Ramses 11 and Pericles

Introduction

This paper compares and contrasts two great political personalities Ramses 11 and Pericles and for this purpose the paper will discuss Historical setting, 19th Dynasty of Egypt, age of Pericles and other important related topic to them.

Historical setting

According to Paparrigopoulos, history vindicated Cimon, because Athens, after Pericles' death, sank into the abyss of political turmoil and demagogy. Paparrigopoulos maintains that an unprecedented regression descended upon the city, whose glory perished as a result of Pericles' populist policies. According to another historian, Justin Daniel King, radical democracy benefited people individually, but harmed the state. On the other hand, Donald Kagan asserts that the democratic measures Pericles put into effect provided the basis for an unassailable political strength. After all, Cimon finally accepted the new democracy and did not oppose the citizenship law, after he returned from exile in 451 BC. One measure of Egypt's prosperity is the amount of temple building the kings could afford to carry out, and on that basis the reign of Ramses II is the most notable in Egyptian history, even making allowance for its great length. It was that, combined with his prowess in war as depicted in the temples, that led the Egyptologists of the 19th century to dub him "the Great," and that, in effect, is how his subjects and posterity viewed him; to them he was the king par excellence. Nine kings of the 20th dynasty called themselves by his name; even in the period of decline that followed, it was an honour to be able to claim descent from him, and his subjects called him by the affectionate abbreviation Sese. (Plato, 15-27)

In Egypt he completed the great hypostyle hall at Karnak (Thebes) and continued work on the temple built by Seti I at Abydos, both of which were left incomplete at the latter's death. Ramses also completed his father's funerary temple on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor (Thebes) and built one for himself, which is now known as the Ramesseum. At Abydos he built a temple of his own not far from that of his father; there were also the four major temples in his residence city, not to mention lesser shrines. (Plato, 15-27)

In Nubia (Nilotic Sudan) he constructed no fewer than six temples, of which the two carved out of a cliffside at Abu Simbel, with their four colossal statues of the king, are the most magnificent and the best known. The larger of the two was begun under Seti I but was largely executed by Ramses, while the other was entirely due to Ramses. In the Wadi Tumilat, one of the eastern entries into Egypt, he built the town of Per-Atum (biblical Pithom), which the Bible calls a store city (Exodus 1:11) but which probably was a fortified frontier town and customs station. In fact, there can have been few sites of any importance that originally did not exhibit at least the name of Ramses, for, apart from his own work, he did not ...