Quick questions on Ramesside Egypt: geography, historical framework and sources (HSC Ancient History Section II)

Seti I began, and Ramesses II greatly expanded, a new royal residence at Qantir in the eastern Delta, near the earlier Hyksos capital Avaris. Excavations there have uncovered stables, chariot-production workshops and glass and bronze foundries, showing a city built as a military-administrative base within easy reach of the Sinai land bridge and the Levantine frontier, rather than a religious foundation like Thebes.

Thebes (Waset) remained the religious capital, home to the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak and the royal burial grounds of the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens on the west bank, alongside the purpose-built workmen's village of Deir el-Medina.

South of the First Cataract, Nubia (Kush) remained under a viceroy and supplied gold, ivory and other prestige goods that funded temple building and royal display.

The Sinai Peninsula supplied turquoise and copper, worked at sites such as Timna and Serabit el-Khadim under royal expeditions in the names of Seti I, Ramesses II and Ramesses III. Beyond Sinai, Canaan and Syria formed a contested frontier zone with the Hittite empire (capital Hattusa, in Anatolia) until their 1259 BC treaty, and later a route by which the Sea Peoples threatened the Delta coast.

Ramesses I (c. 1292-1290 BC), a career soldier and vizier who had served under the last Eighteenth Dynasty king Horemheb, was appointed successor when Horemheb died without an heir. His short reign gave way to his son Seti I (c.

Setnakhte (c. 1189-1186 BC) restored order after this instability, described in the later Great Harris Papyrus as a time when "the land of Egypt was overthrown." His son Ramesses III (c.

The workmen's village near Thebes, occupied through the New Kingdom but overwhelmingly documented in the Ramesside period, has produced thousands of ostraca (cheap limestone flakes and potsherds) and papyri: work rosters and absence records, private letters, wills, marriage settlements, court records, and even magical and medical texts. This is one of the richest bodies of "ordinary life" evidence surviving from anywhere in the ancient world, letting historians reconstruct wages, family structure, women's legal standing, and the community's own internal disputes.

Recording the Year 29 (c. 1157 BC) protest by Deir el-Medina workmen over late grain rations under Ramesses III, this is widely cited as the earliest documented labour strike in history.

Investigations under Ramesses IX (c. Year 16, c. 1110 BC) into robbed tombs in the Theban necropolis survive in papyri such as Papyrus Abbott and Papyrus BM 10052/10053, exposing corruption and weakening state control.

Seti I's temple at Abydos preserves the Abydos King List, a selective royal memory that omits Hatshepsut, Akhenaten and his immediate successors. The Ramesseum and Abu Simbel record Ramesses II's version of the Battle of Kadesh. Medinet Habu, Ramesses III's mortuary temple, is the primary source for his Libyan and Sea Peoples wars, and its adjoining Great Harris Papyrus (the longest surviving Egyptian papyrus) summarises his reign's temple donations, an important economic record.