To start our season of talks we welcome back Egyptologist Claire Ollett who will be talking about the Monuments of Seti I at Thebes.

A change of dynasty in Egypt usually took place amid some internal crisis and the transition from the Eighteenth to the Nineteenth Dynasty was no exception. The Amarna Period had caused political, religious and social upheaval and the old dynasty was dying out because the last king in the royal bloodline, Tutankhamen, had no heir. When he died there followed a sequence of three appointments as king that were highly unusual: Ay, Horemheb and Ramesses I. In Egyptian thought the ideal scenario, the one which would maintain maat, was for a son to inherit his father’s office. Following this sequence of kings who died without an heir, Seti I ascended to the throne after the death of his father Ramesses I, the first king to inherit the office since Tutankhamen. Due to the short reign of Ramesses I, it essentially fell to Seti I to establish his own legitimacy and that of the dynasty.

At the time of Seti’s accession, the monumental landscape at Thebes had already been modified to varying degrees by a succession of kings, each shaping the landscape to facilitate their own personal agenda. Through examining Seti I’s activity in the sacred and monumental landscape of Thebes the architectural context, iconographic programme and textual composition of the monuments can tell us much about the meaning and functionality of the monuments and we can seek to elucidate how Seti I went about establishing this legitimacy.