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Pharoah Rameses II (1314 BCE-1224 BCE)
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Ramesses II (also known as Ramesses the Great and alternatively anglicised as Ramses and Rameses) was an Egyptian pharaoh. He lived from c. 1314 BC to 1224 BC and reigned from 1290 BC to 1224 BC, He ruled for a total of 66 years, becoming pharaoh at the age of 24 and dying in his 90th year. Ancient Greek writers (such as Herodotus) ascribed his accomplishments to the semi-mythical Sesostris.
He was the third king of the 19th dynasty, and the son of Seti I and his Queen Tuya. The most memorable of Ramesses' wives was Nefertari. Others among his wives were Isisnofret and Maetnefrure, Princess of Hatti. The writer Terence Gray stated in 1923 that Ramesses II had as many as 200 sons and 200 daughters;  more recent scholars, however, believe his offspring, while numerous, were far fewer. His children include Bintah (Bintanath) (princess and her father's wife), Setakht (Sethnakhte), the Pharaoh Merneptah (who succeeded him), and prince Kha'emweset.
Ramesses led several expeditions north into the lands east of the Mediterranean (the location of the modern Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria). At the Battle of Qadesh in the fourth year of his reign (1286 BC), Egyptian forces under Ramesses II engaged the forces of Muwatallis, king of the Hittites. Over the following years, neither power could effectively defeat the other, so in the 21st year of his reign (1269 BC), Ramesses concluded an agreement with Hattusilis III, the earliest known surviving peace treaty, believed to have been drawn up in 1271 BC.
Ramesses also campaigned south of the first cataract into Nubia. He constructed many impressive monuments, and more statues of him exist than of any other Egyptian pharaoh: Ramesses indeed provided the artisans who lived in Deir el Medina with plenty of work.
At least as early as Eusebius of Caesarea, he was identified with the pharaoh of whom the biblical figure Moses is popularly believed to have demanded that his people be released from slavery.
His mummy was found at Deir al-Bahari in 1881 and placed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo five years later, where it is still exhibited with pride by the Egyptian people. His successor was his son Merneptah. [The biographical material above is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Ramesses II.]
Alternate Biography
(Gen. xlvii. 11; Exod. xii. 37; Num. xxxiii. 3), or, with a slight change in the vowel points, RAAMSES (Exod. i. II), the name of a district and town in Lower Egypt, is notable as affording the mainstay of the current theory that King Rameses II. was the pharaoh of the oppression and his successor Minephthas the pharaoh of the exodus. The actual facts, however, hardly justify so large an inference. The first three passages cited above are all by the priestly (post-exile) author and go together. Jacob is settled by his son Joseph in the land of Rameses and from the same Rameses the exodus naturally takes place. The older narrative speaks not of the land of Rameses but of the land of Goshen; it seems probable, therefore, that the later author interprets an obsolete term by one current in his own day, just as the Septuagint in Gen.. xlvi. 28 names instead of Goshen Heroopolis and the land of Rameses. Heroopolis lay on the canal connecting the Nile and the Red Sea, and not far from the head of the latter, so that the land of Rameses must be sought in Wadi Tuthilat near the line of the modern fresh-water canal. In Exod. i. II, again, the store cities or arsenals which the Hebrews built for Pharaoh are specified as Pithom and Raamses, to which the Septuagint adds Heliopolis. Pithom also takes us to the Wadi Tumilat. But did the Israelites maintain a continuous recollection of the names of the cities on which they were forced to build, or were these names rather added by a writer who knew what fortified places were in his own time to be seen in Wadi TflmIlat? The latter is far the more likely case, when we consider that the old form of the story of the Hebrews in Egypt is throughout deficient in precise geographical data, as might be expected in a history not committed to writing till the Israelites had resided for centuries in another and distant land. The post-exile or priestly author indeed gives a detailed route for the exodus (which is lacking in the older story), but he, we know, was a student of geography and might supplement tradition by what he could gather from traders as to the caravan routes and at all events to argue that, because the Hebrews worked at a city named after Rameses, they did so in the reign of the founder, is false reasoning, for the Hebrew expression might equally be used of repairs or new works of any kind.
It appears, however, from remains and inscriptions that Rameses II did build in Wadi TumIlgt, especially at Tell Maskhuta, which Lepsius therefore identified with the Raamses of Exodus. This identification is commemorated in the name of the adjacent railway station. But Naville's excavations found that the ruins were those of Pithom and that Pithom was identical with the later Heroopolis. Petrie found sculptures of the age of Rameses II at Tel Rotab, in the Wgdi TfimIlgt west of Pithom, and concludes that this was Rameses. The Biblical city is probably one of those named Prameses, "House of Ramesses," in the Egyptian texts. [Adapted from Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)]
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