Ramses The Great - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

Ramesses was considered the inspiration for Percy Bysshe Shelley's famous poem "Ozymandias". Diodorus Siculus gives an inscription on the base of one of his sculptures as: "King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works." This is paraphrased in Shelley's poem.

The life of Ramesses II has inspired a large number of fictional representations, including the historical novels of the French writer Christian Jacq, the Ramsès series; the graphic novel Watchmen, in which the character of Adrian Veidt uses Ramesses II to form part of the inspiration for his alter-ego known as 'Ozymandias'; Norman Mailer's novel Ancient Evenings, which is largely concerned with the life of Ramesses II, though from the perspective of Egyptians living during the reign of Ramesses IX; and the Anne Rice book The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned (1989), in which Ramesses was the main character. Ramesses II is one of the more popular candidates for the Pharaoh of the Exodus. He is cast in this role in the 1944 novella Das Gesetz ("The Law") by Thomas Mann. Although not a major character, Ramesses appears in Joan Grant's So Moses Was Born, a first person account from Nebunefer, the brother of Ramoses, which paints a picture of the life of Ramoses from the death of Seti, replete with the power play, intrigue, and assassination plots of the historical record, and depicting the relationships with Bintanath, Queen Tuya, Nefertari, and Moses. In film, Ramesses was played by Yul Brynner in Cecil B. DeMille's classic The Ten Commandments (1956). Here Ramesses was portrayed as a vengeful tyrant as well as the main antagonist of the film, ever scornful of his father's preference for Moses over "the son of body". The animated film The Prince of Egypt (1998), also featured a depiction of Ramesses (voiced by Ralph Fiennes), portrayed as Moses' adoptive brother, and ultimately as the film's de facto villain. The Ten Commandments: The Musical (2006) co-starred Kevin Earley as Ramesses. In The Kane Chronicles Ramesses is an ancestor of the main characters Sadie and Carter Kane.