Talk:Ramesses II

Ramesses the self-promoter
I am unsure if this should be included: Ramesses the Great was a superb self-promoter. Does anyone have any opinions on that? Nuretok (talk) 18:27, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Captain obvious. All the monuments Ramesses built were intended to promote his own reputation. The detailed Egyptian description of the Battle of Kadesh (Ramesses' most famous battle) is a famous piece of ancient propaganda. From the main article:


 * "The main source of information is in the Egyptian record of the battle for which a general level of accuracy is assumed, despite factual errors and propaganda. The bombastic nature of Ramesses's version has long been recognized."
 * Some of the sources in the article state something which Wikipedia has avoided to summmarise. Ramesses' inscriptions emphasized his personal courage and presented the battle as a victory, but the heavy Egyptian casualties can directly be attributed to Ramesses' strategic blunders and to Ramesses himself leading the army directly into an enemy ambush. And he actually failed to achieve his strategic goals, as the Egyptian army abandoned the siege of Kadesh and retreated back to Egypt. Dimadick (talk) 08:28, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Prince Regent
The first paragraph under "Early  Life" says Ramesses II's father (Seti I) made  him (R2) Prince Regent. This is a misuse of the term. It is the father who should be referred to as Prince Regent, ruling in  place of the son (therightful monarch) while the son (R2) was still  a  boy. 2603:8000:D300:33A0:E16D:68CB:F904:23DD (talk) 06:56, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Gold Mining In Nubia
Add under the "building projects and monuments" section in a bullet point that "Ramses II expanded gold mining operations in Akuyati (modern day Wadi Allaqi)"

Cosmic Nudibranch (talk) 00:59, 12 September 2023 (UTC)Cosmic Nudibranch


 * ✅. Cheers!  Coco bb8  (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 16:46, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Ramesseum photo
The photo of Ramesseum is incorrect. It shows the temple built by Ramesses III in Medinet Habu. Lifter67 (talk) 15:00, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Hieroglyphics not given?
Surely this basic data is essential?

92.15.223.1 (talk) 17:09, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The full royal titulary is provided in the infobox. It is collapsed (or hidden) by default due to the amount of space it occupies. Mr rnddude (talk) 17:32, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks fur that - I didn't see it.
 * So that begs the question, why is everything in graphics? If you do Ctrl+F and enter the Unicode 𓅭𓇳, nothing comes up. It must be hurting the SEO as well.


 * The problem is that Unicode doesn't seem able to arrange hieroglyphs in vertical groups. For example, "Setepenra" should be


 * but Unicode renders it as 𓇳𓍇𓈖. There is talk on the technical side of Wikimedia about the prospect of replacing WikiHiero (the system we now use) with Unicode, but unless Unicode can replace all of WikiHiero's functionality, it may not get done. A. Parrot (talk) 19:19, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

A mummy with a passport (redux)
In April, User:Temerarius captioned a photo of the mummy with a brief mention of the claim that it was issued a passport when it was taken to France. He did include a cite, although to a podcast without a timestamp. For the sake of being thorough, I listened to the whole thing. Unhappily, it contained not one mention of mummies, passports, or any combination thereof.

I’ve removed the passport claim.

The archived talk page has a detailed discussion of this, but briefly: A user added the passport claim in 2006 without a cite. It stayed there until 2019, never having acquired a reliable source, despite various “verification needed” tags. At that time, after doing some research, I removed it: the claim is ludicrous, wasn’t mentioned in any of the contemporaneous news articles, and isn’t present on e.g. the French-language version of the page. Unfortunately, since 2006, the claim has spread across the internet via citogenesis.

