Bolton AES Lecture - Ramesses II in the North - the Great Pharaoh and Where to Find Him
20th January 2026 - 7.30 pm
Speaker:
Ian Trumble - Bolton AES Chairman and Curator of Archaeology, Bolton Museum
Sadly, our scheduled speaker – Penny Wilson – was not available this month, so our Chairman, Ian, stepped in to give us a talk on the famous pharaoh, Ramesses II of the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt.
Ian took us through where Ramesses II came from, why he was and still is considered one of the greatest pharaohs and ending with some examples of where you can find Ramesses-related material in the museums of northern England. It’s a huge subject and this doesn’t do justice to Ian’s excellent lecture but here is a summary:
Origins
At the end of the Armarna period, Tutankhamun (son of the ‘heretical’, monotheistic Akhenaten) died without an heir. The position of pharaoh was filled by a succession of rulers, without heirs until General Horemheb (pharaoh between 1319 and 1292BC) made Ramesses I (fka Paramessa. Ra mes = son of the sun god) his heir. Conveniently, Ramasses I already had a set of sons and grandsons and so, with him, what we now call the 19th Dynasty was founded.
Seti I took over from his father Ramesses I. He started to re-establish Egyptian power in the region and also reconnect himself as Pharaoh, to the early New Kingdom (i.e. before the Armarna period). His son Ramesses II continued this work and he put one of his 100 to 150 children, Khaemwaset, in charge of historic buildings. With already having 2,000 years of Egyptian history to look back on (this was in ~1,500 BC!) Khaemwaset was fascinated by his predecessors and the things that they had built. He was possibly the world’s first archaeologist.
Building a legacy
Khaemwaset had many new temples built and old ones restored and, as he did this, he inserted his family and especially his father’s name into the history of Egypt. Ramesses II was one of the first names deciphered by the early decoders of hieroglyphs and this was because his son had had it carved all over Ancient Egypt. This is one the reasons that Ramesses II ‘the Great’ is so well known today.
The other reason is partly that he his known for being a great warrior king. Again, Khaemwaset made sure that his building works included lots of scenes of his father smiting his enemies: chiefly the Hittites. A few generations earlier, in the 18th Dynasty, Thutmose III (most definitely a great military strategist) had expanded the Egyptian empire into the Levant in the north. Ramesses II fought the Hittites over this region and managed basically to maintain Egypt’s old territories by avoiding defeats (not exactly victories at cities like Kadesh) and through treaties with the Hittites (and he married a Hittite princess). So how great a warrior king Ramesses II was, is perhaps debatable.
However, thanks largely to his son Khaemwaset, Ramesses II was immortalised in so much Ancient Egyptian art and in its buildings. Fragments of these have found their way to the north of England and Ian gave us seven examples (of many) that are worth seeing:
Ramesses up North
- World Museum of Liverpool. Wall relief carving of Tutankhamun, name partially replaced by that of General Horemheb in the ‘erasing’ of the Armarna period.
- Bolton Museum. The mummy of the unknown man in the replica tomb of Thutmose III. Physically he is very similar to Ramesses II and his mummification is of royal quality. It is thought very likely (bearing in mind how big his family was) that he was a relative of Ramesses II.
- World Museum of Liverpool. The base of a statue of Ramesses II in which he is depicted standing on the nine enemies of Egypt (all named).
- Durham Oriental Museum. Statue of the Visier Paser. Paser looked after the day to day running of Egypt under Ramesses II.
- World Museum of Liverpool. Sarcophagus of Bakenkhonsu. Bakenkhonsu was the overseer of works under Ramesses II. He may have worked with Khaemwaset or possibly took over after him. Either way, he was also probably largely responsible for Ramesses II’s enduring legacy.
- Bolton and Manchester Museums. Temple columns reused by Ramasses II (or maybe that was Khaemwaset). Fantastic, carved, red-granite columns from the temple Herishef at Herakleopolis Magna. They include deeply-carved cartouches of Ramesses II and also son, Merenptah – added in a hurry. They were already 1,000 years old when Ramesses II reused them!
- World Museum of Liverpool. Sculpture of Ramesses II donated by the Egypt Exploration Fund and Amelia Edwards (the EES founder) on a visit to Liverpool in 1889.
About the speaker
As well as being Chairman of the Bolton Archaeology and Egyptology Society, Ian is the Curator of Archaeology, Egyptology and World Culture at Bolton Museum.
Ian curates the largest Ancient Egyptological collection in any UK, local authority museum.
Interested in coming along to a lecture?
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