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Facts About Ancient Egypt They Didn’t Teach In School

Khalid Elhassan October 29, 2023 31 min

Egyptian - The Great Pyramids of Giza, as they would have looked when newly built — The Great Pyramids of Giza, as they would have looked when newly built. Quora

A Great Pharaoh Who Saved Egypt from Fierce Invaders, But Couldn’t Save Himself from His Own Family

Pharaoh Ramesses III (reigned 1186 – 1155 BC) is seen by many historians and scholars as the last great ancient Egyptian ruler. A warrior king, he is most famous for having successfully fought against and beat back a confederation of mysterious marauders known as “The Sea Peoples”, who overran nearly all of the era’s Mediterranean kingdoms. The seaborne invaders inflicted widespread devastation that ushered in what came to be known as The Bronze Age Collapse – a dark age that lasted for centuries, during which civilization took a nose dive.

Egyptian - Detail from a relief, depicting Pharaoh Ramesses III defeating the Sea People — Detail from a relief, depicting Pharaoh Ramesses III defeating the Sea People. Teach Middle East

The one kingdom that the Sea Peoples failed to conquer was Ramesses’s Egypt. In the eighth year of his reign, the Sea Peoples invaded Egypt by land and by sea. As he put it: “As for those who reached my frontier, their seed is not, their heart and their soul are finished forever and ever. As for those who came forward together on the seas, the full flame was in front of them at the Nile mouths, while a stockade of lances surrounded them on the shore, prostrated on the beach, slain, and made into heaps from head to tail“. Unfortunately, as seen below, although he managed to save Egypt, Ramesses III was unable to save himself from his own family.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.