So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, “This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me.'”
Exodus 10:3
The west bank of Thebes is home to many temples to various Pharaohs. After visiting the Valley of the Kings, we poked around some of them.
Our first stop was Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahri. Hatshepsut was one of the few female Pharaohs. When her husband, Thutmose II, died, his heir, Thutmose III, was not old enough to rule, so she took over as regent until he was old enough. After a couple years, she told everyone she really was the one in charge and took control of the country. Thutmose simply had to wait for her to die before his official reign began.
Did he have a chip on this shoulder?
Medinet Habu was the temple for Rameses III (who is not the son of Rameses II). Besides being a large, mostly in tact complex, there’s a depiction of him fighting the Sea Peoples, groups of invaders from across the sea (despite the name, many came by land, too). The Philistines of the Bible are considered one of the Sea Peoples.
The Ramesseum was the temple for Rameses II. Rameses II left his mark all over Egypt. His philosophy seemed to be quantity over quality. While in Memphis, we saw a large statue he had constructed of himself, resting peacefully on the ground. It had been chopped down like a tree sometime in antiquity. From head to knee (where it was cut off), it stood about 43 foot tall. That’s the second largest statue we saw on the trip!
At the Ramesseum we saw Rameses’ biggest statue. Only fragments are left, so original the height is unknown, but it must have been colossal. This guy must have had quite the ego. He reigned for about 67 years, so he had a lot of time to continue building. He’s the number one candidate for the Pharaoh of the Exodus whom Moses appeared before. I suppose, like his statues, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
As the sun was about to set, we went to our final stop of the day, the Colossi of Memnon. These two seated statues once guarded the way into the enclosure for the temple for Amenhotep III, which has basically been lost to the flooding of the Nile.
