RAMSES III

died 1156 BC, Thebes, Egypt king of Egypt (reigned 118756 BC), who defended his country against foreign invasion in three great wars, thus ensuring tranquillity during much of his reign. In his final years, however, he faced internal disturbances and an attempted coup d'tat. Son of Setnakht (reigned 119087 BC), founder of the 20th dynasty, Ramses found Egypt upon his accession only recently recovered from the civil wars that had plagued the land at the end of the previous dynasty. In the fifth year of his reign, a coalition of Libyan tribes invaded the western Nile delta on the pretext that the pharaoh had interfered in their chief's succession. The Libyans had, in fact, encroached upon Egyptian lands, a perennial problem during the 19th and 20th dynasties, and were soundly defeated in a battle in the western delta. After two years of peace, another, more dangerous coalition, the Sea Peoples, a conglomeration of migrating peoples from Asia Minor and the Mediterranean islands, who had previously destroyed the powerful Hittite Empire in Asia Minor and devastated Syria, advanced against Egypt by land and by sea. Ramses' land army checked the enemy's advance in Palestine, and the hostile ships were trapped after being lured into the numerous and intricate waterways of the delta. Egypt averted conquest by the northerners, but two of the invading peoples settled on the coast of Palestine, between Gaza and Mount Carmel. The attempted invasion ended Egyptian pretensions to a Syro-Palestinian empire. Two more years of peace ensued, but in Ramses' 11th year a new coalition of Libyan tribes infiltrated the western delta. Compelled to wage yet another war, he defeated the Libyans after capturing their chief. After this final conflict, Ramses was able to reorganize Egyptian society into classes grouped by occupation and to finish his great funerary temple, palace, and town complex at Madinat Habu, in western Thebes. He also built additions at Karnak, the great Theban temple complex. Ramses encouraged trade and industry, dispatching a seaborne trading expedition to Punt, a land on the Somali coast of Africa, and exploiting the copper mines at Sinai and probably also the gold mines of Nubia, Egypt's province to the south. After a prosperous middle reign, administrative difficulties and conspiracy troubled Ramses' last years. About the year 28 of the king's reign the vizier of Lower Egypt was ousted because of corruption. A year later the workers employed on the royal tombs at Thebes went on strike because of delay in the delivery of their monthly rations. Only the intervention of the Upper Egyptian vizier, who had assumed responsibility for the whole country, ended the work stoppage. Toward the end of Ramses' reign, one of his secondary wives, seeking to place her son on the throne, plotted to assassinate the king. The plan was somehow betrayed and probably foiled, as the plotters were successfully brought to trial. The king may have died as a result of the plot, or soon afterward; but documents contain no information about the year of the conspiracy, and the king's mummy displays no wounds. Ramses died at Thebes in the 32nd year of his reign and was succeeded by the crown prince Ramses IV.