Ramesses I

In an amazing story, the mummy of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses I spent over a century in a museum just north of the Canadian end of the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls, but without anyone knowing who he was.

On a number of occasions, I visited this museum. It used to be called simply the Niagara Falls Museum, but is no longer there:

http://www.nflibrary.ca/nfplindex/show.asp?id=97912&b=1

One of the first exhibits that one saw in the museum was a mummy from Egypt, but no identification as to who it was. It was later determined who the mummy was, and it turns out that we were in the presence of royalty. The mummy has since been given back to Egypt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_I#/media/File:StatueHeadOfParamessu-TitledFrontalView-RamessesI_MuseumOfFineArtsBoston.png

Ramesses I was not born into royalty. Pharaoh Horemheb was childless and so chose Ramesses I as his successor. This began the Nineteenth Dynasty, in which Egypt would become increasingly powerful. A new rival was emerging, the Hittites, and after some battles the two would undertake what is believed to be the world's first peace treaty. Ramesses I ruled around 1290 BC. He was old when he took power, and his reign is believed to have been less then two years. He probably died suddenly because his tomb shows signs of having been unfinished.

Ramesses I ruled in what is called the New Kingdom. The history of Ancient Egypt is divided into the Old, Middle and, New Kingdoms, with Intermediate Periods in between. The kingdoms were long periods of stability, the Intermediate Periods in between were times of less stability. The New Kingdom began with the removal of invaders, known as Hyksos, from Egypt.

Ramesses I was followed as pharaoh by his son, Seti, and then his very famous grandson, Ramesses II, who was one of the greatest of pharaohs. None of these pharaohs was buried in a pyramid. By the time of Ramesses I, the heyday of the pyramids was over a thousand years in the past. It was the Old Kingdom which produced the three pyramids of Giza.

Pharaohs at the time of Ramesses I were buried in much simpler, and less-expensive, tombs in what is known as the Valley of the Kings. King Tut, who seems to have died as a teenager and who is well-known only because ancient grave robbers never found his tomb, was also buried in the Valley of the Kings.

By the way, the Bible story of the Hebrews being at first welcomed, but later made into slaves in Egypt, fits well with what we now know of it's history. The unnamed pharaoh who welcomed and promoted Joseph could have been one of the Hyksos rulers, who had, like the Hebrews, originated from Canaan. But then a pharaoh arose who knew nothing about Joseph, and made the Hebrew settlers, who had been favored by the Hyksos rulers, into slaves. This took place after the Egyptians had rebelled against Hyksos rule, and drove them out, and were naturally wary of these other settlers from the east, who the Hyksos had allowed in.

Ramesses I, like other pharaohs around this time, contributed to building of the temple complex of Karnak, located in the modern city of Luxor. This is in the south of Egypt, far from the Pyramids of Giza.

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The following scenes are of the Valley of the Kings, across the Nile River from the temple complex at Karnak, where so many pharaohs were buried after the expensive pyramid tombs of the Old Kingdom went out of style. The temple with all of the columns is that of Hatshepsut, a queen who ruled nearly two hundred years before the time of Ramesses I.

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Hampton Court Palace And The King James Bible

Hampton Court Palace, on the southwestern edge of London, is another of the red brick palaces built by Henry VIII (The Eighth). The other remaining example of these palaces is St. James, in central London. Henry VIII had three children that reigned after him, Edward VI, Mary I and, Elizabeth I. Henry VIII had broken with the Catholic Church, bringing England onto the Protestant side during the Reformation.

The Reformation, a consequence of the Renaissance, was brought about by original versions of the Bible becoming available in the west. Scholars had moved west, carrying many ancient texts with them, when the Byzantine Empire was conquered by the Ottomans. New translations of the Bible appeared regularly as the invention of the printing press ensured that anyone could now read the Bible for themselves, in their own language.

John Wycliffe, sometimes referred to as "The Morning Star of the Reformation", was the first to translate the Bible into English, in handwritten form before the development of the printing press. William Tyndale translated the first English printed version, but did not translate the entire Bible.

There appeared the Coverdale Bible, the Matthews Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible and, the Bishops Bible. The competition between versions of the Bible revolved around not so much the words of the Bible itself as the margin notes that were added to the Bible.

Henry VIII's daughter, Mary I, tried to bring England back to Catholicism by force. Puritans set up a printing operation in exile in Geneva, and introduced the very popular Geneva Bible, sometimes referred to as the "Breeches Bible".

After Mary I died another daughter of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, became queen and restored the Reformation while trying to bring peace by compromise with Catholics. The result was the Anglican Church and the Bishops Bible. We can see today how the Anglican Church was the result of such an attempt at Puritan-Catholic compromise in how it still tends to be divided into a "high church", representing the Catholic side, and a "low church", representing the Puritan side.

The Bishops Bible was Elizabeth I's Anglican Bible. But it never gained popular acceptance. The few remaining copies of the Bishops Bible seem to have barely been used.

Elizabeth I was the last of the House of Tudor. She died childless and was followed by her nearest living relative, who happened to be King James of Scotland. He also thus became the King of England. This was a new dynasty so the first Stuart King of England was James I. This began the personal union with England and Scotland being ruled by the same king, the "Union of the Crowns", but it would be another century before they would actually unite as one country.

The Puritans, in disagreement with the Anglican Church because they wanted no compromise at all with Catholicism, hoped that James I would listen to them. He did, although he did not sympathize with the Puritans as much as they had hoped. But James I did agree that a new translation of the Bible was called for.

A conference was held and teams of scholars were appointed for the necessary translation of the Bible. It was reminiscent of the Septuagint, when the Hebrew Scriptures was translated into Greek for the Jewish community in Alexandria, many of whom were forgetting how to speak Hebrew. The conference took place at a palace that had been built by Henry VIII, Hampton Court Palace. Ironically, the palace was originally intended for a cardinal, but that was changed upon arrival of the Reformation.

The result was the publication, in 1611, of the King James or Authorized version of the Bible. Most of the phrases of William Tyndale, in the parts of the Bible that he translated, were retained in the King James Version. This is the familiar old Bible with the archaic wording such as "thee" and "thou". In 1769, another edition standardized spelling and punctuation.

The King James Bible was not an immediate success. It was decades before it replaced the Geneva Bible, and was plagued with printing errors in it's early days. But the Geneva Bible was considered as the Bible of the Puritans and when they fell increasingly out of favor, the King James Bible took over because it was seen as the Bible of reconciliation.

This is the most printed book ever, in the English language. It was by far the dominant English-language Bible for at least 250 years, from 1700-1950 when versions in "modern" language began to be printed. The King James Bible had more influence on the language than Shakespeare did. Even today, there is a "King James Only Movement" in Christianity, that will only use the King James Bible.

My first Bible, that I used to take to school when there was psalm-reading there, was a King James Version (often abbreviated as KJV). Years later, when I started to really study the Bible for myself, it was with another King James Version.

There are over 200 of what are referred to as King James Idioms. These are phrases that were introduced into the language by the King James Bible, and are all around us today. Here is a list of some of these phrases, that most people use without having any idea of how they got into the language. 

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/feb/18/phrases-king-james-bible

Here is Hampton Court Palace, where the conference that led to the King James Bible was held.

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