After Ramesses II succeeded in defeating the invaders and capturing some of them, Sherden captives are depicted in this Pharaoh's bodyguard, where they are conspicuous by their helmets with horns with a ball projecting from the middle, their round shields and the great Naue II swords, with which they are depicted in inscriptions of the Battle with the Hittites at Kadesh.

The Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC was one of the defining points of Pharaoh Ramesses II's reign and is celebrated in bas-relief on his monuments.

In the famous narrative of the Battle of Kadesh, Ramesses II was said to have seen the enemy and " raged at them like Monthu, Lord of Thebes ".

On the Orontes was fought the Battle of Kadesh during the reign of Ramesses II ( 1279 – 1213 BC ).

Five years after Seti I's death, however, his son Ramesses II resumed hostilities and made a failed attempt to recapture Kadesh.

Kadesh was henceforth effectively held by the Hittites even though Ramesses temporarily occupied the city in his 8th year.

Redating the reign of Ramesses II to three centuries later than that given by the conventional chronology would not only reposition the date of the Battle of Kadesh and revise the linked chronology of Hittite history, it would also require a revision of the chronology of Assyrian history prior to 911 BC.

Records or possible records of sea peoples generally or in particular date to two campaigns of Ramesses II, a pharaoh of the militant 19th Dynasty: operations in or near the delta in Year 2 of his reign and the major confrontation with the Hittite Empire and allies at the Battle of Kadesh in his Year 5.

The Sherden prisoners were subsequently incorporated into the Egyptian army for service on the Hittite frontier by Ramesses, and were involved as Egyptian soldiers in the Battle of Kadesh.

The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II in the 13th century BC, as a lasting monument to himself and his queen Nefertari, to commemorate his alleged victory at the Battle of Kadesh, and to intimidate his Nubian neighbors.

The Battle of Kadesh ( also Qadesh ) took place between the forces of the Egyptian Empire under Ramesses II and the Hittite Empire under Muwatalli II at the city of Kadesh on the Orontes River, in what is now the Syrian Arab Republic.

Historical records exist which record a large weapons order by Ramesses II the year prior to the expedition he led to Kadesh in his fifth regnal year.

The immediate antecedents to the Battle of Kadesh were the early campaigns of Ramesses II into Canaan.

Ramesses marched north in the fifth year of his reign and encountered the Hittites at Kadesh.

Ramesses ' army crossed the Egyptian border in the spring of year five of his reign and, after a month's march, reached the area of Kadesh from the South.

The Hittite king Muwatalli, who had mustered several of his allies ( among them Rimisharrinaa, the king of Aleppo ), had positioned his troops behind " Old Kadesh ", but Ramesses, misled by two spies whom the Egyptians had captured, thought the Hittite forces were still far off, at Aleppo, and ordered his forces to set up camp.

On the Hittite side, Ramesses II recorded a long list of 19 Hittite allies brought to Kadesh by Muwattallis.

As Ramesses and the Egyptian advance guard were about 11 kilometers from Kadesh, south of Shabtuna, he met two Shasu ( nomads ) who told him that the Hittites were " in the land of Aleppo, on the north of Tunip " 200 kilometers away, where, the Shasu said, they were "( too much ) afraid of Pharaoh, L. P. H., to come south.

In his haste to capture Kadesh, Ramesses II committed a major tactical error.

Logistically unable to support a long siege of the walled city of Kadesh, Ramesses prudently gathered his troops and retreated south towards Damascus and ultimately back to Egypt.

Once back in Egypt, Ramesses proclaimed that he had won a great victory, but in reality, all he had managed to do was to rescue his army since he was unable to capture Kadesh.

In a personal sense, however, the Battle of Kadesh was a triumph for Ramesses since, after blundering into a devastating Hittite chariot ambush, the young king had courageously rallied his scattered troops to fight on the battlefield while escaping death or capture.

During 1823, he confirmed this, identifying the names of pharaohs Ramesses and Thutmose written in cartouches in far older hieroglyphic inscriptions that had been copied by Bankes at Abu Simbel and sent on to Champollion by Jean-Nicolas Huyot.

Two important inscriptions from the first decade of Ramesses ' reign, namely the Abydos Dedicatory Inscription and the Kuban Stela of Ramesses II, consistently give the latter titles associated with those of a Crown Prince only, namely the " king's eldest son and hereditary prince " or " child-heir " to the throne " along with some military titles.

* Rohl offers inscriptions that list three non-royal genealogies which, when one attributes 20 to 23 years to a generation, show, according to Rohl, that Ramesses II flourished in the 10th century BC as Rohl advocates.

Ramesses II describes his arrival on the battlefield in the two principal inscriptions he wrote concerning the battle, the so-called " Poem " and the " Bulletin ":

The leading elements of Hittite's retreating chariots were thus pinned against the river and in several hieroglyphic inscriptions related to Ramesses II, said to flee across the river, abandoning their chariots, " swimming as fast as any crocodile " in their flight.

Outside of the inscriptions, there are textual occurrences preserved in Papyrus Raifet and Papyrus Sallier III, and a rendering of these same events in a letter from Ramesses to Hattusili III written in response to a scoffing complaint by Hattusili about the pharaoh's victorious depiction of the battle.

The inscriptions were added about 200 years later by Ramesses II to commemorate his military victories.

