Ramesses VI

Ramesses VI Nebmaatre-Meryamun, also called Ramses or Rameses and earlier known as Prince Amenherkhepshef C, was the fifth pharaoh of Egypt’s Twentieth Dynasty. His reign lasted roughly eight years during the mid-to-late 12th century BC. He was the son of Ramesses III and Queen Iset Ta-Hemdjert. Before taking the throne, he went by Ramesses Amunherkhepeshef and served as a royal scribe and cavalry general. His successor was his son Ramesses VII Itamun, whose mother was Queen Nubkhesbed. Ramesses VI became pharaoh after the death of Ramesses V, who was the son of Ramesses VI’s older brother, Ramesses IV. In his first two years on the throne, he put a stop to frequent raids by Libyan or Egyptian marauders in Upper Egypt and arranged the burial of his predecessor in a tomb that is now lost somewhere in the Theban necropolis. He took over KV9, a tomb in the Valley of the Kings originally designed for Ramesses V, and expanded and redecorated it for himself. The huts built for craftsmen near KV9’s entrance accidentally covered the entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb, protecting it from a wave of robberies that struck within twenty years of Ramesses VI’s death. He may have planned and started six more tombs in the Valley of the Queens, but none of them are known today. Around the time of his reign, Egypt lost control of its last strongholds in Canaan. Egyptian rule in Nubia continued, but losing the Asiatic territories strained the weakening economy and drove up prices. With construction projects harder to fund, Ramesses VI took over monuments built by earlier kings, carving his own cartouches over theirs. Still, he boasted of having “covered all the land with great monuments in my name … built in honour of my fathers the gods.” He was especially fond of cult statues of himself; more statues survive of him than of any other Twentieth-Dynasty king after Ramesses III. Egyptologist Amin Amer described him as “a king who wished to pose as a great pharaoh in an age of unrest and decline.”

Royal authority weakened in Upper Egypt during his rule. Although his daughter Iset was named God’s Wife of Amun, the high priest of Amun, Ramessesnakht, turned Thebes into Egypt’s religious capital and a second power center rivaling Pi-Ramesses in Lower Egypt, where the pharaoh lived. Even so, there is no evidence that Ramessesnakht’s family worked against the king, suggesting the Ramesside rulers may have approved of these changes. Ramesses VI died in his forties, in his eighth or ninth year as pharaoh. His mummy lay untouched in his tomb for fewer than twenty years before looters damaged it. During the reign of Pinedjem I, the body was moved to KV35, where Victor Loret discovered it in 1898. It is now kept in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. **Family**

**Parents and early life** Ramesses VI was the son of Ramesses III, who is often considered the last great pharaoh of the New Kingdom. This relationship is confirmed by a large relief in the portico of Ramesses III’s Medinet Habu temple, called the “Procession of the Princes.” It shows ten princes, including Ramesses VI, worshipping their father. The sculptors left the relief unfinished; only the figures of the king and princes appear, with no names written in the spaces beside them. The relief was likely carved when Ramesses VI was still a young prince, since he is shown wearing the sidelock of youth that marked childhood. When he became king, Ramesses VI added his princely names “Ramesses Amunherkhepeshef” inside royal cartouches, along with the titles he had held before his reign: “king’s son of his body, his beloved, crown prince, royal scribe, cavalry general.” He altered his youthful figure on the “Procession of the Princes” by adding a uraeus to show his royal status and completed the relief with the names of all his brothers and sons, except for Ramesses IV, who had already written his own royal name there. During the 1960s and 1970s, some Egyptologists speculated about the chronology and genealogy of the Twentieth Dynasty, and uncertainties about the identity of the prince on the relief led a few scholars to suggest that Ramesses VI was a grandson of Ramesses III and the son of either an unknown prince or the infamous Pentawer, who was involved in the murder of Ramesses III. These ideas have since been firmly rejected. The relief is now understood to mean exactly what it shows: Ramesses VI was the son of Ramesses III. His mother was probably Iset Ta-Hemdjert, Ramesses III’s Great Royal Wife, based on the presence of Ramesses VI’s cartouches on a doorjamb of her tomb in the Valley of the Queens. **Consort and children** Ramesses VI’s Great Royal Wife was Queen Nubkhesbed. Egyptologists Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton believe she bore him four children: princes Amenherkhepshef, Panebenkemyt, and Ramesses Itamun—who became Ramesses VII and ruled briefly after his father—and princess Iset, who was appointed to the priestly role of “Divine Adoratrice of Amun.” A stela recording this appointment was found at Koptos and confirms that Nubkhesbed was Iset’s mother. Prince Amenherkhepshef died before his father and was buried in tomb KV13 in the Valley of the Kings, originally built for Chancellor Bay, a key official of the late Nineteenth Dynasty. The tomb’s decoration was updated, and some reliefs mention Nubkhesbed. Amenherkhepshef’s sarcophagus was taken from Queen Twosret.