New Kingdom Egypt Society during the Ramesside Period

New Kingdom Egypt society during the Ramesside period is one of the Ancient Societies options in Section II (25 marks). You answer one question with three or four parts; one part is worth 10–15 marks and the others are short answers, often based on a source. The syllabus asks you to study the society through its evidence:

• Historical and geographical context: the Nile and its resources; sites such as Memphis, Per-Ramesses, Thebes, Deir el-Medina and Abu Simbel.
• Social structure and political organisation: the pharaoh's roles and image, the vizier and the bureaucracy, priests, the army, scribes, artisans and farmers, the role and status of women.
• The economy: agriculture, crafts, exchange and the deben, technology, and the evidence of strikes, tomb robberies and corruption.
• Religion, death and burial: gods and priesthoods, personal religion (piety and magic), festivals, funerary customs and texts, temples and tombs.
• Cultural and everyday life: art and architecture, writing and literature (including the Report of Wenamun), leisure and health.

The Ramesside period is the 19th and 20th Dynasties (about 1295–1069 BC). Most questions centre on the kings from Ramesses I to Ramesses III, with evidence from the late 20th Dynasty for change and decline. Dates are approximate.

The historical frame

• Ramesses I (about 1295), a former army officer from the eastern Delta, founded the 19th Dynasty.
• Seti I restored temples and campaigned in the Levant; his temple at Abydos has the Abydos King List.
• Ramesses II (about 1279–1213) reigned for about 66 years. He fought the Hittites at Kadesh (about 1274) and later made a peace treaty with them (about 1259); about 14 years after the treaty he married a Hittite princess.
• Merenptah defeated Libyans and Sea Peoples; his victory stela contains the earliest mention of ‘Israel’ yet found in an Egyptian text.
• Ramesses III (about 1184–1153), of the 20th Dynasty, defeated the Sea Peoples (Year 8) and the Libyans, as shown at Medinet Habu. Late in his reign came the tomb-builders' strikes and a conspiracy in the royal harem.
• Ramesses IV to XI: declining royal power, rising prices, tomb robberies and the growing power of the high priests of Amun at Thebes.

Key sites

• Per-Ramesses (Qantir): Ramesses II's capital in the eastern Delta, close to his family's homeland and the roads to the Levant; palaces, temples, chariot workshops and barracks.
• Memphis: administrative centre in the north; the Apis bull burials at Saqqara.
• Thebes: Karnak (the Hypostyle Hall), Luxor, the Ramesseum and Medinet Habu; the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens (Nefertari's tomb).
• Deir el-Medina: the tomb-builders' village and our richest source for non-royal life.
• Abu Simbel: Ramesses II's two rock-cut temples in Nubia.

The pharaoh

The king was the divine son of the gods and upholder of maat, as before, but Ramesside kings emphasised two images: the victorious warrior (Kadesh reliefs, Medinet Habu) and the god-king, worshipped in statues such as those at Abu Simbel. Because the dynasty was not of royal origin, monuments also stressed legitimacy, for example Seti I's King List at Abydos.

Officials

• Viziers (two) ran justice and administration; the southern vizier was responsible for the royal tomb-builders.
• High priests of Amun controlled huge estates; by the late 20th Dynasty their office was hereditary and one, Herihor, took royal titles.
• Viceroy of Kush governed Nubia.
• Mayors of towns, such as the mayors of eastern and western Thebes, whose rivalry appears in the tomb-robbery papyri.

The army

A permanent professional army, organised in divisions named after gods (Amun, Ra, Ptah and Set at Kadesh), with chariotry, infantry, archers and foreign troops such as the Sherden. Soldiers could be rewarded with land; Libyan soldiers were settled in Egypt, and their descendants later became rulers.

Social groups

Below the elite were scribes, priests, craftsmen, soldiers, farmers and servants. Literacy was the route to office. The Medjay were desert police, guarding the necropolis at Thebes.

Women

Women had legal rights to own, inherit and sell property and to go to court. Naunakhte's will (Deir el-Medina, Year 3 of Ramesses V) shows a woman disinheriting children who had not cared for her. Royal women such as Nefertari were honoured with fine tombs and the small temple at Abu Simbel. Most women's role centred on the household; some were chantresses in temples.

