09he probably married at the very least a babylonian princess and maybe one from assyria and from some
38:16some other foreign kingdom in syria
38:23and so it sort of ensured peace for everyone in this area which would be beneficial in the long run
38:30you could have your trade you could do all kinds of things without having to bash each other's heads in
38:37you'd think pharaoh would marry off his many daughters in return to further strengthen his alliances
38:43but egyptians didn't do things like everyone else the egyptians believed they were better than
38:49everyone else and so as a result they would never sully themselves by marrying a barbarian
39:05and so you couldn't really do dynastic marriages with foreign princes by giving them your daughters
39:18this practice could offend his new allies but ramses ii knew how to silence the critics he sent
39:25them huge quantities of gold because he had other plans for his daughters princesses are also priestesses
39:33they played essential roles in many different religious aspects of egypt and these daughters
39:40were most likely for a long time living in the harim but for some of them they became something else
39:50they became wives of their father
39:57of the 53 daughters mentioned in his monuments seven were the offspring of his unions with nefertari
40:04and isis nofret five of them in turn became their father's royal wives bringing his list of official wives to
40:13a total of 12.
40:18so much has been written about the notion of a father marrying his daughters
40:24marrying your own daughter and having intercourse with your own daughter would be something totally
40:29forbidden in most modern cultures but in ancient egypt actually this might have been much more accepted and
40:36in the fact that no one would have seen a real problem why did the great ramses ii marry five
40:43of his daughters
40:44what kind of relationship did he have with them the big question is whether these marriages were consummated
40:51or not there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever for or against the proposition that ramses produced children
40:59by them we shouldn't be thinking in terms of some kind of sexual appetite or anything else what we're
41:07looking at is an essential political need that he had to fulfill
41:16there is no evidence to suggest that ramses ii was involved in incestuous practices with his daughters
41:23what is certain however is that by naming his daughters as royal wives he further strengthened
41:29his dynasty he was sending out a strong signal that of a powerful egypt with a strong and well-supported
41:36pharaoh it might have also been a way to strengthen ramses ii's rule by marrying his own daughters he knew
41:44that also this kind of office that the court that everything remained in the family's hands
41:54and to make this known he deified his five daughters and placed them at a side in front of the
41:59facade
41:59of his temple at abu simbol erecting statues of them in the four corners of the kingdom
42:05and building lavish tombs for them in the valley of the queens alongside those of nefertari
42:12far from being something that was a burden on them i think that this was probably the best thing
42:17that ever happened to them especially for bentanath
42:23bentanath is omnipresent she is often found in front of all her sisters in the lists of princesses
42:29in several places at the rameseum at ramses ii's funerary temple or at abidus in the first courtyards
42:36in front of seti the first temple is is no fred's first daughter is the most represented daughter
42:43wife of ramses the second when she married her father she surely had no idea that she would later
42:51marry another pharaoh
42:59but as ramses grew old surrounded by his daughter wives goddesses children and grandchildren a new
43:06tragedy shook his long life
43:11in 1224 bce the 80 year old pharaoh saw his second crown prince ramses jr die of old age
43:24ramses of course didn't predict how old he would become how long a life he would live
43:33one of the bitter consequences of ramses living to extreme old age is that he was fated to see many
43:42not just of his wives but also many of his children and probably even grandchildren die before him
43:49this is how ramses ii lived his last years the life of a living god whose exceptional longevity
43:56forced him to suffer the martyrdom of illness but also to experience the painful emotions that came
44:03with seeing those closest to him die to honor the memory of his sons and ensure their peaceful journey
44:10to the afterlife he built a tomb like no other in the valley of the kings
44:16of the kings with a surface area of 1260 square meters the equivalent of three soccer pitches
44:22it is the largest in the theban necropolis it is like an underground car park except it's for human
44:29beings we really unfortunately don't have the names of all of the children of ramses who were buried there
44:35but they are fragments there are traces of decoration that proved that none other than
44:40omni herkopashev and ramses jr were buried there the tomb has been badly damaged by flooding and looting
44:50new excavations are underway and could well be at the heart of new revelations about the famous pharaoh
44:56in the months or years to come at the moment we've cleared about 130 rooms but we're not done yet
45:03the corridors are still being worked on so there are probably still other princes waiting to be
45:10discovered the fact that he is willing to kind of exert this amount of effort on behalf of children
