The aim of Professor Kenneth Kitchen’s magisterial Ramesside Inscriptions is simple—to make available the principal historical and biographical texts of the Ramesside age (c.1300–1070 bc) in a comprehensive, compact and accurate edition that should be comprehensive but handy to use. It does not, however, include purely literary, ritual and funerary texts.

This book presents full translations for the second half of the documentation from the long, prosperous and relatively well-sourced reign of Ramesses II (c.1279–1213 bc), as published in hieroglyphic (original texts and transcriptions) in Ramesside Inscriptions (KRI), volume III. The previous volume (II) made available the ‘official’ and royal records issued or engraved in the king’s name, personifying (as he did) the effective government of ancient Egypt for his time. Here, by contrast, we have records that concern primarily, or were left us by, the king’s subjects at all levels of society, from viziers and viceroys at the head of the royal administration (along with priesthoods and the military) down through society’s echelons to the workmen who laboured in the royal tombs in Western Thebes (based in Deir el-Medina village) and the humble folk that served them.

First published in 2000 by Wiley-Blackwell (Oxford-New Malden), this volume has been re-designed and re-printed as a handsome, paperback edition.