es 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.

He displayed little activity, his advanced age preventing him from
entering on any serious undertaking: but his accession nevertheless
marks an important date in the history of Egypt. Although Harmhabi was
distantly connected with the line of the A