Skip to main content

A 3000 Years Old Love Story

Pharaoh Ramesses the Great and Queen Nefertari

Pharaoh Ramesses II the Great ruled ancient Egypt during the 19th dynasty (1292-1190 BCE). His reign was the second-longest in Egyptian history, lasting from 1279 to 1213 BCE. He assumed the throne in 1279 BC as a royal member of the Nineteenth Dynasty and ruled for 67 years. In Greek sources, Ramesses II was also known as Ozymandias, with the first half of the appellation deriving from Ramesses' regnal name, Usermaatre Setepenre, which means 'The Maat of Ra is mighty, Chosen of Ra'. 


He is also recognized as the Egyptian Empire's greatest, most renowned, and most dominating pharaoh. His successors and subsequent Egyptians are reported to have referred to him as the Great Ancestor.



Ramesses II was a famous explorer, monarch, and warrior who conducted multiple military excursions to the Levant to reestablish Egyptian dominance over Canaan. He is also supposed to have conducted journeys south to Nubia, which are documented in inscriptions at the Beit el-Wali and Gerf Hussein temples.

Ramses II the Great had 200 wives and concubines, 96 sons, and 60 daughters throughout his reign. But his first wife, Nefertari, was his favorite and, according to historians, the true love of his life. They were both 24 years old when they married and had four children.



Ruler Nefertari is supposed to have been a Nubian queen from 1292 until 1225 B.C., while some authors state they don't know her origins. She is thought to have been well educated and capable of reading and writing hieroglyphs, uncommon capabilities she employed in diplomatic work for her period, similar to other powerful royals of the time.

According to some historians, she married for peace, that her marriage to Ramses II began only as a political act, a power swap between two kings that resulted in a 100-year ceasefire between Nubia and Egypt. Others claim they married before Ramesses II became King.



While her motives are unknown, historians suggested that Ramses was madly in love with her. She is also known to have accompanied Ramses on military operations, which was unique at the time.

The Great King even had monuments dedicated to the Queen created in her honor. Ramesses, in fact, erected a temple for her at Abu Simbel, one of Egypt's greatest and most magnificent monuments.

Despite her possible early death (perhaps during delivery), Nefertari was widely represented in murals and statues, with one renowned example being the beautiful wall painting within her tomb. In any event, upon Nefertari's death, Ramesses' secondary wife Isetnefret (or Isetnofret) was promoted to the status of main consort – and their son Merneptah (or Merenptah) was the throne's successor (who was already 70 years old during the time of his ascension).

While the pharaohs frequently showed themselves as greater than their queens' sculptures, Ramses did not, he sculpted on the front of the temple two huge sculptures of the queen and four of Ramses II, all of the same height.

Image from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ramses-II-king-of-Egypt

King Ramesses II the great also uniquely called her with the most beautiful names: 
  1. Great of Praises (wrt-hzwt)
  2. Sweet of Love (bnrt-mrwt)
  3. Lady of Grace (nbt-im3t)
  4. Great King's Wife (hmt-niswt-wrt)
  5. His beloved (hmt-niswt-wrt meryt.f)
  6. Lady of The Two Lands (nbt-t3wy)
  7. Lady of all Lands (hnwt-t3w-nbw)
  8. Wife of the Strong Bull (hmt-k3-nxt)
  9. God's Wife (hmt-ntr)
  10. Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt (hnwt-Shm'w-mhw)
Sweetly, 'The one for whom the sun shines'.

Most notably, the beautiful tomb of Nefertari is regarded as the "Sistine Chapel of Ancient Egypt" and is considered one of the crown jewels of Egyptian burial monuments. It is one of the most brilliantly adorned tombs ever discovered in Egypt.



On her tomb walls, King Ramesses had carved the most lovely words: 'My love is unique – no one can rival her, for she is the most beautiful woman alive. Just bypassing, she has stolen away my heart'.

Hope it can help. Share your thoughts too.
Labels:
Location: London, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Parallel A* Search on GPU

A* search is a fundamental topic in Artificial Intelligence. In this article, let’s see how we can implement this marvelous algorithm in parallel on Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Traditional A* Search Classical A* search implementations typically use two lists, the open list, and the closed list, to store the states during expansion. The closed list stores all of the visited states and is used to prevent the same state from being expanded multiple times. To detect duplicated nodes, this list is frequently implemented by a linked hash table. The open list normally contains states whose successors have not yet been thoroughly investigated. The open list’s data structure is a priority queue, which is typically implemented by a binary heap. The open list of states is sorted using the heuristic function  f(x) : f(x) = g(x) + h(x). The distance or cost from the starting node to the current state  x  is defined by the function  g(x) , and the estimated distance or cost from the current stat
Post a Comment
Read more

Dead Reckoning

When it is the beginning , the navigator is clearly aware of the position/location. When he starts to move (in the mid-sea or mid sky), he can get some known (measured) factors other than the position/location in terms of a fixed landmark . They are, The direction of movement (by using a compass) Speed of movement Time taken to reach each heading Using all this information, the navigator calculates the distance and route which he has covered and keeps track of his movement by plotting a nautical chart ( also called a sea chart). This technique is known as Dead reckoning . In brief, Dead recko ning is a process to determine the position of the navigator (sailing a ship or flying an aircraft) using the record of courses that have been sailed (or flown), the distance covered (by using the velocity in which he has traveled and time taken to reach the next course from the previous course), known point (the previous point is the known point) and the estimated or known or approximated
Post a Comment
Read more