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00:01Ramses II, the most famous pharaoh of them all.
00:05If his name is crossed the millennia, it's largely thanks to the monuments which carry his name to the four
00:11corners of ancient Egypt.
00:13As an Egyptologist, even when you try to avoid traces of Ramses II, you'll still find his cartouches in the
00:19desert. He's everywhere.
00:21There are kings who you find on many sites, but Ramses II is the superstar. He's everywhere.
00:27But it's just not possible that all these temples were built during his reign.
00:32There is no way, even though Ramses lived a long time, there is no way that he built that much.
00:38One of the reasons why Ramses II has so many monuments is because he usurped many, many of them.
00:47Usurpation. That's the practice of certain pharaohs of replacing the name of their predecessor with their own on monuments which
00:54they didn't build.
00:55It's almost as though he didn't want there to be any grand monuments in Egypt that appeared to have been
01:02built by anybody else.
01:04So when we see these erased cartouches, we as Egyptologists, we ask ourselves, what is this?
01:10Why would Ramses do this?
01:12It took Egyptologists more than two centuries to resolve this archaeological puzzle.
01:18Two centuries to discover the reasons behind such audacity and to reveal a little known character of the great monarch.
01:28As a child, he was destined to become an extremely important figure in the Egyptian state, but not a pharaoh.
01:35He needed to be a good politician to make his reign successful. And he succeeded.
01:42Ramses II would have made people like Donald Trump or any other ruler look like an amateur if he had
01:49had a cell phone because he knew how to manipulate and he knew his propaganda.
01:55Prepare yourselves to discover Ramses II. Behind the legend, a man ready to go to any lengths to make his
02:02name resound to the four corners of the Kingdom of Egypt.
02:29The year is 1829 in Abu Simbel in southern Egypt.
02:35Following the discovery by Westerners of this gigantic temple 16 years earlier, a new type of explorer had the privilege
02:42of entering the sanctuary dating back over 1000 years.
02:46Egyptologists. Amongst them, Jean-François Champollion.
02:51This 39-year-old Frenchman was at the head of a pioneering expedition in the history of the modern world.
02:57If anything is even more impressive, Champollion and his colleagues would enter this enormous space entirely cut from the rock
03:08with rows of pillars with engaged statues on either side.
03:26It was covered with the inscriptions of a pharaoh, but the explorers didn't know which pharaoh it belonged to.
03:36Champollion was not the first person to see this, but he was bringing with him on this expedition a brand
03:44new tool and the kind of secret weapon of Egyptology.
03:50This secret weapon was an extraordinary discovery. A remarkable tool for deciphering this mysterious writing which was to revolutionize our
04:00understanding of pharaonic civilization.
04:03The result of several years' work on the part of Jean-François Champollion. The deciphering of hieroglyphics.
04:13The doors of knowledge immediately opened. There was access to what was written in the temples. The names of kings
04:19began to be deciphered.
04:23So armed with this new knowledge, this new tool, he could read the cartouches and identify the pharaoh who built
04:31this extraordinary monument.
04:37Ramses. That's what Champollion could read. But the French Egyptologist was faced with a problem.
04:46Well, which Ramses was it? We now know that there were 11. And Champollion knew that there were at least
04:53several Ramses that he could choose from.
04:58The decipherer of hieroglyphics had a vast knowledge of ancient Egypt. He knew how to solve the mystery of the
05:05identity of this enigmatic pharaoh.
05:08Each individual pharaoh had a unique set of royal names. Five, in fact.
05:14Most important was what we would call the coronation name, which was a unique name. No other pharaoh had the
05:22exact same coronation name.
05:24This coronation name was enclosed in these oval shapes called cartouches. The interior walls at Abu's symbol displayed two identical
05:33ones in various places.
05:36Thanks to his exceptional deciphering formula, Jean-François Champollion miraculously managed to translate them. And what he discovered left him
05:44speechless.
05:48The name that Champollion read or the names were Usermat Ray, which means the justice of Ray is strong, is
05:58powerful, is well established. And Setheben Ray, who is the chosen one of Ray.
06:07Ra, the sun god. The supreme Egyptian divinity at the origin of the creation of the world, who spent each
06:16night overcoming the terrible serpent, Apep, in order to be reborn the next morning.
06:21So that is the name of the king, but of course that doesn't mean very much to us.
06:27This was not the name he was given at birth, but only when he became pharaoh.
06:33Although his pharaonic name was unknown to the wider public, his original name has been passed down through the ages
06:39and is now one of the most famous in the world.
06:43This is the name of Ramses II.
06:45This is the name of Ramses II.
06:49All the hundreds of pharaohs who ruled the country, he is the one, perhaps more than anybody else, who embodies
06:56the idea of a great, powerful ruler, a military man, a great builder.
