Ramses & the Gold of the Pharaohs
Name, in order to exist.
Display, in order to rule.
Burn, in order not to disappear.
In spring 2023, the Grande Halle de la Villette did more than host an exhibition. It opened a face-to-face encounter with eternity.
Dedicated to Ramses II, a major figure of the 19th Dynasty, the exhibition revisited a reign of exceptional longevity - sixty-six years, from 1279 to 1213 BCE - and a life that, according to estimates, exceeded ninety years. This exceptionally long reign was also marked by numerous descendants, reinforcing both dynastic affirmation and political stability.
On April 1, 2023, I had the pleasure of presenting live on France Inter, alongside Dominique Farout and Bénédicte Lhoyer, the major pieces of this exhibition and the reign of Ramses II. The exchange also left room for a few anecdotes.
France Inter — Special Culture Evening (April 1, 2023): listen
Video presentation of the exhibition: watch
The exhibition brought together 180 artifacts on loan from Egypt, a collection of exceptional magnitude, including the coffin of Ramses II. Presented in Paris for the first time in nearly forty-five years, this loan was one of the highlights of the event.
This gesture took on a particular resonance.
In the 1960s, the Abu Simbel temple, threatened by the rising waters of the future Lake Nasser, was dismantled and moved block by block during an unprecedented international campaign. Later, in 1976, the sovereign's mummy was transferred to France for treatment, as part of a major scientific cooperation between France and Egypt, with which Christiane Desroches Noblecourt was closely associated.
The body was saved.
The temple was saved.
In 2023, it was the coffin that returned to Paris.
The mummy remains in Egypt today - legislation prohibits the removal of royal remains - but this return reactivated a scientific and heritage memory shared between the two countries.
The opening took place on April 6, 2023 in the presence of Ahmed Issa, Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Mostafa Waziri, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Alaa Youssef, Ambassador of Egypt to France, as well as Zahi Hawass, Egyptian archaeologist and former Minister of Antiquities.
The scientific curatorship was provided by Dominique Farout, Egyptologist and professor at the École du Louvre, with Bénédicte Lhoyer, Egyptologist and professor at the École du Louvre, as scientific advisor.
On the occasion of this exhibition, I led a guided tour for members of the French Association of Friends of the Orient. I also prepared a video presentation covering the entire route, highlighting several emblematic works, including the statue of Queen Touya, the statue of Mérenptah, the coffin of Sennedjem, the golden funerary mask of Amenemope (pharaoh of Tanis), and the sumptuous sarcophagus of Sheshonq III.
But beyond the talks and the objects, what this exhibition reveals is a machinery of power. Ramesses II not only ruled. He inscribed his name.
His title — Ousermaâtrê Setepenrê Ramessou Meryamon — sets out a royal identity grounded in cosmic truth, solar descent, and divine election. In Egyptian thought, the name is not merely a designation: it conditions survival. To multiply it, engrave it, and re-engrave it is to secure its permanence. Composed of five names, the royal titulary multiplies the symbolic and theological anchors of the sovereign.
Certain works on display bore witness to this: earlier statues reused, faces retouched, cartouches added. Monumental usurpation is not just a political gesture. It is a strategy of memory.
The battle of Kadesh sheds light on another facet of Ramesside power. Confronted with the Hittite kingdom, Ramses II did not win a decisive victory; the confrontation ends without a real winner.
But the stake is not only military. What happened on the battlefield is transformed, on temple walls, into a demonstration of sovereignty. There, the king appears alone before the enemy, supported by the gods, invincible by definition. The image corrects the event. Stone replaces testimony. This is a genuine enterprise of royal propaganda, in which monumental repetition imposes an official version of events. The reliefs at Luxor, the Ramesseum, and Abu Simbel endlessly repeat this scene.
Subsequent campaigns ultimately led to a lasting diplomatic agreement between Egypt and the Hittite world, often touted as the oldest preserved peace treaty. Thus, an indecisive confrontation becomes both a heroic model and the basis of political stability.
The exhibition also showed the sovereign builder, he too is part of this logic of eternity.
At Abu Simbel, a monumental border facing south, light penetrates twice a year to the bottom of the sanctuary, striking the divine statues and that of the king. Power is no longer content to be engraved in stone: it is aligned with the cosmic cycle.
At the Ramesseum, temple of “millions of years”, Ramses appears in Osirian form, already projected into the beyond. The ceilings display a celestial map: decans, stars, order of the sky. The reign is part of the architecture of time.
Then comes gold.
In funerary texts, gold is associated with the flesh of the gods, while their bones are said to be silver. Masks, pectorals, adornments are not luxury, but an ontological transformation of the royal body.
Gold does more than shine: it transfigures.
Even when tomb KV7 was damaged, even when the remains were moved to the hiding place of Deir el-Bahari to protect them from looting, the essential remained intact: the name.
Registered. Recognized. Pronounced.
Three millennia later, we still read it. We still pronounce it. For the ancient Egyptians, a spoken name does not die.
Ramses II therefore succeeded in what mattered most: he still moves through eternity.
He named.
He showed.
He engraved.