Rameses II.
From BibleWiki
Rameses II., the son of Seti I., is probably the Pharaoh of the Oppression. During his forty years' residence at the court of Egypt, Moses must have known this ruler well. During his sojourn in Midian, however, Rameses died, after a reign of sixty-seven years, and his body embalmed and laid in the royal sepulchre in the Valley of the Tombs of Kings beside that of his father. Like the other mummies found hidden in the cave of Deir el-Bahari, it had been for some reason removed from its original tomb, and probably carried from place to place till finally deposited in the cave where it was so recently discovered.In 1886, the mummy of this king, the "great Rameses," the "Sesostris" of the Greeks, was unwound, and showed the body of what must have been a robust old man. The features revealed to view are thus described by Maspero: "The head is long and small in proportion to the body. The top of the skull is quite bare. On the temple there are a few sparse hairs, but at the poll the hair is quite thick, forming smooth, straight locks about two inches in length. White at the time of death, they have been dyed a light yellow by the spices used in embalmment. The forehead is low and narrow; the brow-ridge prominent; the eye-brows are thick and white; the eyes are small and close together; the nose is long, thin, arched like the noses of the Bourbons; the temples are sunk; the cheek-bones very prominent; the ears round, standing far out from the head, and pierced, like those of a woman, for the wearing of earrings; the jaw-bone is massive and strong; the chin very prominent; the mouth small, but thick-lipped; the teeth worn and very brittle, but white and well preserved. The moustache and beard are thin. They seem to have been kept shaven during life, but were probably allowed to grow during the king's last illness, or they may have grown after death. The hairs are white, like those of the head and eyebrows, but are harsh and bristly, and a tenth of an inch in length. The skin is of an earthy-brown, streaked with black. Finally, it may be said, the face of the mummy gives a fair idea of the face of the living king. The expression is unintellectual, perhaps slightly animal; but even under the somewhat grotesque disguise of mummification there is plainly to be seen an air of sovereign majesty, of resolve, and of pride."
Both on his father's and his mother's side it has been pretty clearly shown that Rameses had Chaldean or Mesopotamian blood in his veins to such a degree that he might be called an Assyrian. This fact is thought to throw light on Isa 52:4.
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Egyptian king; the founder of the city of Rameses and of Pithom (comp. Ex 1:11), who would, consequently, seem to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus. This king, the second of his name (Egyptian, Ra'mes-su; Ra'-mes-es), and the third ruler of the Egyptian dynasty, succeeded his father, Sethos I., in early youth and reigned for almost sixty-seven years. Concerning him, under the name Sesostris (possibly confounded with a king of the twelfth dynasty), the Greek writers tell stories of great conquests in Asia, Europe, and Africa; the monuments narrate, however, that he waged only one serious war, that with the Hittite empire, in Asia Minor and Syria, and that this long war, followed by a marriage with the daughter of the "great king of the Hittites," had no other result than to confirm him in the possession of his modest inheritance — Palestine and half of Phenicia. The frequent representations of the same few victories, especially that at Ḳadesh on the Orontes (celebrated also in a lengthy epic erroneously ascribed to Pentaur), seem to have given to later generations a false impression of Rameses' achievements. The king was quantitatively the greatest Egyptian builder, and the Ramesseum (called the tomb of Osymandyas by Diodorus, after the second, official name of Rameses II., User-ma' [t]n-rê'), with its colossal statues, the temples at Luxor, Abydos, Abu Simbel in Nubia, etc., belongs to the grandest constructions of ancient Egypt; many other monuments, however, were only usurped by this indefatigable builder. The colonization of Goshen and the digging of canals from the Nile to the Bitter Lakes (but hardly to the Red Sea!) formed another great monument of this Pharaoh. His sepulcher is in the valley of the royal tombs at Thebes; his mummy is in the museum of Cairo.
