Ramses III

Usimare Ramesses III (also written Ramses and Rameses) was the second Pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty and is considered to be the last great New Kingdom king to wield any substantial authority over Egypt.

Ramesses III was the son of Setnakhte and Queen Tiy-Merenese. He was probably murdered by an assassin in a conspiracy led by one of his secondary wives and her minor son.

He reigned from 1187 to 1156 BC

During his long tenure in the midst of the surrounding political chaos of the Greek Dark Ages, Egypt was beset by foreign invaders (including the so-called Sea Peoples and the Libyans) and experienced the beginnings of increasing economic difficulties and internal strife which would eventually lead to the collapse of the Twentieth Dynasty.

Notably, Ramesses began the reconstruction of the Temple of Khonsu at Karnak from the foundations of an earlier temple of Amenhotep III and completed the Temple of Medinet Habu around his Year 12. He decorated the walls of his Medinet Habu temple with scenes of his Naval and Land battles against the Sea Peoples. This monument stands today as one of the best-preserved temples of the New Kingdom.The mummy of Ramesses III was discovered by antiquarians in 1886 and is regarded as the prototypical Egyptian Mummy in numerous Hollywood movies His tomb (KV11) is one of the largest in the Valley of the Kings.

A murderous plot

The New Kingdom Pharaoh Ramesses III was assassinated by multiple assailants — and given postmortem cosmetic surgery to improve his mummy’s appearance.

Ancient papyrus documents refer to a plot to assassinate Ramesses III.

Court documents outline the tale of a harem conspiracy to take Ramesses III’s life, hatched by one of his wives, Tiye. Her son Pentawere was in line for the throne after his half-brother, Ramesses IV (who was named Amun-her-khepeshef before assuming the throne). Tiye and other members of the royal household, including servants and administrators, meant to kill Ramesses III and then oust Ramesses IV to install Pentawere as ruler.

They seem to have succeeded in killing Ramesses III, but were brought to trial for that murder under the rule of Ramesses IV. Tiye, Pentawere and their conspirators were convicted and executed. A mummy thought to be Pentawere’s has been studied, and Egyptologists believe he died of suffocation or strangulation. Ancient documents show that Pentawere took his own life after his conviction.

Ramesses III’s attackers outnumbered him. Part of his big toe had been hacked off and had not healed, meaning the injury happened around the time of death, Saleem said. Embalmers had fashioned a sort ofpostmortem prosthesis out of linen to replace it when they mummified him.

In fact, the embalmers may have gone the extra mile to try to hide the toe injury. In the late 1800s, an authority at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo tried to unwrap Ramesses III’s mummy, but was unable to penetrate the thick layers of resin that covered the bandages around the feet.

It seems that this was the intention of the ancient Egyptian embalmers, to deliberately pour large amounts of resinto glue the layers of linen wrappings to the body and feet.

In 2012, after CT scan reasearches were performed, researchers reported the discovery that Ramesses III’s throat had been cut with a sharp knife, severing his trachea and esophagus.

The severity of these difficulties is stressed by the fact that the first known labor strike in recorded history occurred during Year 29 of Ramesses III's reign, when the food rations for the Egypt's favoured and elite royal tomb-builders and artisans in the village of Set Maat her imenty Waset (now known as Deir el Medina), could not be provisioned.

Thanks to the discovery of papyrus trial transcripts (dated to Ramesses III), it is now known that there was a plot against his life as a result of a royalharem conspiracy during a celebration at Medinet Habu.The conspirators murdered pharaoh Ramesses III by cutting his throat.