07:02His reign encompassed many generations of Egyptians, so all they knew was Ramses the Great, who was also deified, he
07:11was a god.
07:21His mummy, discovered in 1881, put a striking face to the name of the world's most powerful man 3,300
07:29years ago.
07:30But a realization came over the archaeologists who traveled the country, uncovering the land of the ancient Egyptians.
07:37As an Egyptologist, even when you try to avoid traces of Ramses II, you'll still find his cartouches in the
07:43desert. He's everywhere.
07:46When you excavate a site, it's the first cartouche you find, that of Ramses.
07:50There are kings who you find on many sites, but Ramses II is the superstar. He's everywhere.
07:57Over the course of his reign, the pharaoh had tens of fabulous structures built, and hundreds of statues of him,
08:03all along the Nile Valley.
08:06The temple at Abu Simbel is his most emblematic work.
08:10At Luxor, the Ramesseum is entirely dedicated to his glory.
08:14But strangely, the other great monuments of the pharaonic period, which still remain, also bear traces of Ramses II.
08:24In some places, it's almost as though Ramses is the only king.
08:29It cannot be that he built everything and nobody else built anything. That doesn't make any sense.
08:35Is it possible in one reign to build so many temples? To make so many statues?
08:41Or, as some began to expect, had he added his name onto monuments that he in fact had never actually
08:48built?
08:53Only meticulous investigation could uncover the true history of Ramses II, establishing the portrait of a man as contradictory as
09:01he was fascinating, as megalomaniacal as he was impressive, because for Egyptologists, the answer to the question was clear.
09:11There is no way, even though Ramses lived a long time, there is no way that he built that much.
09:19One of the reasons why Ramses II has so many monuments is because he usurped many, many of them.
09:29Usurpation.
09:32An intriguing phenomenon which complexified the work of Egyptologists.
09:38This is the practice certain pharaohs had of replacing their predecessor's name by their own on monuments that they hadn't
09:44built.
09:45Could the most famous Egyptian monarch in history also be the greatest of all usurpers?
09:52It's almost as though he didn't want there to be any grand monuments in Egypt that appeared to have been
09:59built by anybody else.
10:01And the question is, why would Ramses do this?
10:04Why would he take the monument of an earlier king and replace their name with his own name?
10:12It was the beginning of a passionate investigation to the four corners of Egypt to try to separate fact from
10:18fiction and understand the motivations of this extraordinary pharaoh.
10:25A journey through time which takes us back to the reign of Ramses II.
10:31When Ramses used to erase the names of earlier kings and replace them with his own, when we look at
10:39them very closely, it's a bit like forensics.
10:42Fortunately, it was possible to see that in some cases telltale signs were present that an earlier name had been
10:55there.
11:04It's here in Luxor, formerly Thebes, the religious capital of ancient Egypt, that we begin our investigation into traces of
11:12usurpation of monuments by Ramses II.
11:15At the far end of the magnificent avenue of Sphinxes stands one of the most important cult monuments in ancient
11:22Egypt, Luxor Temple.
11:27When you go in the Luxor Temple, basically everywhere you see the name of Ramses II.
11:34There are obelisks and also colossal statues, images of Roses II himself. It's like a sort of comprehensive picture of
11:44how wonderful he is.
11:45He's a great warrior. He's this huge presence, this huge mighty presence looming over you.
11:52This monumental pylon, 24 meters in height, comparable to a seven-story building, was commissioned by Ramses II himself.
12:00Its facade depicts the pharaoh vanquishing his enemies at the famous Battle of Kadesh.
12:06But the mark of Ramses II doesn't end there.
12:11As we enter the first court, we are again greeted with colossal statues and columns of Ramses II.
12:19So the court itself is decorated extensively by Ramses himself.
12:22There are all sons and daughters of Ramses represented on the walls.
12:27Everything seems to be connected to Ramses II.
12:30But once you enter the temple, things change slightly.
12:34But that's when you start to realize that maybe this temple is not Ramses.
12:42Six spectacular statues stand here.
12:45They quickly revealed secrets concerning the temple's construction.
12:50When you look at it, you think, oh, it's Ramses II.
12:54But that's really not the case.
12:56We look at the inscriptions on the back and we see places where the surface has been adjusted.
13:03And we even see a few traces of earlier hieroglyphs.
13:07Or something seemed to be cut a little deeper.
13:10And so it was more and more obvious that something had been changed.
13:16But that wasn't all.
13:17The composition of the sculptures was equally astonishing, particularly concerning the faces.
13:24Certain traits correspond with the official face of Ramses.
13:29Almond-shaped eyes with slightly thick upper eyelids.
13:32The eyes often lowered.
13:35The aquiline nose, shaped something like this.
