Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), Tutankhamun, Ay and Seti I 3/3

with no air in line to inherit the kingship the throne was passed to I Tutankhamun's closest advisor or Vizier records show that right after he died I prepared to marry Tutankhamun's young widow to help justify his assumption of the throne there is evidence that she suspected I was responsible for her husband's death and tried to avoid this marriage desperate the widow Uncas and a moon sought help from outside of Egypt she turned to a land in the east control by the Hittites and wrote to their king send me one of your sons you have many that I may marry one and he shall become king for I have none here whom I named Mary he did send one of his sons to be married to Uncas and our moon and become Pharaoh of Egypt but consider the bureaucrats Horemheb was the general in charge of the army I was the chief high priest curiously enough the Hittites Prince got as far as the borders of Egypt and he was murdered I married Tutankhamun's Widow in 1325 BC and became Pharaoh before the deceased Kings burial had been even completed we know this from a painting in Tutankhamun's tomb it depicts I already wearing a king's blue crown while he performs a ceremony during Tutankhamun's burial of course it is possible that I was just the logical choice to assume the throne after young Tutankhamun died hairless but there is one more suspicious aspect in the archaeological record from this time right after I ascends to the throne there is no more mention of the young Queen arcus in the moon she disappears was she the next victim in this 3000 year old conspiracy I reigned for only 4 years and like tutankhamun had no heirs to carry on the 18th dynasty soon the throne of Egypt would belong to a new dynamic bloodline of kings among them would be the greatest of the Pharaohs he would assure in a period of building an expansion never to be equaled and he would take the image of the Pharaoh as a god to the extreme the city of ancient Thebes the Pharaohs of Egypt who were drawn to this landscape that lay along the banks of the Nile River queen hatshepsut had embellished it with an obelisk that bore her name Amenhotep the third had built a grand temple to its patron god the southern location was a natural choice with the capital city of a country that was expanding downward toward the rich territory of Nubia the Pharaoh Tutankhamen had moved the royal court back here before he died and his Vizier I had remained at Thebes during his brief reign in 1321 BC the general called Horemheb proclaimed himself to be the pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt his name meant Horus in jubilation Horace is Egypt's hawk headed deity a bird of prey the god of the Kings Horemheb came to the throne after a long and distinguished military career which began four administration's earlier when Amenhotep the third was King he was later appointed the great commander of the army by Akhenaten and under King Tutankhamen he was given the title of the Kings deputy little is known about horemheb's heritage he was not from a royal bloodline and therefore had no claim to the throne he remedied that by marrying Nefertiti sister thus creating a feeble into the bloodline of the Kings already middle-aged Horemheb immediately set out to restore Egypt to its status prior to Akhenaten's heresy at Thebes he reopened the temples of our Moon but to avoid a power struggle with the priesthood he appointed priests from the army since he was a military man he felt they could be trusted after this Horemheb initiated the destruction of the great temples to the sun disk built in Amarna by Akhenaten he used the thousands of stone blocks he removed as filler inside the pylons and walls of his new building projects but his efforts to erase all traces of Akhenaten's reign ended up having an ironic twist almost 3,000 years later the result is now of course many thousands of years later as archaeologists worked to restore and study these monuments what do they find they find these thousands of temple blocks that Horemheb thought he'd buried forever and since they've been buried all these years these scenes depicting at night and whose cult are actually much better preserved than any of the scenes which depict harm him Horemheb also usurped many of the statues and monuments of his immediate predecessors this was done by simply replacing their names with his two statues at Karnak are labeled with the name of Horemheb but most Egyptologists believe the facial features are similar to Tutankhamun's while to us this may seem to be the epitome of egotism this practice was not uncommon for many of the Pharaohs Egyptians might have not put such a negative spin on it and they might have considered it more of recycling but it was also a royal prerogative in a way because when a king took over he became divine and therefore since the office had always existed then he in that office would always have been around and would always exist it was a right and a privilege that the reigning monarch had Horemheb ruled for almost 30 years but when he died in 1306 BC he like Tutankhamun and I was cursed