Quick questions on New Kingdom Egypt - Seti I and the founding of the nineteenth dynasty: HSC Ancient History

The eighteenth dynasty ended with Horemheb, a former general who had himself restored order after the Amarna period but who died without a surviving son. He chose as his heir his vizier and army commander, Paramessu, who took the throne as Ramesses I (throne name Menpehtyre). The choice was pragmatic: Ramesses I was already an old man, but he had a capable adult son (the future Seti I) and a grandson, so his accession promised the stable succession the state had lacked.

Seti I (c. 1294-1279 BC) is the central figure of this dot point. He inherited an Egypt whose international position had weakened during the Amarna period, when royal attention turned inward to Akhenaten's religious revolution and the Hittites under Suppiluliuma I expanded into northern Syria. Seti I set out to restore the empire of Thutmose III and the prestige of the crown, and he did so on several fronts at once.

Seti I's building was as important to the restoration as his campaigns, because it re-asserted orthodox religion and royal legitimacy after the Amarna disruption. Three monuments matter most.

In his first regnal year Seti I marched into Canaan. His war reliefs and the stelae found at Beth-Shean record him defeating the Shasu Bedouin who threatened the coastal road, and reducing towns such as Beth-Shean and Yenoam, restoring the route into Palestine. This re-established the southern Levant as an Egyptian sphere for the first time in decades.

Seti I then pushed north into Syria, into direct competition with the Hittite empire, now led by Muwatalli II. He recovered the strategic city of Kadesh on the Orontes and the vassal state of Amurru, leaving a victory stela at Kadesh. This was the first serious Egyptian-Hittite clash of the dynasty.

Seti I also secured the other frontiers. He campaigned in Nubia (against the land of Irem) to protect the gold routes and Egyptian control of the south, and he fought the Libyans (Tjehenu) pressing on the western Delta, an early sign of the Libyan threat that would grow across the Ramesside period.

Seti I built a great limestone temple at Abydos, the cult centre of Osiris, dedicated to Osiris and a group of seven deities (including Amun, Re-Horakhty, Ptah and the deified king himself). It is famous above all for its raised relief carving, among the finest and most delicate in all Egyptian art. On one of its corridor walls is the Abydos King List: seventy-six royal predecessors named in cartouches, shown being honoured by Seti I and the boy prince Ramesses.

Within the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak, Seti I built and largely decorated the great columned hall, a vast forest of 134 sandstone columns. Its northern wing carries Seti I's fine raised relief; the southern wing was later decorated under Ramesses II in sunk relief, and the contrast between the two is a textbook illustration of the change of style between the two reigns. The exterior north wall carries Seti I's war reliefs.

Seti I's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, KV17, is the longest, deepest and most elaborately decorated of all the royal tombs there. Discovered by Giovanni Belzoni in 1817, it was the first tomb to carry the full range of New Kingdom funerary texts (including complete versions of the Amduat and the Book of Gates) with painted relief of exceptional quality. Its exquisite alabaster (calcite) sarcophagus is now in the Sir John Soane's Museum in London.