Fall Asleep to the ENTIRE Story of Ramesses II — The Most Powerful Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt

You can now find me on Spotify 🎧 Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/show/0JZW8iO... This video tells the story of Ramesses II — the pharaoh who reigned for sixty-six years, built more monuments than any ruler in Egyptian history, carved his face into a cliff face in Nubia at a scale that still stops people cold three thousand years later, and became so synonymous with the idea of worldly power that when a Romantic poet wanted to write about the vanity of human ambition, he reached for his name. Ramesses was born around 1303 BCE into a dynasty still recovering from the Amarna heresy — the religious revolution of Akhenaten that had closed the temples, neglected Egypt's empire, and shaken the foundations of everything the civilization rested on. His father Seti I was a great restorer, and Ramesses grew up inside that project of restoration: watching his father campaign in Syria and Libya, learning to drive a chariot and shoot a composite bow from a moving vehicle, absorbing the mathematics of logistics and the politics of generalship, and being named co-regent early enough to govern before he had to govern alone. The battle that defined his military legend came in his fifth year. At Kadesh on the Orontes River in 1274 BCE, his intelligence failed him — two Hittite spies convinced him the enemy was far away, he accelerated his march, the Hittite chariots hit his strung-out columns and nearly destroyed the campaign. Ramesses fought personally when his army broke, calling on Amun and charging into the surrounding Hittites until reinforcements arrived from the northwest. The battle was a tactical draw and probably a strategic Hittite success — Egypt failed to take Kadesh. Ramesses went home and turned it into the most documented military event in ancient Egyptian history, carved on temple walls from Abu Simbel to Karnak, the grandest propaganda exercise the ancient world had yet attempted. #HistoryForSleep #DriftThroughHistory #RamessesII #AncientEgypt #Pharaoh