Ramses III was able to fight off the Sea Peoples, but not an assassination plot by a jealous secondary queen in his harem. In 1177 B.C., Ramses III and the Egyptian navy successfully repelled the second massive Sea Peoples invasion, and the pharaoh memorialized the victory on the walls of his temple and tomb complex in Medinet Habu.īut the celebration was short-lived, says Eric Cline, an archaeologist and historian of the Bronze Age, who wrote 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Marauding fleets of Sea Peoples may have attacked Egypt at least twice during the reigns of Merenptah and Ramses III. The precise identity of the Sea Peoples is still unknown, but most scholars believe they were an ethnically diverse band of refugees from the western Mediterranean displaced by drought and famine, who came east looking for new lands to conquer and inhabit. His reign coincided with one of the most turbulent and challenging periods in ancient Mediterranean history, known as the invasion of the “Sea Peoples.” Ramses III ruled Egypt for 31 years and is widely considered the last of the “great” pharaohs. Ramses' Temple at Abu Simbel Ramses III, the Last Great Egyptian Pharaoh