45:17who are not yet dead but may still need him it's a very it's a very interesting statement of who
45:24ramses was potentially as a father an even more moving testimony of a father to his sons
45:31the architecture and positioning of the tomb it seems to have been designed to serve a very specific
45:39purpose clearly there's a kind of communication between the tomb of ramses ii and the tombs of his
45:46children and it's pretty much sort of diagonally across from his own tomb so as they were together
45:52in life they could be together in death while it's difficult to determine how many wives and daughters
46:03he buried during his lifetime we do know that he lost 12 of his sons before he died in 1213
46:09bce
46:10after reigning for 66 years and reaching the incredible age of 90. the greatest of all pharaohs was no more
46:27but he was able to fulfill the main mission entrusted to him by his father with dozens of sons he
46:34could
46:34trust that one of them would succeed him and ensure the future of the 19th dynasty if we think of
46:41nefertari
46:41as having won the baby race is it no front won the marathon to see which son would outlast ramses
46:49and
46:49become the next pharaoh he's being followed by his 13th son marinta someone who probably never thought of
46:57becoming king at over 60 marinta knew that his time on the throne would be short while he probably
47:06managed his father's affairs during the last years of his reign he found himself suddenly alone with an
47:11impossible mission he's following a pharaoh who for the entire population of egypt is the only king
47:22they've ever known a king whose achievements are the perception would have been greater than any pharaoh
47:29before him how on earth is he going to succeed
47:38nonetheless marinta ramses the second successor managed to leave an enduring legacy in the space of just 10
47:50years
47:50a staggering feat his name is now celebrated among historians not just of egypt but of the ancient
48:00world more generally because he left behind the stela which includes the word israel
48:08it is fascinating because it's one of the very first historic records that we have
48:13of the existence of israel at this time
48:18and incredible as it may seem memrentah took one of his father's queen daughters as his royal wife
48:25is this no fret's first daughter his elder sister bentanat
48:33first being married to her father and then being married to the next heir this is unusual this is not
48:39what we normally see in traditional egyptian representations all of which seems crazy to us
48:51ben tanat ramses ii's first child could have been his successor had she been a man
48:58she outlived her father and twice held the most important position a woman could hold in two consecutive
49:07reigns together with her brother husband marinta they represented the necessary balance for egypt
49:14like their father and nefertari then their mother isis nofret before them they became the new
49:20incarnations of the deities horus and hathor but succeeding a man like ramses ii was no easy task
49:28can you imagine being the child of god i have no idea it couldn't have been easy being a child
49:35of
49:35ramses ii unless they had inherited some of their father's temperament considering the size of this
49:40man's ego one imagines he had a certain awareness of his own potential
49:48the reign of ramses ii was both the golden age of pharaonic civilization and the beginning of its
49:55its inexorable decline the 19th dynasty collapsed just 27 years after his reign
50:03the consequences of fierce competition between his descendants
50:09this leads to the establishment of a new dynasty the 20th dynasty this dynasty is called the ramasside
50:17dynasty because every pharaoh chooses to use the name ramses in his royal titles it is as if they
50:24hoped by taking this name they would gain some of the power and the magic of ramses ii but there
50:33really was only one ramses the second a century after his reign egypt descended into chaos the kingdom
50:43split in two its golden age was a thing of the past but the legacy of ramses the great spans
50:50the
50:50centuries and millennia it presents us with the portrait of an exceptional family sired by a
50:56legendary man who had no idea of the destiny that awaited him the day he was born ramses ii was
51:03a great
51:05egoist a great propagandist was a great fighter and probably someone who was also a great family man
51:14he appeared to be fond of his wives and children but he must have been a bit of a pain
51:20to live with
51:21you have to imagine that we're dealing with a family so huge that we still haven't got to the
51:25end of it every time we say to ourselves well that's it we've finished the list we're pretty
51:30sure about the number of children we discover a new one and just recently another child of ramses
51:37ii was found on a statue of ramses ii in tanis the image of the pharaoh par excellence the one
51:47who alone
51:47personifies the civilization of the ancient egyptians that was his wish and that's why he had himself
51:54represented in the four corners of his kingdom alone or with his family in the end the members of the
52:03royal family were mirrors of his greatness it was all about ramses a unique pharaoh who did all he
52:13could in his own lifetime to make his mark on earth father to a hundred children an ingenious builder
52:21and a king of communication ramses ii did everything to become immortal in the history of humankind