Ramesses VI
Ramesses VI Nebmaatre-Meryamun was the fifth ruler of the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt. He reigned for about eight years in the mid-to-late 12th century BC and was a son of Ramesses III and queen Iset Ta-Hemdjert. As a prince, he was known as Ramesses Amunherkhepeshef and held the titles of royal scribe and cavalry general. He was succeeded by his son, Ramesses VII Itamun, whom he had fathered with queen Nubkhesbed.
After the death of the ruling pharaoh, Ramesses V, who was the son of Ramesses VI's older brother, Ramesses IV, Ramesses VI ascended the throne. In the first two years after his coronation, Ramesses VI stopped frequent raids by Libyan or Egyptian marauders in Upper Egypt and buried his predecessor in what is now an unknown tomb of the Theban necropolis. Ramesses VI usurped KV9, a tomb in the Valley of the Kings planned by and for Ramesses V, and had it enlarged and redecorated for himself. The craftsmen's huts near the entrance of KV9 covered up the entrance to Tutankhamun's tomb, saving it from a wave of tomb robberies that occurred within 20 years of Ramesses VI's death. Ramesses VI may have planned and made six more tombs in the Valley of the Queens, none which are known today.
Egypt lost control of its last strongholds in Canaan around the time of Ramesses VI's reign. Though Egyptian occupation in Nubia continued, the loss of the Asiatic territories strained Egypt's weakening economy and increased prices. With construction projects increasingly hard to fund, Ramesses VI usurped the monuments of his forefathers by engraving his cartouches over theirs. Yet he boasted of having " all the land with great monuments in my name built in honour of my fathers the gods". He was fond of cult statues of himself; more are known to portray him than any Twentieth-Dynasty king after Ramesses III. The Egyptologist Amin Amer characterises Ramesses VI as "a king who wished to pose as a great pharaoh in an age of unrest and decline".
The pharaoh's power waned in Upper Egypt during Ramesses VI's rule. Though his daughter Iset was named God's Wife of Amun, the high-priest of Amun, Ramessesnakht, turned Thebes into Egypt's religious capital and a second center of power on par with Pi-Ramesses in Lower Egypt, where the pharaoh resided. In spite of these developments, there is no evidence that Ramessesnakht's dynasty worked against royal interests, which suggests that the Ramesside kings may have approved of these evolutions.
Ramesses VI died in his forties, in his eighth or ninth year of rule. His mummy lay untouched in his tomb for fewer than 20 years before pillagers damaged it. The body was moved to KV35 during the reign of Pinedjem I, and was discovered in 1898 by Victor Loret. His mummy is currently kept in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.
Family
Parents and early life
Ramesses VI was a son of Ramesses III, the latter being considered the last great pharaoh of the New Kingdom period. This filiation is established beyond doubt by a large relief found in the portico of the Medinet Habu temple of Ramesses III known as the "Procession of the Princes". The relief shows ten princes including Ramesses VI, worshipping their father. Ramesses III's sculptors seem to have left the relief incomplete; only the figures of the king and princes appear and no names are written in the spaces next to them. The relief seems to have originally been executed when Ramesses VI was still a young prince, as he is shown wearing the sidelock of youth used to denote childhood.When Ramesses VI became king, he added his princely names "Ramesses Amunherkhepeshef" inside royal cartouches as well as the titles he held before ascending the throne as "king's son of his body, his beloved, crown prince, royal scribe cavalry general". He altered his youthful figure on the "Procession of the Princes" with an uraeus underscoring his royal status and further completed the relief with the names of all his brothers and sons, with the exception of Ramesses IV, who had already written his royal name on the relief.
Speculation in Egyptology during the 1960s and 1970s concerning the chronology and genealogy of the Twentieth Dynasty as well as uncertainties affecting the identity of the king shown on the "Procession of princes" relief led some scholars to propose that Ramesses VI was a grandson of Ramesses III and the son either of an unknown prince or of the infamous Pentawer involved in the murder of Ramesses III. Such hypotheses have now been conclusively rejected and the relief is understood to mean exactly what it shows: that Ramesses VI was the son of Ramesses III. Ramesses VI's mother was probably Iset Ta-Hemdjert, Ramesses III's Great Royal Wife, as suggested by the presence of Ramesses VI's cartouches on a door-jamb of her tomb in the Valley of the Queens.
Consort and children
Ramesses VI's Great Royal Wife was queen Nubkhesbed. The Egyptologists Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton believe that she bore Ramesses VI a total of four children: the princes Amenherkhepshef, Panebenkemyt and Ramesses Itamun—the future pharaoh Ramesses VII who succeeded his father for a short while on the throne—and princess Iset who was appointed to the priestly role of "Divine Adoratrice of Amun". A stela recounting this appointment was discovered in Koptos and demonstrates that Nubkhesbed was indeed Iset's mother.Prince Amenherkhepshef died before his father and was buried in tomb KV13 in the Valley of the Kings, originally built for Chancellor Bay, an important official of the late Nineteenth Dynasty. The tomb decoration was updated in consequence, some reliefs notably mentioning Nubkhesbed. Amenherkhepshef's sarcophagus was usurped from queen Twosret.