Agriculture and redistribution

The inundation and the farming year continued as in earlier periods. The state and the temples collected grain as tax and from their estates and paid workers in rations. The great Papyrus Harris I records Ramesses III's enormous gifts of land, people and goods to the temples, showing how much wealth they controlled.

Exchange: the deben

Without coins, people bartered, valuing goods in deben (a weight of about 91 g of copper, divided into 10 kite) or in sacks (khar) of grain. Ostraca from Deir el-Medina record prices of coffins, animals, cloth and furniture.

Deir el-Medina and the tomb-builders

The tomb-builders, ‘servants in the Place of Truth’, were divided into a right and a left side, each under a foreman, with a scribe keeping records. They worked eight days and rested two in each ten-day week, were paid monthly rations and supplies, and earned extra by private commissions.

Strikes, robberies and corruption

• Turin Strike Papyrus (Year 29 of Ramesses III): workmen stop work because rations are weeks late.
• Tomb-robbery papyri (Ramesses IX): investigations reveal robbers among workmen and officials and rivalry between the mayors of Thebes.
• Rising grain prices and Libyan raids disrupt work in the later 20th Dynasty.

Trade and foreign relations

Egypt traded with the Levant, Cyprus and the Aegean, and received Nubian gold. The Report of Wenamun (end of the 20th Dynasty) shows an Egyptian envoy treated with little respect by the ruler of Byblos, a sign of Egypt's fallen prestige.

Gods and priesthoods

Amun-Ra of Thebes, Ptah of Memphis, Ra of Heliopolis and Set (honoured by the Ramesside family, whose name Seti means ‘of Set’) were the leading gods. Their temples were rich, with large priestly staffs.

Personal piety and magic

Ramesside evidence shows ordinary people praying directly to the gods: Neferabu's stelae confess sins against Ptah and Meretseger; ‘ear stelae’ ask a god to hear a prayer. Villagers consulted the oracle of the deified Amenhotep I and used amulets, spells and dream books to protect themselves.

Festivals

Opet and the Beautiful Festival of the Valley continued at Thebes, as well as local festivals of village patrons.

Death and burial

Royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings were decorated with funerary texts such as the Book of Gates and the Amduat. Mortuary temples (the Ramesseum, Medinet Habu) kept the king's cult alive. At Deir el-Medina, workmen built their own painted tombs, such as Sennedjem's, showing the fields of the afterlife. Shabtis, the Book of the Dead and amulets remained common.

Art and architecture

Huge scale was the Ramesside signature: the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak (134 columns), colossal statues and battle reliefs with crowded scenes of chariots and fortresses. Royal names were often carved deep so they could not easily be erased, and earlier monuments were reused. The tomb of Nefertari has some of the finest painting of the period.

Writing and literature

The Kadesh poem and bulletin, love poems, stories such as the Contendings of Horus and Seth, teaching texts, letters and legal records survive, many from Deir el-Medina. Scribes trained by copying classic texts on ostraca.

Everyday life, leisure and health

Houses at Deir el-Medina had a front room with a shrine, a living room, a bedroom and a kitchen open to the sky. People played senet, held banquets and festivals and kept pets. Ostraca record absences from work for illness, scorpion stings or family reasons, and a doctor attached to the gang.

• Treating Kadesh as a clear Egyptian victory because the reliefs say so. It was indecisive; peace came later by treaty.
• Assuming the Deir el-Medina workmen were slaves. They were skilled, paid state craftsmen.
• Generalising from Deir el-Medina to all Egyptians without saying it was an unusual community.
• Confusing Ramesses II's wife Nefertari with Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten.
• Using 18th Dynasty evidence without saying it comes from an earlier period.

• Name your evidence precisely: the Turin Strike Papyrus, the Abbott Papyrus, Naunakhte's will, Medinet Habu.
• For source questions, use the source's words, add own knowledge and comment on its purpose (royal propaganda, administrative record, private document).
• In the 10–15 mark answer, open with a clear judgement and structure paragraphs around the question, not around a list of sites.
• Historians' views are credited if used accurately, but they are not required.

• ANC-NKE (to the death of Amenhotep III): compare 18th Dynasty kingship, empire and religion.
• ANC-ISR (Israel): Merenptah's stela and the collapse at the end of the Bronze Age form the background to the rise of Israel.