* It would appear, from an Ostracon in the British Museum, that the year XXI. follows after the year VII. of Harmhabi’s reign; it is possible that the year XXI. may belong to one of Harmhabi’s successors, Seti I. or Ramses II., for example.

** The efforts to connect Ramses I. with a family of Semitic origin, possibly the Shepherd-kings themselves, have not been successful.  Everything goes to prove that the Ramses family was, and considered itself to be, of Egyptian origin.  Brugsch and Ed. Meyer were inclined to see in Ramses I. a younger brother of Harmhabi.  This hypothesis has nothing either for Or against it up to the present.

He was already an old man when he ascended the throne, and we ought perhaps to identify him with one or other of the Ramses who flourished under the last Pharaohs of the XVIIIth dynasty, perhaps the one who governed Thebes under Khuniatonu, or another, who began but never finished his tomb in the hillside above Tel el-Amarna, in the burying-place of the worshippers of the Disk.

[Illustration:  160.jpg RAMSES I.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch in Rosellini.

He had held important offices under Harmhabi,* and had obtained in marriage for his son Seti the hand of Tuia, who, of all the royal family, possessed the strongest rights to the crown.**

* This Tel el-Amarna Ramses is, perhaps, identical with the Theban one:  he may have followed his master to his new capital, and have had a tomb dug for himself there, which he subsequently abandoned, on the death of Khuniatonu, in order to return to Thebes with Tutankhamon and Ai.

** The fact that the marriage was celebrated under the auspices of Harmhabi, and that, consequently, Ramses must have occupied an important position at the court of that prince, is proved by the appearance of Ramses II., son of Tuia, as early as the first year of Seti, among the ranks of the combatants in the war carried on by that prince against the Tihonu; even granting that he was then ten years old, we are forced to admit that he must have been born before his grandfather came to the throne.  There is in the Vatican a statue of Tuia; other statues have been discovered at San.

Ramses reigned only six or seven years, and associated Seti with himself in the government from his second year.  He undertook a short military expedition into Ethiopia, and perhaps a raid into Syria; and we find remains of his monuments in Nubia, at Bohani near Wady Haifa, and at Thebes, in the temple of Amon.*

     * He began the great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak; E. de Rouge
     thinks that the idea of building this was first conceived
     under the XVIIIth dynasty.