The filiation of Ramesses VII is established by an inscription on a doorjamb from Deir el-Medinaeh which reads "the good god, lord of the two lands, Usimaare-meryamun-setepenre, Son of Re, lord of epiphanies, Ramesses , -Amun, god, ruler of Heliopolis—he has made as his monument for his father, live the good god, lord of the two lands, Nebmaare-meryamun, Son of Re, ".
The Egyptologists James Harris, Edward F. Wente and Kenneth Kitchen have also proposed, based on circumstantial evidence, that Ramesses IX was a son of Ramesses VI and thus a brother to Ramesses VII. They note that Ramesses IX honoured Ramesses VII on two offering stands, suggesting that they were close kin. Ramesses IX named one of his sons Nebmaatre, which is Ramesses VI's prenomen, possibly as a means to honour his father. This hypothesis is contested by other scholars including Dodson and Hilton, who believe that Ramesses IX was instead a son of prince Montuherkhopshef and thus a nephew to Ramesses VI. They base their conclusion on other circumstantial evidence: first is a depiction of Montuherkhopshef in KV19 on which Ramesses IX's prenomen had been added. Second is the fact that Ramesses IX's mother was named Takhat and Montuherkhopshef's spouse might have been a lady of the same name, hence possibly the same person.
Reign
Reign length
Ramesses VI assumed the throne around the interval between Year 1 I Peret day 25 and Year 1 II Peret day 11 of his reign when his predecessor Ramesses V died. The scholarly consensus is now that Ramesses VI reigned in the mid 12th century BC over a period of eight full years and lived for two months into his brief last regnal year. More precisely, the Egyptologist Steve Vinson proposed that he reigned between 1156 BC and 1149 BC, while the Encyclopædia Britannica reports 1145–1137 BC, Jürgen von Beckerath gives 1142–1134 BC, Erik Hornung 1145–1139 BC, Nicolas Grimal 1144–1136 BC making him a contemporary of Nebuchadrezzar I of Isin, Ian Shaw, Jacobus van Dijk and Michael Rice 1143–1136 BC, and 1132–1125 BC in a 2017 study.In 1977, the Egyptologists Edward F. Wente and Charles van Siclen were the first to propose, upon reviewing the chronology of the New Kingdom period, that Ramesses VI lived into his eighth year of reign. This hypothesis was vindicated the next year by the Egyptologist Jac Janssen, who published an analysis of an ostracon which mentions the loan of an ox in the seventh and eighth years of an unnamed king who can only have been Ramesses VI. Two years later, Lanny Bell reported further evidence that Ramesses VI not only reigned into his eighth regnal year but most likely completed it and lived into his ninth.
Ramesses VI's eighth year on the throne may also be mentioned in Theban graffito 1860a, which names the then serving High Priest of Amun, Ramessesnakht. This graffito has also been ascribed to Ramesses X, but this interpretation has been contested and its ascription to Ramesses VI has been proposed as an alternative. The subject remains debated.
An important piece of evidence first recognised by Jansen in 1978 but fully exploited only five years later by the Egyptologist Raphael Ventura is found on the Turin Papyrus 1907+1908, which covers the time period from Ramesses VI's fifth year until Ramesses VII's seventh year on the throne.
The reconstruction of the document proposed by Ventura shows that the simplest solution available to explain the chronology of the period covered by the papyrus is that Ramesses VI enjoyed a reign of eight full years and two months, dying shortly in his ninth regnal year, and was succeeded by Ramesses VII rather than Ramesses VIII, as had been debated until then.
Activities and situation in Egypt
Early reign: strife in the Theban region
Immediately after his accession to the throne, Ramesses VI and his court may have visited Thebes on the occasion of the Beautiful Festival of the Valley or the Opet Festival, concomitant with the preparations for Ramesses V's burial. Ramesses VI visited the city on at least another occasion during his reign, when he installed his daughter as Divine Adoratrice of Amun. The situation in the south of Egypt at the time of Ramesses VI's accession was not entirely stable, as attested by records showing that the workmen of Deir el-Bahari could not work on the king's tomb owing to the presence of "the enemy" in the vicinity, a situation which occurred over a period of at least fifteen days during Ramesses VI's first year on the throne. This "enemy" was rumoured to have pillaged and burned the locality of Per-Nebyt and the chief of the Medjay of Thebes—essentially the police—ordered the workmen to remain idle and watch the king's tomb. It is unclear who these enemies were, the term could designate parties of Libyan Meshwesh, Libu and Egyptian bandits, or as the Egyptologist Jaroslav Černý conjectured, a full blown civil war between followers of Ramesses V and Ramesses VI, a hypothesis supported by Rice but which has been strongly rejected by Kitchen and, to a lesser extent, by Grimal and van Dijk.A short military campaign might have ensued and from Ramesses VI's second year on the throne onwards these troubles seem to have stopped. This campaign could be connected with an unusual statue of Ramesses VI showing him holding a bound Libyan captive, as well as with a depiction of Ramesses VI triumphing over foreign soldiers on the second pylon of the Karnak temple. This triumph scene was the last one to be made in Egypt until the later reigns of Siamun and Shoshenq I.
Other indications in favour of strife and military activities early in Ramesses VI's reign are the names he adopted upon ascending the throne, his Horus name meaning "Strong bull, great of victories, keeping alive the two lands" as well as his Nebty name "Powerful of arms, attacking the myriads".