Rameses II., or Rameses the Great
What a marvel is the simple fact that Rameses is here before us in full view after all these centuries. Here is the form of a dead king photographed three thousand years after his death. The writer, in the spring of 1887, in Bûlâk Museum, in Cairo, saw this mummy and looked for a long time on the features here photographed. In 1881, near Thebes, in Upper Egypt, a wonderful collection of royal mummies was found. These mummies represent four ancient dynasties, covering a perîod of four hundred years. It was during their time that the Israelites were oppressed in Egypt and were delivered by Moses. The bodies of these kings were identified beyond doubt, and the most important of them is that of Rameses II., or Rameses the Great—the most powerful of all the Pharaohs. He was the third king of the nineteenth dynasty, surpassed by none of the ancient kings of Egypt unless it be by Thothmes III. “the Alexander the Great of Egyptian history,” who lived one hundred and fifty or two hundred years before Rameses the Great. The father of Rameses II. was Seti I. His body is also in Cairo. Rameses II. was a great warrior, the builder of the “treasure cities” on which the Israelites worked (Exodus 1:2), “the new king who knew not Joseph.” He built temples, obelisks and cities. He was great, but egotistical and vain. He erased his father’s name from many monuments that his own might be placed there. He vaunted himself as a god. He introduced polygamy into Egypt. He was brave, but boasted excessively of his bravery. With it all he was a selfish tyrant. Look at him.
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