13:38The slightly strange outline of the ears.
13:41He has a very slight smile.
13:44It's not exaggerated.
13:46He's not grinning or laughing.
13:48They always have their mouths closed, but there's just a very slight smile that plays across his lips.
13:56However, these distinctive traits are not to be found on these statues.
14:01For the experts, the corroborating evidence was overwhelming.
14:04They came to the conclusion that these statues had been usurped by Ramses II.
14:11There was some reworking.
14:13Something was going on.
14:14Something was changed.
14:15And this tells us that most likely they originally were made by someone else, another pharaoh.
14:21He's done a fantastic job of appropriating somebody else's work and making it seem as though he is responsible.
14:31The discovery struck like a bombshell.
14:34It raised many questions about the personality of history's most famous pharaoh and called for a fresh look at this
14:40legendary king.
14:41Far from the heroic image regularly attributed to him, perhaps Ramses II was a thief who had appropriated the monuments
14:49of others with a hammer and a chisel.
14:51Other pharaohs often did this because they were trying to suppress the memory of a pharaoh they considered to be
14:58illegitimate or somehow bad.
15:02If you erase the name of someone, their memory is gone because for the Egyptians it had to be written
15:09down.
15:10So if the name is not there, they did not exist.
15:13This was the case with the pharaohs Hathetzab and Akhenaten, who were struck from the records of the past for
15:19thousands of years.
15:20Only the meticulous work of talented Egyptologists revealed that they had been victims of Damnasio Memoriae, a deletion campaign.
15:30Is this what Ramses II had tried to do?
15:34When we see these erased cartouches, we as Egyptologists, we ask ourselves, what is this?
15:40Is it a kind of Damnasio Memoriae, some kind of ancient cancel culture?
15:46Had the pharaoh of this statue become illegitimate in the eyes of Ramses II, was that why he appropriated his
15:52monument?
15:54Holding a magnifying glass to these statues helped the investigation to advance.
15:59Even though the name had been lost, other clues indicated the original identity of the pharaoh depicted.
16:07Five of them have the name of Ramses II.
16:12But if we are looking at the sixth statue, we discover a different one.
16:18And it's the name of Amenhotep III.
16:22Amenhotep III was one of the great pharaohs of ancient Egypt.
16:25He reigned 70 years before Ramses II.
16:29He was known for his military victories, his immense constructions, his revolutionary art, and as being the father of the
16:37famous Akhenaten.
16:40Amenhotep III was Egypt's dazzling sun king.
16:44He led Egypt in a time period of incredible prosperity.
16:49Egypt's international empire is almost at its height.
16:53Egypt is at the wealthiest that it's ever been.
16:56In addition, he is also a very long-lived pharaoh.
17:03It was originally assumed that the reason that Ramses was putting his name on all of these monuments was that
17:09he was trying to erase the reign of Amenhotep III and claim credit for what Amenhotep III had done.
17:17But this is not the whole story.
17:21Because when you go further into the temple, the name of Amenhotep III is found everywhere.
17:32His name even remains outside the temple.
17:35There's no attempt to remove it or to disguise it or to insert Ramses' name over the top in those
17:41places.
17:43And that goes true for other monuments of Amenhotep III.
17:47So although Ramses was choosing to usurp some of them, he left most of Amenhotep III's monuments alone.
17:55And this doesn't sound like an act where what we might call a damnation memore.
17:59This was not what Ramses was doing.
18:04Far from being a thief, Ramses II had usurped the statues of Amenhotep III because he was his role model,
18:11a tutelary figure that he revered.
18:15He was a great pharaoh.
18:17So by aligning himself with Amenhotep III, Ramses is sort of saying,
18:23we are an unbroken line, we are legitimate, this is the greatness of Egypt.
18:29Look, I am exactly the same as this other magnificent pharaoh.
18:34He was also a king who had elevated himself to the status of a living god on earth.
18:41And these were all goals of Ramses II's own kingship.
18:49Ramses finished the construction of the temple initiated by Amenhotep III.
18:53He enlarged it by building this extension at the front of the temple.
18:58Consequently, when you arrive before the edifice, you have the impression of entering a Ramses II monument.
19:06The Luxor Temple is a very particular sanctuary.
19:10It is the Temple of Amun, the king of the gods.
19:15This is a place where every pharaoh has to leave his mark.
19:19And so it's no wonder that Ramses went exactly here to build,
19:24but also to take over older monuments, to leave his mark,
19:29to show that he is the king and that he is closely connected to this god
19:35that is so important for ancient Egypt and for the king.
19:38Other pharaohs also placed their cartouches on the Temple of Amenhotep III,
19:42the most famous being his grandson, the child king Tutankhamun.
