The first recorded labour strike happened under Pharaoh Ramesses III
In the 29th year of Ramesses III's reign, the elite craftsmen who carved royal tombs near Thebes stopped work because their grain rations had not arrived. It is the earliest known strike in history. The pharaoh who had beaten back the Sea Peoples was struggling with an empty treasury, and worse was coming from inside his own palace.
Ramesses III, second king of Egypt's Twentieth Dynasty, ruled for about 31 years, roughly 1185 to 1154 BC by one reckoning. Despite the name he was not closely related to Ramesses II; his father Setnakhte seized power in a crisis. He is considered the last New Kingdom pharaoh to hold real power, reigning while the Late Bronze Age collapse toppled neighbouring states.
In his eighth year the Sea Peoples, a coalition including groups called the Peleset and Shardana, invaded by land and sea. Ramesses defeated them first at Djahy, in what is now southern Lebanon, then lured their fleet into the Nile mouths, where archers lined the banks and Egyptian ships used grappling hooks to drag enemy vessels close. He settled the defeated peoples in southern Canaan, which may have helped give rise to Philistia. He also fought off Libyan invasions in his fifth and eleventh years, and in April 2025 Jordanian officials reported his cartouche carved in the Wadi Rum reserve.
The wars drained the treasury. Around the same time something in the atmosphere, possibly the Hekla 3 eruption in Iceland, dimmed sunlight and stunted tree growth for nearly two decades, pushing up grain prices. His monuments show none of this. His vast mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, among the largest and best preserved in Egypt, copies the style of Ramesses II, yet it was ringed with heavy fortifications no earlier temple in Egypt's heartland had needed.
The end came through a harem conspiracy. Ramesses had passed over older sons in naming Ramesses IV as heir, and his secondary wife Tiye plotted to put her son Pentaweret on the throne. Surviving trial papyri show officials, butlers, scribes and army officers were implicated, and 38 people were sentenced to death. The plot killed the king, but Ramesses IV still succeeded him, and the conspirators' names were erased from their tombs.
Source: Ramesses III
