The pharaoh the Greeks called Ozymandias ruled Egypt for 66 years
Ramesses II took the throne at 25 and, by the most likely estimate, died at 90 or 91. In between he ruled for 66 years, staged more jubilee festivals than any other pharaoh, and was worshipped as a god while still alive. Greek writers knew him by another name: Ozymandias.
Born around 1303 BC, Ramesses was the third king of the Nineteenth Dynasty, during the New Kingdom, the period when Egyptian power peaked. Later pharaohs addressed him as the Great God and prayed for a share of his long life. His reign is the longest securely recorded for any pharaoh, with only Pepi II, a thousand years earlier and credited with more than 90 years, possibly rivalling it.
The Greek name comes from the opening of his throne name, Usermaatre Setepenre. Cuneiform letters dug up at Hattusa, the Hittite capital, preserve how foreigners actually heard his name: Riamessesa, with a full formal title rendered as Wasmuriya Satepnaria Riamessesa Maiamana.
His early years went into construction. He founded Pi-Ramesses in the Nile Delta, made it the capital, and used it as a base for campaigns into Syria. He fought at least 15 campaigns, reasserting control over Canaan and Phoenicia and pushing into Nubia, with those southern expeditions recorded in inscriptions at Beit el-Wali and Gerf Hussein. All were victories except Kadesh, which historians usually score as a draw. He also held thirteen or fourteen Sed festivals, the royal renewal ceremonies, an unmatched total.
He was first laid in tomb KV7 in the Valley of the Kings, but the body was later shifted to the Royal Cache, where archaeologists found it in 1881. The mummy now lies in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo. Popular culture often casts him as the pharaoh of the Exodus story, an identification rejected by scholars including the historian Lester L. Grabbe and Mostafa Wazir, formerly head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Source: Ramesses II