19:48But Amenhotep III was not the only monarch usurped by Ramses II.
19:59There is this series of usurpation, but you can't always usurp that way.
20:05There are other ways of doing it.
20:07And you can see this in the city of Tannis.
20:12Situated in the Nile Delta, Tannis is definitely one of the places in ancient Egypt
20:17where Ramses II is most represented.
20:20The ruins of this ancient temple carry all the signs of the legendary pharaoh.
20:25So much so that for a long time, many Egyptologists thought that this was the site
20:30where Ramses II's lost capital stood.
20:33Paramesis.
20:34We know from the Bible in the book of Exodus that there was a city called the city of Ramses.
20:42And this was one of the major objectives of archaeologists was to discover this lost city of Ramses.
20:52It wasn't until the 1930s and the work of the Egyptian archaeologist Mahmud Hamza that it was understood that the
21:00vestiges did indeed come from the capital of Ramses II,
21:03but that this city was in fact situated 30 kilometers further south, close to the present-day village of Kantir.
21:10They were found at Tannis because Parameses had been dismantled a century after his reign.
21:19At a certain point in the life of Parameses, after the Ramses II's time,
21:25the branch of the river Nile that it was built on came to silt up and it became unviable.
21:32It became landlocked and therefore it was not easy to get to or to leave from and therefore the city
21:39had to be abandoned.
21:41A century after the reign of Ramses II, Egypt was cut in two with the priests of Amun reigning in
21:47the south of the kingdom
21:48and the kings of the delta in the north.
21:51These were foreign pharaohs originating from Libya.
21:54Rather than restoring Parameses, abandoned by the waters and its population, they came up with another idea.
22:01Since the work of opening up access routes to the city would have been immense,
22:05the decision was taken to move all the monuments a little higher up, which resulted in the city of Tannis.
22:13And that is why Ramses II is present all over a site which he in fact never frequented.
22:21But certain statues from Parameses discovered in Tannis drew the attention of Egyptologists.
22:28Extensive analysis of them revealed that these two had been usurped by Ramses II.
22:34When you look at the inscriptions, there are hints that maybe an earlier name was there and had been erased,
22:41but there are no actual traces of an earlier name.
22:45So how do we determine? Well, we can look at the faces.
22:52If you have a look at the face, that is totally different from Ramses II.
22:58You can see lots of small scars, stigmatas which showed that this head wasn't originally that of Ramses.
23:05So you try and guess who it was before.
23:08For decades, Egyptologists tried to uncover the secret of the identity of these Sphinxes.
23:14The alterations had been carried out by sculptors with exceptional know-how.
23:21Meticulous work using techniques which were rudimentary, but astonishing.
23:27This was done by Virtuosi. Here you see the traces of modification.
23:31Here, around the ear, it's been transformed. You can tell it's been polished here, but not there.
23:37The shape of the Nemes, the emblematic headwear of pharaohs, the beard, the mouth, the almond-shaped eyes with thick
23:45eyelids,
23:46the marked curve of the eyebrows and the severe expression bore no resemblance to the sculptures of Ramses II.
23:53The curve of the cheeks was the main element which gave the game away and revealed the origin of these
23:58Sphinxes.
24:02Most of them are actually much, much older than Ramses II.
24:06Most of them are coming from the so-called Middle Kingdom five, six hundred years before Ramses II.
24:15This period was seen as a kind of classic period.
24:17A classic period of arts, literature and great kings.
24:21These were the kings of an idealized past.
24:24In a way, it was their own romanticized Middle Ages, the Golden Age.
24:28They were well beyond living memory and they were in the distant, remote past who nobody could remember.
24:36They were almost like legends.
24:41Amenemhat III was the one Ramses II usurped the most in Paramesis.
24:47But he wasn't the only one.
24:49A whole gallery of other great pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom was identified thanks to the facial features of the
24:55sculptures.
24:56The Ramses was collecting ancestral statues of a number of kings of this glorious era of his past.
25:07But if the great pharaoh wished to mark his affinity with them, as was the case with Amenhotep III, why
25:13remove the names of his predecessors?
25:16An idea began to take shape in the minds of the specialists.
25:20Was Ramses II a megalomaniac to the point of making other pharaohs disappear?
25:25If a modern US president were to remove the head of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln from a memorial monument
25:34in Washington DC and rename it for themselves, well this would be considered outrageous.
25:39But the Egyptians had a very different attitude to this kind of thing.
25:44Not only was it considered acceptable for Ramses to do this, it even gave Ramses a kind of sense of
25:52historical honor in that he would acquire some of the prestige of these great rulers of the past.
25:59In this way he was acquiring their glory.
26:03Particularly because at the time of Ramses II, the monuments of the Middle Kingdom were in ruins and in no
26:10way reflected the glorious past of pharaonic civilization.
