When did Ramesses the 2nd die?

Answer 1

The conventional or official date for Ramses II (reigned 1304-1237 B.C.) is now seriously questioned as a result of studies into the re-organisation of Egyptian chronology. Officially, this man was the third ruler of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt. The first ruler of this dynasty, "Ramesses I", ruled for one year. This man seems to have been an appointed official tasked with implementing a new constitution. It is now looking much more likely that the experiment Herodotus reported on, "The Twelve Governors of Egypt" is the source for "Ramesses I". Appointed by "Ramesses I", these governors ruled Egypt just a couple of centuries before Herodotus arrived in Egypt not 800 years before his time. In the re-construction, it is not clear if Herodotus's twelve governors reigned for a few years before the start of the 19th dynasty (circa 680 BC), or later. However, at the moment, we assume these 'twelve ramessides' ruled Egypt just prior to Sety's establishment of his '19th' dynasty. As Herodotus says, unhappy with the failure of kings, the Egyptians tried other forms of government in the 7th century BC. After the Assyrians, Carthaginians and Ethiopians invaded or conquered Egypt, a domestic elite, or a regime appointed by the Assyrians, managed to re-gain independence around 670 BC. The initial experiment seems to have been to appoint twelve governors as rulers of different districts of Egypt. It was probably an experiment in decentralisation. But it failed. Thus a general in the army, Psammetichus or Seti-Ptah-Maat overthrew these governors according to Herodotus. This is probably how the 19th dynasty emerged. Later compilers of the king lists, or the ramessides themselves, probably referred to "Ramesses" or The Moses of Ra as the entity to represent the twelve governors. That is why just one year is ascribed to him. Ramesses I is purely a representative entry in a king-list. Thus Sety (or Seti) was installed king of Egypt in a new dynasty in circa 670 BC. This dynasty is labelled the 19th since it followed the 18th. But all these labels are misleading because there were probably only about 8 dynasties that ruled all Egypt or Egypt and Ethiopia. National or supra-national dynasties should be distinguished from dynasties of regional rulers and it is not at all clear Egyptologists in fact do this. Ramesses II was therefore the second real king of the "19th" dynasty but the first to take the title "Ramesses". Three or four of his sons, including the infamous Merneptah Baenre Meriamun Hotephir-maat, inscriber of the Israel Stele which said, "Israel's seed is destroyed; the Land razed to the ground," also reigned before another general overthrew this dynasty. This general, probably "Amasis", started another dynasty taking the title Ramesses III. Later archivists and our modern Egyptologists then placed the other 'ramessides' or original governors in a sequence after Ramesses III to give about twelve in all. However, they were contemporaries not consecutive and probably ruled Egypt a few decades before Ramesses III who took over after Merneptah, last son of Ramesses II to rule. Thus, after re-organising the dynastic structure of ancient Egypt by using Merneptah's statement about Israel as an anchor or chronological land-mark to date him at 586 BC not 1210 BC, we get a new date for the death of Ramesses II, or Merneptah's father. Ramesses II therefore died about 610 BC.

Answer 2

born 1279 - died 1213 BC.