Photographs taken near the time the obelisk was erected in the park show that the inscriptions or hieroglyphs, as depicted below with translation, were still quite legible and date first from Thutmosis III ( 1479-1425 BC ) and then nearly 300 years later, Ramesses II the Great ( 1279-1213 BC ).

While Ramesses IX's chief queen is not precisely identified in surviving Egyptian inscriptions, she was most likely Baketwernel.

" While both Herihor and his wife Nodjmet were given royal cartouches in inscriptions on their funerary equipment, their ' kingship ' was limited to a few relatively restricted areas of Thebes whereas Ramesses XI's name was still recorded in official administrative documents throughout the country.

Dodson suggests that Baktwerel was perhaps the wife of Ramesses IX, and that this lady later usurped Amenmesse's tomb and added her own scenes and inscriptions there ( Dodson 1987 ).

The most lavish, judging by surviving inscriptions, were those of Ramesses II and Amenhotep III.

Here was formerly a group of granite statues representing Ramesses II, two inscriptions naming Pr-Itm, storehouses and bricks made without straw.

Ramesses I usurped Horemheb's reliefs and inscriptions on the pylon and added his own to them.

* Synchronisms with inscriptions relating to the burial of Apis bulls begin as early as the reign of Amenhotep III and continue into Ptolemaic times, but there is a significant gap in the record between Ramesses XI and the 23rd year of Osorkon II.

Ramesses III claims that he incorporated the Sea Peoples as subject peoples and settled them in Southern Canaan, although there is no clear evidence to this effect ; the pharaoh, unable to prevent their gradual arrival in Canaan, may have claimed that it was his idea to let them reside in this territory.

The theory that these people came from the Western Mediterranean, suggested by some who draw attention to the etymological connections between Sherden and Sardinia, Shekelesh with Sicily, and Trs-w ( Teresh or Tursci ) with Etruscans, is not archaeologically satisfactory, and there is evidence that these people arrived in the areas in which they lived in classical times after the period of Ramesses III, rather than before.

Papyrus Harris I records some of Ramesses III activities:

Rohl argues instead that Shishaq should be identified with Ramesses II ( probably pronounced Riamashisha ), which would move the date of Ramesses ' reign forward some 300 years.

In his Second Year, an attack of the Sherden, or Shardana, on the Nile Delta was repulsed and defeated by Ramesses, who captured some of the pirates.

Ramesses personally led several charges into the Hittite ranks together with his personal guard, some of the chariots from his Amun division and survivors from the routed division of Re, and using the superior maneuverability of their chariots and the power and range of Egyptian composite bows, deployed and attacked the overextended and tired Hittite chariotry.

The running borderlands conflicts were finally concluded some fifteen years after the Battle of Kadesh by an official peace treaty in 1258 BC, in the 21st year of Ramesses II's reign, with Hattusili III, the new king of the Hittites.

Given that Ramesses VIII only reigned briefly some 25 years after his father ’ s death, it is hardly likely that the decoration of QV 52, with the mwt-nsw ( i. e. king's mother ) title intimately mixed with Tyti ’ s other titles, could have been delayed this late to refer to him.

As for which -- if any -- of the other sons of Ramesses III were borne to Tyti, no unequivocal data is available, other than the fact that Amenhirkhopeshef B, buried in QV 55, 24 was ms n Hmt-nTr mwt-nTr Hmt-nsw-wrt, paralleling Tyti ’ s titles so closely that he may with some confidence be proposed as her son.

The beginning of the Great Harris Papyrus or Papyrus Harris I, which documents the reign of Ramesses III, provides some details about Setnakhte's rise to power.

He is the sole pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty whose tomb has not been definitely identified in the Valley of the Kings, though some scholars have suggested that the tomb of Prince Mentuherkhepshef, KV19, the son of Ramesses IX, was originally started for Ramesses VIII but proved unsuitable when he became a king in his own right.

Herihor never really held power outside the environs of Thebes, and Ramesses XI may have outlived him by two years although Jansen-Winkeln argues that Ramesses XI actually died first and only then did Herihor finally assume some form of royal status at Thebes and openly adopted royal titles -- but only in a " half-hearted " manner according to Arno Egberts who has adopted Jansen Winkeln's views here.

Egyptologists suspect that some time prior to Ramesses II's accession to the Egyptian throne, Muwattalli had reached an informal peace treaty or understanding with Seti I over Kadesh to avoid a clash between the two superpowers over control of Syria.

There is some debate around the identity of Ramesses ' wife and Seti's mother.

1883 + 2095, dated to Year 8 IV Shemu day 25 ( most likely Ramesses VII ), details the record of the commissioning of some copper work and mentions two foreman at Deir El-Medina: Nekhemmut and Hor.

Early Egyptological excavations some 2 or 3 km from the area known today as Abu Qir have revealed extensive traces of the city with its quays, and granite monuments with the name of Ramesses II, but they may have been brought in for the adornment of the place at a later date.

Ramesses ’ obvious affection for his wife, as written on her tomb's walls, shows clearly that Egyptian queens were not simply marriages of convenience or marriages designed to accumulate greater power and alliances, but, in some cases at least, were actually based around some kind of emotional attachment.

Also poetry written by Ramesses about his dead wife is featured on some of the walls of her burial chamber.