26:14To restore the image of this legendary period, the celebrated pharaoh gave these statues a second life by recycling them
26:21in his new and flamboyant capital of Pyramaces.
26:26Rather than have a half destroyed temple buried under the sand, he used all these blocks laden with prestige to
26:32construct a new building.
26:34And reused the statues which no longer served any real purpose, but had genuine prestige.
26:41They were very ancient, beautiful and impressive.
26:50Taking their investigations even further in the south of Egypt, in Luxor, Egyptologists realized that Ramses II had not only
26:58usurped monuments of his role model, Amenhotep III, or statues of legendary pharaohs of the bygone Middle Kingdom.
27:06He had also attacked monuments of people much closer to him, and for very different reasons.
27:17On the other side of the Temple of Amun stands an unequaled ancient wonder which transports visitors into the immensity
27:25of the glorious ancient civilization.
27:28A complex of temples dedicated to the god Amun-Ra, Karnak.
27:36Temple of Karnak is the biggest preserved temple from ancient Egypt.
27:41It's absolutely huge.
27:44It's several times St. Peter's in Rome.
27:47It's much, much larger.
27:49As you enter the temple of Karnak, everywhere you look are these gigantic monuments.
27:57You go through the pylon gateways, they're almost like artificial mountains.
28:02Huge courtyards, you see colossal statues and soaring obelisks, some of them that are 95 feet tall.
28:11Everything is gigantic.
28:13Then, going through the gateway, you arrive in what is called the Hypostyle Hall.
28:17This immense space with dozens and dozens of columns.
28:21A forest of columns which is even larger than Notre Dame of Paris.
28:25It's gigantic.
28:27The Hypostyle Hall.
28:29This is undoubtedly the vastest sacred place of all ancient Egypt.
28:355,000 square meters.
28:37The size of a football pitch.
28:41134 columns, of which the tallest are 21 meters in height.
28:45Like seven-story buildings.
28:48A colossal space, every millimeter of the surface of which was intricately decorated by the ancient Egyptians.
28:56It's incredible state of preservation means that this unique and grandiose place is an unrivaled open book about the Pharaonic
29:05civilization.
29:05In many places, everywhere you turn, in fact, are cartouches and inscriptions and wall carvings and scenes that represent Ramses
29:16II.
29:17Many, many pharaohs left their mark there.
29:21But no one left his mark like Ramses II.
29:24Where Ramses II's name is absolutely everywhere.
29:29The presence of Ramses II is so overpowering in this forest of gigantic columns that for many years, Egyptologists thought
29:37that it was at the origin of its construction.
29:41But detailed analysis of the cartouches revealed traces of unusual scraping work.
29:48And once again, uncovered usurpation by the famous pharaoh.
29:54In parts of the central nave, especially on top of the roof and along some of the rows of columns,
30:02we can see that, in fact, the inscriptions had been carved twice.
30:10But how to trace the name on the original cartouches?
30:14By what means could Egyptologists discover the identity of the pharaoh who had commissioned the building of the Hypostyle Hall?
30:23It depends on the method of carving that the original sculptors used.
30:30And it also depends on how good or bad the guys that usurped it did their work.
30:36And there are two different types of relief.
30:39There is raised relief, where the decoration appears to raise out of the wall.
30:42And there is sunk relief, where the decoration appears to sink into the wall.
30:47It's extremely difficult, not to say impossible, when the cartouche was in relief because nothing remains.
30:54This is an ideal situation if you want to hide a usurpation.
30:59Replacing a cartouche isn't that complicated.
31:02You just need to remove two or three millimeters of stone and then put a new name on the cartouche,
31:07which is consequently slightly concave because you're obliged to remove some of the stone.
31:12Or you can write the new name in relief in the hollow, meaning the relief isn't part of the surface
31:16but hollowed out.
31:17But the task is much more complex when the original cartouche was already in sunken relief.
31:23What to do when there's no more material?
31:25How did the ancient Egyptians go about it?
31:29If it sunk relief, because you have to cut into the wall to remove that name,
31:36and then they would fill it with plaster and then try to carve into the plaster in order to make
31:41it appear beautiful and level with everything that's around it.
31:45Plaster.
31:47It was by using an ingenious mixture of stone and plaster that Ramses II's sculptors managed to cover the name
31:54of the original pharaoh who created the Hypostyle Hall.
31:58These inscriptions are 33 centuries old, so after more than 3,000 years, the plaster has fallen away, which is
32:07fortunate for us, at least for me as an Egyptologist that wants to see what was going on.
32:13It's not so fortunate for Ramses II because now we can see what he was up to.
32:18This was how Egyptologists discovered the identity of the pharaoh who Ramses II usurped.
