Ramesses II

Ramesses II, often called Ramesses the Great, was a pharaoh of Egypt's Nineteenth Dynasty whose sixty six year reign is among the longest and best documented of the New Kingdom. He fought the Hittite empire to a standstill at the Battle of Kadesh around 1274 BCE, an engagement he had recorded on temple walls as a personal triumph even though the campaign itself ended inconclusively, and the peace treaty he later concluded with the Hittite king Hattusili III, preserved in both Egyptian and Hittite versions, is the oldest surviving international peace treaty. He undertook one of the most extensive building programmes of any pharaoh, including the rock temples of Abu Simbel and the hypostyle hall at Karnak, and fathered a large number of children through several principal wives, most famously Nefertari. Modern chronology places his death around 1213 BCE, after which he was succeeded by his thirteenth son, Merneptah, most of his older sons having predeceased him.