Objects of Splendor
Today my husband and I drove into San Francisco to see the Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs exhibit at the de Young. It’s fun to live near enough to the Bay Area to do that sort of thing. The objects, from giant to tiny, presented a magnificent display.
We enjoyed looking up close and personal at a range of large stone sculptures, sarcophagi, weapons, jewelry, and other gold and colorful stone objects. Overall, it gave a vivid sense of what objects the topmost Egyptians would have surrounded themselves with, especially as they prepared for death.
Curating the Ramses Exhibit
The curators did a good job of giving the background context to Ramses in vivid ways that held people’s attention. There were short videos, wall size 3D depictions of surrounding spaces, among other formats.
The curators had to fudge somewhat on the actual items shown because as they dramatically noted, tomb raiders and flash floods stripped bare Ramses II’s burial place. So they included items from other tombs and finds that reflected the sort of grandeur and beauty likely among his actual tomb treasure. They did dramatize the 1881 find of Ramses’ mummy among a large cache of mummies that Egyptian priests had moved and stored to protect them from pillaging. Nonetheless, Ramses’ mummy wasn’t included in the exhibit. This show focuses on beautiful objects.
Glimpse of an Artisan at Ramses Exhibit
One of my favorite items was the wooden sarcophagus of one of the artisans of Deir el-Medina. He was a highly skilled painter for the royal tombs. As such, he certainly did up his own gorgeous “box.” It was a fine way to show off Egyptian artistry. It also gave a glimpse into the life of a non-elite but well-off person. I would have enjoyed more peeks at everyday life, even if the items were less glamorous. To bring in the crowds, I suppose they needed Ramses’ marquee name and that enticing “Gold of Pharaohs.” The museum website has an article about this piece.
Telling the Story of Ramses’ Life
The curators gave Ramses a full blown, unambiguously positive, heroic portrayal. When celebrating his giant building projects, they showed laborers cheerfully chipping away at stone and never mentioned the human costs and nuances of ancient slave labor.
When portraying Ramses’ life and deeds, they skirted around the issue of distortions in the way the walls of Ramses’ many temples and other buildings portray events. The exhibit failed to address in a direct way the intentional propaganda that such displays intended. It’s not a demerit of the artwork or of Ramses. He wanted to put out his own good press release, Egyptian style. That’s fascinating and would have increased the viewers’ interaction with Ramses’ life story.
Ramses Smites his Enemies
First, take those iconic relief poses of giant Ramses with a weapon raised above the heads of tiny, bound enemies he is about to smite single-handedly. The background info could have mentioned that this is a traditional artistic style. Similar reliefs depict other pharaohs the same way. So, it’s a standard “glowing” way to show pharaohs dealing with enemies of Egypt, whether or not said pharaoh had an illustrious history of smiting them or not. Also, pharaohs did not go into battle single-handedly and do all the killing as you would assume by taking Ramses’ walls literally. Perhaps all this is obvious and didn’t need mentioning, but I’m guessing attendees would have enjoyed such context. It would also have reduced the overly done “Ramses was the best pharaoh ever” narrative that felt a bit more hype than history.
Winning the Battle, or not
Second there’s the question of who “won” the Battle of Kadesh. That battle, between the Egyptians under Ramses II and the Hittites under Muwatalli II, took place in 1274 BCE outside the city of Kadesh near the modern Lebanon-Syria border. Both empires suffered such great losses of men that they worked very hard to avoid further conflict going forward. Neither empire could afford a second try. So you could argue there was no victor at Kadesh. There’s a good deal of truth there.
However, in the aftermath, the Hittites controlled more lands that had been under Egyptian control in the years immediately preceding the battle. If you measure war victories by who won the most territory, historians would give this one to the Hittites.
Ramses’ Version vs Hittites’
Therefore, when Ramses boasted on his many temple walls about his smashing victory, wise viewers take this tale with a grain of salt. As far as I can tell from all the sources measured against each other, the battle went back and forth. It’s a great story of trickery, ambush, courage, and comeback. It’s way less “Go Egypt” than Ramses claims, although Ramses acquitted himself with honor in actual combat. Not bad for the head of state.
It’d be great to hear the Hittite version of the battle. However, the Hittites did not paint or carve their own version on any walls, nor did they write one. In fairness, the exhibit curators did in one video have a sentence saying the Hittites didn’t consider it a big Egyptian victory. They do say that after this conflict Ramses and the Hittites signed the first recorded peace treaty in history.
Hittite Historical Fiction
This episode in Egyptian-Hittite relations is central to the lives of my two historical fiction main characters, Hattu and Tesha, based on the Hittite King Hattusili and Queen Puduhepa. Hattusili fought on that battlefield as one of his older brother’s generals, probably his most trusted one. Puduhepa and Hattusili negotiated and sealed the peace treaty. Puduhepa’s extant cuneiform letters reveal her skill and toughness as a negotiator and ruler.
As a writer of fiction, I love the conflicts and nuances of character. Flawless, totally heroic characters are boring. So perhaps I’m faulting the exhibit in this way unfairly, although I emphasize I loved the exhibit overall. But it seems like hyping Ramses in an unambiguously grand light without any nuance about the politics of his reign seemed like a missed opportunity. I don’t think it would have turned off the general public. I suspect exhibit attendees would have found it engaging to weigh the realities of Ramses’ rule for themselves.
Further Reading
If you’d enjoy reading more about Ramses and his tendency toward propaganda, you can read my post, “Propaganda and Reality: Hittites vs Pharaoh Ramesses.”