32:25This man was none other than his predecessor, a man very close to him.
32:31It now appears that, in fact, the entire building was actually constructed by Seti I.
32:38It's Seti I, the father of Ramses II.
32:43The news sent shockwaves through the world of Egyptology.
32:47The great Ramses II had dared to erase the name of his father in his most monumental construction.
32:55So the question is, what is really happening here? Why did he erase the name of his father on this
33:03building?
33:03So why would he do this?
33:06In order to understand the special relationship Ramses II had with his father, we need to go to one of
33:12the most beautiful and best preserved temples of ancient Egypt, the mortuary temple of Seti I in Abidus.
33:18The Abidus temple is particularly interesting because it raises a lot of questions about the succession between Seti I and
33:27Ramses II.
33:29When Seti I died, to everyone's surprise, after a reign of 12 years in 1279 BCE, his son succeeded him
33:37on the throne of Egypt.
33:40Ramses II was about 25 years old.
33:43He didn't only inherit a powerful kingdom, but also the unfinished projects which his father left.
33:50When the father of Ramses, Seti I, died, most of his temples had not been completed.
33:55He expected his child to finish what he had started.
33:59And indeed, that's exactly what happened.
34:02But as he had done with others, Ramses II effaced the cartouche of his father and replaced it with his
34:09own, and in several parts of the temple.
34:12A huge amount of work by Egyptologists was needed to discover the ruse, and to realize the intricacy of the
34:19work carried out by the legendary pharaoh sculptors.
34:23He tries to shave into it, and then put his own name over top.
34:29In operating this way, Ramses II could not have imagined that a lintel in the main hall of the temple
34:35in Abidus would find itself at the heart of the strangest theories concerning pharaonic civilization.
34:45An unfathomable mystery forever associated with ancient Egypt.
34:51He put plaster on it.
34:53He put plaster on it. Nowadays, the plaster is gone. There's two inscriptions, and some signs that suddenly look weird.
35:02There are a number of visible motifs, which from a distance look a bit like a helicopter or a flying
35:08saucer, or other strange things.
35:09And next to them are various objects that have been interpreted as everything from Luke Skywalker's land speeder from the
35:18first Star Wars movie, to a glider, and one object that is either an early jet fighter, or is a
35:26submarine, or a spaceship.
35:27And many people have said, this is proof that the ancient Egyptians came from outer space, that they had access
35:36to all kinds of flying machines, etc, etc.
35:39If you know your glyphs, if you look at it, you'll realize that there are two glyph sets superimposed.
35:47These two superimposed hieroglyphs are a perfect example of Ramses II's usurpation.
35:53The plaster has slowly crumbled over time, resulting in the appearance of these highly modern means of transport, which didn't
36:00exist in the pharaoh's time.
36:01Regrettable as it is, it seems that there were no aliens at the time of Seti I or Ramses II.
36:08But why did Ramses II usurp his own father in his mortuary temple?
36:15From today's viewpoint, this seems outrageous.
36:21And yet, the reason is less clear-cut and quite astonishing.
36:25We have to dismiss the idea that Ramses had a negative attitude, that he held some grudge against his late
36:32father, Seti.
36:34In fact, Ramses seemed to have been quite devoted to the memory of this father.
36:39Seti was an ambitious ruler, but he didn't live very long, and so many of his building projects were finished
36:45off by Ramses II.
36:47Ramses, as the good and loyal son that he is, takes up that job and tries to finish the decoration
36:54of the temple.
36:57There even seems to have been a lot of complicity between the two men.
37:01Throughout his reign, Seti I prepared his son Ramses to reign after him.
37:06And from the reliefs and inscriptions in the temple of Seti I and Abidas, we learn that he had been
37:14prepared by his father to become king.
37:17He had already been given titles.
37:20He had been introduced in an ideological way into the line of kings, introduced to the gods.
37:27A fresh interpretation appeared, that of a son faithful to his family, who celebrated the memory of his father by
37:33placing him in the ranks of the gods in the eyes of his people.
37:37Ramses is carving his name over his father's to create a greater connection to his father's memory.
37:43It should be seen, rather, as an homage, in fact. He put his own name inside that of his father.
37:48He's worshipping his father. He is celebrating his father.
37:51Not about Ramses II trying to disguise the fact that any other pharaoh has existed.
37:58If anything, it's the reverse. He wants to emphasize greatness of his predecessors and to make himself part of this
38:05long line.
38:06By way of proof, look at the stretch of wall at Abidas.
38:11It's one of the most important testaments and historic landmarks in the history of Egyptology.
38:17The Abidas king list.
38:18And you can see there's an image of Seti with the baby, where young Ramses next to him, holding the
38:24scroll of papyrus,
38:26where they're reading off the names of all of these kings that are their predecessors.
