As I am new to the post of Feature Writer on Suite 101 I wanted to take a minute to explain my philosophy on writing about history. What I like to do is focus on the story behind the written record and the archeology. I think nearly everyone has read a dry historical textbook and has been able to compare that with an intriguing tale of events nearly forgotten that draws you in. In some of my recent articles I have been focusing on the Late Bronze Age in the Ancient Near East. This period of history is, in my opinion, one of the great overlooked epochs of our past.
By looking at Egypt, the best known of the Late Bronze Age Empires, my point becomes clear. Countless documentaries, books and articles hail Ramses II as the greatest pharaoh of the New Kingdom if not of all time. However, even with his alleged appearance in the Christian Bible as the Pharaoh in the story of Moses, the evidence does not hold. Ramses II is best described as the last in a series of imperial pharaohs who personally oversaw the end of Egyptian hegemony in the Levant. By my account, the real story of the greatest pharaoh will not be about a braggart who managed to live long enough to pilfer all of his predecessors monuments and label them as his own.
So who is the greatest pharaoh you ask? Well, I will tell you a story about a time when….
