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With Ramses XI, maybe the pharaoh Ramses’s X son, Egypt had its last Ramses
period and at the same time the last long reign before the Third Middle Period.
His reign is divided in two parts: the first is characterized by a period
eighteen years long in which the country was involved in a civil war in upper
Egypt, while the second part is the one called the “Rebirth”, in which the
counting of the previous years of government are cancelled to start again from
zero, when Ramses XI with Herihor’s hel, who was a general a high priest and
future “King of Tebe”, gets back the control of the country. Under Ramses XI
there were thefts even during the day in Ramesseum and in Medinet Habu. This is
another sign of the great difficulties in which Egypt was at the end of the XX
dynasty. To complicate more the situation there is the presence of some
personages, whose figure has been studied for a long tim by the historians. Amon
these we remember Panehesy, vice-king in Kush, called in the Egyptian territory
by Ramses XI to establish the order in the Tebaide area, as it had already
happened under other Kings, but instead of establishing order in Tebe, he
sqaggered with impunity. He wasn’t satisfied to control the Tebaide, but he went
up to Hardai, 400 km from Tebe. In a short time, after he had sacked various cities, the vice-king’s of Kush tropus controlled the whole area in Upper Egypt. The people suffered hunger the corruption was everywhere and the sacks continued in the necropolis. The tombs had the traces of the damages made by a violence that couldn’t certainly be attributed to little hungry thieves who looked for some precious object. It’s so believed that those destructions were made by Panehesy’s tropps, who soon became a threat for the country and for the pharaoh himself. Ramses X decided to stop this situation. He sent his army to Tebe, Commanded by general Herihor, who drove Panehesy away, forcing him to retire in Nubia. It’s with this action that the first year of the period called “Rebirth” begins. According to some historians, Herinor was an usurpator, who drove away Panchesy, to take his place, but today it seems more Cikely that the general was chosen by the king precisely to become a great priest and to reign in Tebe as a royal representative, keeping order. Moreover, it’s true that Herirhor acquired the complete royal title but we have to admit that he did it only in Karnak: in fact the title appears only inside the temple in Kjonsu and in a few other places in Amon’s temple. Herirhor had Piye (or Payankh) as a successor, that must not be confused with the homonymous Nubian kink of the XXV dynasty. Not the least trance of Ramses’s XI mummy has been found in the Valley of the king’s: this because at the pharaoh’s death the subjects probably received orders to not bury the sovereign in Tebe but in the Delta region. This way the Ramses period ended, and with it, ended also forever the Egypt of the great pharaohs, the future would have seldom seen the country resurrect and ofter by foreign people. |