38:31To associate yourself with these glorious figures in the past lent a sense of historical continuity,
38:40but also lent some of their glory to yourself. And I think this is what Ramses was trying to do.
38:47Because Ramses II had every reason in the world to act in this way.
38:51The first being an extremely important rule of succession in ancient Egypt.
38:56It was not of royal blood.
39:02As a child, he was destined to become an extremely important figure in the Egyptian state, but not a pharaoh.
39:10How did Ramses the Great arrive on the throne of Egypt?
39:16What rivals did he need to face to reach such a position?
39:20When Ramses takes the throne, Egypt is under a great deal of stress.
39:27Ramses II came from a military family originating in the Nile Delta.
39:32Fifty years before his birth, the pharaoh Akhenaten had led the country in a bad direction and offended the gods.
39:42Following the reign of Akhenaten, there were a series of kings who ruled for only a brief amount of time.
39:50Tarankamun takes the throne, but he only rules for ten years.
39:54But he died young and childless.
39:56And the only living member of the royal family of the 18th dynasty was Ai, who succeeded him.
40:03But he had no children either.
40:06This series of deaths without an heir deeply destabilized royal power.
40:12After Ai, no descendant of Amenhotep III was still living.
40:17To keep the kingdom afloat, a man who had already proved himself on the battlefield was chosen.
40:24Horemheb.
40:25He's an army general. He's not at all royal. He has no relationship to the royal family.
40:31This is a very strong man. He serves as the prime minister, what we call the vizier of Egypt.
40:37The future Ramses II was born during the reign of this new king chosen by default.
40:43The military pharaoh re-established order in the kingdom of Egypt after Akhenaten's chaotic reign.
40:50But misfortune knocked at his door as well.
40:55He didn't have a son that was fit to rule. Maybe he didn't have any son at all.
41:00There's at least none in the records.
41:02And he needed to see how and to whom he can pass on Egypt and kingship.
41:11Horemheb's greatest worry is that once you have a third king who is appointed to the throne,
41:17there's a danger that the principle of inherited kingship will break down.
41:22And that especially if the next king also dies without an heir,
41:27that this will cause a domestic crisis that could lead even to civil war.
41:40Horemheb needed to be sure that his successor had a family ready to create a new dynasty of kings.
41:46which could successfully pass the throne from father to son.
41:53And happily for the future of Egypt, he had someone in mind.
41:58He chose an old officer from his army, someone who also was a vizier, so the kind of prime minister
42:09in ancient Egypt.
42:10But he has also been groomed to be one of the senior administrators of Egypt.
42:16He is a man named Paramesu.
42:19When he mounted the throne upon the death of Hormed,
42:22Paramesu chose his pharaoh's name and it was one which would mark the history of the world, Ramses I.
42:28Egypt is lucky because Ramses happens to have a son.
42:34So at last we have an individual who stepped into power who already has an heir and that's Seti.
42:41And Seti is the father of Ramses II.
42:47Ramses I founded the 19th Egyptian dynasty and hoped to give back to the land of Egypt the gloried had
42:54known
42:54during the golden age of the great Amemhotep III, the pharaoh who Ramses' family regarded as the supreme model.
43:03Although not of royal blood, he counted on his son and grandson to create a new lineage of worthy pharaohs
43:10for this age-old land of innumerable riches.
43:13Because for the Ramses, it was a family affair.
43:17One temple illustrates this perfectly.
43:20When we leave Karnak and travel to the west bank of Thebes, we find the temple of Ghorna that Seti
43:28I had built for his own cult,
43:31but also for the cult of his father Ramses I, who did not live long enough to build his own
43:38cult temple.
43:40When Ramses I took the throne of Egypt, he was already aging.
43:45He died after a reign of just one and a half years without having the time to accomplish what he
43:50had begun.
43:52His successor, his son Seti I, began the construction of places of worship to honor the memory of his father.
44:00But Seti died after a reign of 12 years, leaving this precious heritage to the young Ramses II,
44:06along with the delicate mission of continuing the work of his elders.
44:09And as usual, Ramses made the most of it.
44:13This is great.
44:16To living God.
44:17Here I come.
44:18This is great.
44:19To living God.
44:21To living God.
44:22Strangely enough, Seti I is not the only family member that Ramses II usurps.
44:29He also targets some of the inscriptions of his own grandfather, Ramses I.
44:35To living God.
44:35To living God.
44:37To living God.
44:37At the very beginning of this reign, Ramses II finished the decoration of part of the Temple of Gorna.
44:43And notably, the entrance to this chapel, where he honored his grandfather, Ramses I.
44:50A sacred place.
44:52We can see probably a little bit the human behind Ramses.
