A Great Pharaoh Who Saved Egypt from Fierce Invaders, But Couldn’t Save Himself from His Own Family
Pharaoh Ramesses III (reigned 1186 – 1155 BC) is seen by many historians and scholars as the last great ancient Egyptian ruler. A warrior king, he is most famous for having successfully fought against and beat back a confederation of mysterious marauders known as “The Sea Peoples”, who overran nearly all of the era’s Mediterranean kingdoms. The seaborne invaders inflicted widespread devastation that ushered in what came to be known as The Bronze Age Collapse – a dark age that lasted for centuries, during which civilization took a nose dive.
The one kingdom that the Sea Peoples failed to conquer was Ramesses’s Egypt. In the eighth year of his reign, the Sea Peoples invaded Egypt by land and by sea. As he put it: “As for those who reached my frontier, their seed is not, their heart and their soul are finished forever and ever. As for those who came forward together on the seas, the full flame was in front of them at the Nile mouths, while a stockade of lances surrounded them on the shore, prostrated on the beach, slain, and made into heaps from head to tail“. Unfortunately, as seen below, although he managed to save Egypt, Ramesses III was unable to save himself from his own family.