Menmaatre Seti I (1312-1298 B.C.) is among the greatest figures of the royal history of the Double-Country. The son of Ramesses I, founder of the 19th Dynasty, he was Ramesses II's father and the first of this line of absolutist pharaohs who succeeded each other on the throne until the extinction of the 20th Dynasty, when Ramesses XI who, unable to live up to the heavy legacy, died miserably in 1085 B.C.
In fact, Seti I was not born to power; Horemheb, the last of the 18th Dynasty was childless and seems to have singled him out from others because of his intelligence and determination; worried, however, about imposing too brilliant a candidate on Egypt and the others, whom they certainly would have blocked, he had the subtlety to name Seti's father, Ramesses, a career general from Tanis, then old and well past his prime. The high clergy and the court approved of this choice, certain that they would be able to control a pharaoh without ambition or motivation. When he died two years later and was succeeded by his son, Seti, they finally came to realize that Horemheb had given them their master.
Never fruitlessly considering reconquering the huge Asian empire which Pharaoh Thutmosis II had carved out two centuries earlier, and thus implicitly admitting that his immediate predecessors' negligence, notably that of Akhenaten, had irremediably destroyed Egypt's chances in Asia Minor and left the Hittites as masters of the field, Seti limited his actions to clean-up campaigns within the borders of the kingdoms which had remained loyal to his cause. In so doing, he implacably defeated the revolting Bedouins in southern Palestine, quelled a coalition of Canaanite princes, mysteriously supported by the Hittites and re-established his authority as far north as Tyre.
Inside his kingdom, Seti proved to be a wise and moderate administrator, a pharaoh with clear goals, who knew how to make people forget the errors of the preceding reigns; Egypt soon forgot that it had narrowly escaped civil war.
Concerned about restoring the royal image to its former glory, Seti was also a great builder; he knew that stone had a longer memory than man. He was responsible for some of the most dazzling achievements in all of Egyptian history, notably the hypostyle hall of the Great Temple of Amon in Karnak, which has remained unchallenged down through the ages. A number of sanctuaries in Middle and Upper Egypt bear his cartouche, proof that he was dedicated to their restoration, enlargement and embellishment. Finally reflecting on his own eternal destiny, he ordered the largest underground tomb ever seen and erected a funerary temple at a site called Gournah, between the fertile lands and the desert; it was, no doubt, a reflection of his own majestic image; unfortunately, ill-used by time and man, pillaged by those who used its blocks to their own ends, it is now nothing more than a hypostyle hall, a vestibule and an open pronaos in the Western desert. As if to gain a foothold in Osiris' kingdom, Seti added his Abydosian foundations to his tomb and his temple.