I thought it worthwhile to add this talk page section to mention this brief clip from a 2023 BBC HistoryExtra podcast interview with Toby Wilkinson. He’s a bona fide Egyptologist and author of a Ramesses biography, who calls the passport claim “nonsense”. Flamerule (talk) 00:34, 4 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you! I'm sorry you had to go to all the work. I'll get you that timestamp at least. Temerarius (talk) 16:06, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not hearing it on that episode either, I'm sorry. I'll find it for you, but it might take time. Greg is quite careful about citing reliable sources. Ie his standards are higher than Wikipedia's. @Flamerule Temerarius (talk) 16:10, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It might have been the Moe Berg one. In a teaser for a longer story on the futilitycloset website? It was at the end of an episode, unusually. Temerarius (talk) 19:38, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, don’t sweat it. Before posting I did search their website using the obvious search terms and didn’t see anything relevant. Flamerule (talk) 20:18, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you Flamerule for your thorough work!
 * Temerarius - I am inclined to believe a respected, professional Egyptologist over a non-subject expert podcast host. Merytat3n (talk) 21:57, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I found it, episode 358: The Radium Girls at the 25 minute mark. It is a "lateral thinking" game between the two hosts. The notes say the factoid was sent in by a listener, providing a Heritage Daily article from 2020 as support. Heritage Daily says:
 * "In 1975, Maurice Bucaille, a French doctor studying his remains said that the mummy was threatened by fungus and needed urgent treatment to prevent total decay. French laws dictated that entry and transportation through the country required a valid passport. To comply with local laws, the Egyptian government issued a passport to the Pharaoh."
 * No source is given for this specific statement. The only cited source in the article is this 1976 NYT article, which says Ramesses was flown to France on 26 September 1976 for treatment, and was met by government officials and the army. It says Ramesses "received special treatment at Le Bourget Airport" but nothing is mentioned about a passport. Merytat3n (talk) 03:28, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks yes, the Times article feels familiar. I'm sorry I fouled up the citation; I'll be sure to add a timestamp and double check the address next time. Thanks for looking out after accuracy. We might want to ask the refdesk if France does require passports of incoming cadavers. Temerarius (talk) 18:39, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * How do you like the podcast, right? Pretty good stuff. Temerarius (talk) 18:40, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * According to the Consulate General of France in LA, to bring a body into France (for burial) requires a death certificate, a disposal permit, a medical certificate stating cause of death (and that it was not caused by a contagious disease), signed authorisation by family/other appointed person requesting the remains come to France, a French permit for burial, and a statement from a funeral home that the remains are securely contained in a coffin. In view of this, maybe it would be easier to just issue a passport!


 * Anyway, if we can find a reliable source for the passport claim from before it appeared on Wiki, that would be great :) Merytat3n (talk) 21:21, 5 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Merytat3n, does this help? It's a children's book but the author seems a reliable chap:
 * In 1974, experts discovered that Ramses II's skin was being destroyed by a mysterious infection. The royal mummy was flown to Paris three years later for medical treatment. International regulations required him to have a passport, which gave his occupation as "King (deceased)". When he arrived in France, a team of conservators successfully cured the infection, which turned out to be a fungus...
 * Alansplodge (talk) 18:43, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * that is something!
 * In doing a quick survey with Google Books, I find that Peter J. Brand mentions the passport on p.486 of Ramesses II: Egypt's Ultimate Pharaoh. Footnote 85 doesn't say anything helpful, like mentioning a source for the claim, only that the images online are fakes and that the Egyptian govt has never released a photo of the real passport. As previously mentioned, Toby Wilkinson dismisses the claim Ramesses had a passport.
 * I wish that, in all the repetitions of the story, someone cited a source >_<
 * License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport by Paul Bixby discusses RII's passport on pages 24-26, listing all the various reasons given for why he apparently had one. Bixby notes that "for all its notoriety, the passport of Ramesses II does not reside in any archive. Reporting on the transfer of the mummy in 1976 makes no mention of the passport, and no such document is to be found in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, or in the Musee de l'Homme, Paris." He then goes on to say that the story of the passport is either a hoax or a fabrication by the internet.
 * The only source close to the time that might possibly say *something* is La Momie de Ramses II: contribution scientifique à l'égyptologie (1986) by Balout and Roubet, who worked on the royal mummy in France, and records the circumstances around him coming to France. Or it might not mention it at all. As it stands, it may be worth putting a note on the page mentioning that the claim he had a passport is oft repeated by not verifiable. Merytat3n (talk) 03:43, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, that seems the best solution (also, I didn't realise that Putnam had the wrong year). At least we now know that the story predates Wikipedia. Alansplodge (talk) 14:59, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I posted the link to this fact check by French news agency Agence France-Presse on the ref desk, Alansplodge asked me to copy it here. This disputes the story of the passport and points to a possible origin of the confusion. This seems to be the work mentioned by Merytat3n (although from 1985, ), where the term passeport is used in inverted commas, i.e. metaphorically, to describe the negotiations necessary to make the transfer of Ramesses happen. This was a very special operation and it seems therefore futile to look at standard procedures for the transfer of (usually recently) deceased persons. Since the negotiations involved the highest levels of the French and Egyptian states (the Presidents!) it would seem incredibly petty for France to demand a standard-form passport. --Wrongfilter (talk) 19:35, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Fantastic! Seems like the nail in the proverbial coffin or should I say, a stamp on the (nonexistent) passport. Thank you everyone!! Merytat3n (talk) 21:33, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I have added a brief note ("e" in the Notes section) should the question arise again. Please feel free to edit or delete if it doesn't fit the bill. Alansplodge (talk) 12:54, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I have added a brief note ("e" in the Notes section) should the question arise again. Please feel free to edit or delete if it doesn't fit the bill. Alansplodge (talk) 12:54, 16 June 2024 (UTC)