Master story-teller and renowned Egyptologist and historian Aidan Dodson, author of several AUC Press books, including most recently Rameses III, King of Egypt: His Life and Afterlife (AUC Press, 2019), is giving a lecture in Cairo on January 14, at 5:00pm, British Council, Garden Room, 192 Sharia el-Nil, Agouza, Cairo. Click here for more information.
The second king of the Twentieth Dynasty, Rameses III has often been called ‘the last great pharaoh.’ Coming to the throne after the civil conflicts of the late Nineteenth Dynasty, he consolidated the regime established by his father, Sethnakhte, embarked on a considerable programme of public works, and defended Egypt from the assaults of the Sea Peoples, who had previously devastated much of the eastern Mediterranean. But by the last few years of his reign, the Egyptian economy was in tatters, with even the royal tomb workmen striking for lack of pay. Against this background he fell victim to a palace conspiracy, his demise ushering the final decline and fall of the New Kingdom.
Aidan Dodson is the author of Amarna Sunrise: Egypt from Golden Age to Age of Heresy (AUC Press, paperback edition, 2016), Afterglow of Empire: Egypt from the Fall of the New Kingdom to the Saite Renaissance, (AUC Press, forthcoming, new in paperback), Poisoned Legacy: The Fall of the 19th Egyptian Dynasty (AUC Press, revised edition, 2016), Amarna Sunset: Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb, and the Egyptian Counter-Reformation (AUC Press, revised edition, 2018), Monarchs of the Nile (AUC Press, revised edition 2015), and most recently Sethy I, King of Egypt: His Life and Afterlife (AUC Press, 2019), and Rameses III, King of Egypt: His Life and Afterlife (AUC Press, 2019).