by not having an heir to avoid the chaos caused by a fight for succession Horemheb nominated his trusted Vizier for the job this Pharaoh took the name of Rameses he would begin the 19th dynasty one of the greatest periods of Egyptian history Rameses had been a career army officer and was probably in his 50s when he became pharaoh ramses planned to continue rebuilding egypt but his reign lasted only two years he did manage to accomplish something his three predecessors had not Rameses produced a male heir to inherit the throne Ramsey's sun was setting the first he had been the Vizier and troop commander during his father's brief reign after inheriting the throne set he gave himself the additional title of repeater of births to signify the beginning of a new era during his time as Pharaoh Egyptian art and culture flourished tremendous building projects were also undertaken at Karnak said he enhanced the building of the great hypostyle Hall here in the temple of Amun he also began to repair and augment the religious sites at Abydos these efforts helped him to legitimize his non Royal bloodlines claim to the throne Abydos was the ancient center dedicated to the cult of Osiris the God of the Dead he was originally built in the Old Kingdom and had since fallen into disrepair the temple SETI the first build for himself at Abydos is considered one of the master works of the era inside his likeness is depicted alongside many of the gods of Egypt it is believed that the gods actually dwelled within the temples which were dedicated to her the wall reliefs here are considered some of Egypt's finest they were carved with great precision and in the more difficult razed technique instead of the more common and quicker inscribed carvings SETI was also the Pharaoh who had the list of Kings inscribed in his temple of Abydos it not only honored those who came before him but also elevated SETI into their ranks the name SETI means he of the god Seth Seth was the deity of storms and war SETI lived up to his name on the battlefield he has grown up with the army he's a totally different attitude to life and certainly to royalty and the higher echelon he fights incredible campaigns year after year against the Syrians amongst his great foundations was in fact the Temple of Karnak and on the north wall you find these incredibly long and huge reliefs of SETI attacking fortresses destroying the enemies of Egypt he's a mighty warrior in 1278 BC SETI the first died after raining for an extremely productive 13 years he was originally buried in a tomb prepared for him in the Valley of the Kings but to protect SETI's remains from grave robbers his mummy was later removed and taken to a hiding place dug high into the cliffs above queen hatshepsut's temple at deir el-bahari slightly over 100 years ago in 1881 archaeologists unearthed this tool it revealed a remarkable collection of over 160 mummies known as the royal cash SETI the first was among the Pharaohs discovered his is the finest example of all the existing royal mummies during his lifetime SETI's primary queen was a woman named Julia like her husband she was from a non royal family with a military background their first son died their second child was a daughter but their third child was a boy destined to become Egypt's most celebrated ruler the dog star Sirius is the brightest in the Egyptian heavens each year it disappears around the beginning of May to reappear about the 18th of July to the ancient Egyptians its returns signaled the new year and the time for the annual Nile floods that would leave behind a new layer of fertile soil one year during SETI's reign the floods were particularly high Egyptian legend told that this was the good omen that announced the coming of the next ruler of Egypt this was ramses ii ramses ii has become the name that is almost synonymous with pharaoh but it may have been SETI's careful preparation of his song the crown prince which really predestined Ramsay's success Rhymes us ii was probably one of the best prepared pharaohs in egypt because by the time that he came to the throne they really had a fairly regular process of making sure that all the senior royal princes had a lot of experience in military affairs and governance so when they came to the throne they were already experienced and effective in what a pharaoh needed to be by the age of 15 ramses was already accompanying his father on military campaigns by 22 he led his first command to put down a small revolt in Nubia he also ambushed mediterranean pirates who were searching for plunder along the mouth of the Nile by the time SETI the First's reign was coming to an end his son had already proven himself as a military leader and worthy of kingship possessed with unmatched vision and self-confidence the future King was poised to leave his indelible mark on the history of Egypt 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Rating: 4.8198199 out of 5

Keywords: The, Greatest, Pharaohs, 1350 BC, 30 BC, Amenhotep, IV, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, Ay, Seti I

Id: 6ipF_AGg7WQ

Length: 15min 3sec (903 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 10 2011