Ramses Emerson - Personal History

Personal History

Born in the summer of 1887, named for his father’s younger brother, he received the nickname "Ramses" from his father, who said of his baby, "in its belligerent appearance and imperious disposition it strongly resembled the Egyptian pharaoh, the second of that name, who had scattered enormous statues of himself all along the Nile." Likewise, his swarthy complexion and dark hair gave him a closer resemblance to Egyptians than to traditional English boys. As he grows up, he also cultivates an impassive facial expression that Nefret Emerson calls his "stone pharaoh" face.

As a child, Ramses was very precocious, and could speak with appalling fluency before the age of two, though he had a mild speech impediment that faded quickly. His mother, who admits that her maternal instincts are not very developed, finds his early years an incredible ordeal, given his insatiable curiosity, his lack of fear, and his incurable habit of going on speaking until he runs out of breath or someone interrupts him (usually the latter). He also has what his mother calls a streak of “Machiavellian logic” that requires her to expressly forbid him from doing as many things as she can think of.

Ramses' first trip to Egypt occurs in the Archaeological season of 1894-95, in the novel,The Mummy Case. This is his first involvement with the mysteries the Emersons solve. He is seven years old.

Seeing a Large Cat is a pivotal novel in Ramses's development. At the beginning, he has just turned sixteen, and returns to his family after he and David have spent several months in the desert under the tutelage of Sheikh Mohammed Bahsoor, a friend of Emerson's, learning the traditional skills of manhood: fighting, horseback riding, desert survival, tracking. It is also during this time (as hinted later in He Shall Thunder in the Sky) that he loses his virginity.

With Seeing a Large Cat, Peters begins to use Ramses as a parallel voice, providing a different point of view from the first person perspective of Amelia. Peters purports to intersperse the sections of Amelia’s journals with excerpts from "Manuscript H," written in the third person.

Ramses follows his family’s Egyptological path, becoming a skilled excavator like his father. However, his specialty and true passion is, like his Uncle Walter, philology, the reading and translation of ancient languages.

His precocity and skill at languages, mimicry, and disguise, lead some Egyptians to credit him with supernatural abilities, resulting in his nickname, Akhu el-Efreet, "Brother of Demons".

During World War I, Ramses is outwardly a conscientious objector, but occasionally (and reluctantly) lends his skills to the service of both the Cairo police and British Intelligence.