44:57And for sure, it's not the face of a megalomaniac in this moment.
45:01But it's the face of someone who probably really liked and venerated his family.
45:08It's here in the cult chambers of his grandfather that we see Ramses II paying homage to the cult images
45:18of his father, Seti I, and his grandfather worshiping them as gods.
45:29So by making a major contribution to it, Ramses II is emphasizing his dynasty and his own legitimacy and power
45:40to rule.
45:41And he very much needed to.
45:44Because when he arrived on the throne of Egypt, Ramses II had many enemies.
45:49The elite doubted his capacity to govern the kingdom.
45:55Unlike Ramses I and Seti I, who were well established and had a long track record as high officials during
46:03the reign of Horemheb,
46:05Ramses II was still a very untested young man who people could ask, well, is this guy really up to
46:14the jaw?
46:16In this context, Ramses II needed to reassure everybody and establish his authority.
46:22He needed to bring stability immediately because Egypt was in danger.
46:27He needs to create a sense that Egypt is now at peace, that everyone can relax, that the government is
46:35taken care of, that religion is taken care of.
46:37That's the message that Egyptians really need, because Egyptians are used to things working like clockwork.
46:48He needed to be a good politician to make his reign successful, and he succeeded.
46:54And so by doing all of these things, Ramses is promoting to his people, Maat is back.
47:03We are no longer in a period of chaos, we are in a period of stability.
47:13To demonstrate this, he proved his valour in combat by leading three great battles against the enemies of Egypt.
47:19He brought wealth to the country through his expeditions to Nubia, from which he extracted gold,
47:24and he built vast monuments the likes of which had never been seen.
47:30And more than anyone else, he had his name and his face engraved in all the stones of the kingdom.
47:36He became a symbol, a legend, a living god.
47:43And if there are so many representations of Ramses II, it's thanks to the royal jubilees of the second half
47:49of his long reign.
47:53These great traditional festivals started after 30 years of his reign, to honour the pharaoh.
48:00It's tempting to compare it to a political campaign, but the king wasn't elected, the king was just there and
48:06was legitimate.
48:06He was God sent, so it was more a ceremony intended to renew his energy,
48:11and help him to continue his role of bringing order to the world.
48:17And this is something, these celebrations that Ramses II did like no other ruler before him or after him.
48:26Ramses II lived to the age of 90.
48:30A reign of more than 66 years, to the point that the most famous pharaoh in history didn't celebrate with
48:36just one jubilee.
48:39He had 14 of them, more than any other pharaoh in the history of Egypt.
48:46At the times of Ramses II, the people didn't have modern media.
48:50It wasn't possible to just quickly put your name everywhere.
48:53He just had lots of statues in very prominent places outside of temples where people would see them, erected or
49:01basically usurped.
49:02Because people, even if they weren't literate, would probably be able to recognise the same cartouche repeated endlessly.
49:10All the people that could read, could read his name, and even those who could not read would nevertheless realise
49:17by facial features,
49:19if it was statues really by Ramses II, that everything here was about Ramses II.
49:26Ramses II was a wise politician who already understood the value of an image in establishing power.
49:33All these depictions of him justify a very modern nickname.
49:37Ramses II was certainly king of communications, of propaganda, and very much someone who curated his history for the good
49:47of himself and the good of the country.
49:54Ramses II would have made people like Donald Trump or any other ruler look like an amateur if he had
50:01had a cell phone,
50:02because he knew how to manipulate and he knew his propaganda.
50:08If Ramses had lived now, he would have been king of X.
50:12This is the portrait of Ramses II, a man who took the power which was given him and who accomplished
50:18the missions which his forefathers left him.
50:21This wasn't all about his ego or his megalomania. This was a normal part of the office of kingship and
50:30filling his role as king.
50:32The king was at the centre of the universe. It was just a bit excessive to us in how much
50:39he was doing in it.
50:40But he had also reigned so much longer than other kings. Very few Egyptians by the end of his reign
50:47could remember any other pharaoh.
50:49But also that of an able politician who was able to use the prestige of his father and grandfather to
50:59legitimize his own kingship,
51:01to stay in power and to become even more powerful.
51:07Ramses II was the greatest of usurpers. But he never sought to deliberately erase the existence of his predecessors.
51:16On the contrary, he helped perpetuate their greatness by choosing them as models.
51:23With his vast ambition, by presenting himself as equal to the gods, he helped rejuvenate the strength of Egypt.
51:32A unique pharaoh who did all he could in his own lifetime to make his mark on earth.
51:40Father to a hundred children, an ingenious builder and a king of communication.
51:46Ramses II did everything to become immortal in the history of humankind.
51:51A magical whimsy 520s
51:52The Magnifique
51:52In essence, a release.