Ramesses VI Nebmaatre-Meryamun (sometimes written Ramses or Rameses, also known under his princely name of Amenherkhepshef C[note 1]) was the fifth ruler of the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt.

In the first two years after his coronation, Ramesses VI stopped frequent raids by Libyan or Egyptian marauders in Upper Egypt and buried his predecessor in what is now an unknown tomb of the Theban necropolis.

The Egyptologist Amin Amer characterises Ramesses VI as "a king who wished to pose as a great pharaoh in an age of unrest and decline".

[5] This filiation is established beyond doubt by a large relief found in the portico[4] of the Medinet Habu temple of Ramesses III known as the "Procession of the Princes".

[note 2][9] The relief seems to have originally been executed when Ramesses VI was still a young prince, as he is shown wearing the sidelock of youth used to denote childhood.

[20] Prince Amenherkhepshef died before his father and was buried in tomb KV13 in the Valley of the Kings, originally built for Chancellor Bay, an important official of the late Nineteenth Dynasty.

[38] In 1977, the Egyptologists Edward F. Wente and Charles van Siclen were the first to propose, upon reviewing the chronology of the New Kingdom period, that Ramesses VI lived into his eighth year of reign.

[41] Ramesses VI's eighth year on the throne may also be mentioned in Theban graffito 1860a, which names the then serving High Priest of Amun, Ramessesnakht.

[1] This "enemy" was rumoured to have pillaged and burned the locality of Per-Nebyt[note 10] and the chief of the Medjay of Thebes—essentially the police—ordered the workmen to remain idle and watch the king's tomb.

[note 12][51][55] Following this, the community of workers at Deir el-Medina went into gradual decline, the settlement being finally abandoned in the subsequent Twenty-first Dynasty.

The papyrus indicates that the statue was made of two essences of painted wood and clay, showing pharaoh wearing a golden loincloth, a crown of lapis-lazuli and precious stones, a uraeus of gold and sandals of electrum.

[64] The letter seems to have been received favourably by the king, as the author's grandson is known to have held the title of "High Priest of Nebmaatre [Ramesses VI], Beloved of Amun".

[67] Ramesses VI was so satisfied with this deed that he commanded his Viceroy of Kush "Give the two silver vessels of ointment of gums, to the deputy [Penne]".

[68][69] While few of Ramesses VI's activities are known in details, he is well attested by numerous reliefs, inscriptions, statues and minor finds from Karnak, Koptos and Heliopolis.

[note 14][29][71] Over the period spanning the reigns of Ramesses VI, VII and VIII, prices of basic commodities, in particular grain, rose sharply.

[76] A possible evidence for genuine architectural works on Ramesses VI's behalf is found in Memphis, where an inscription on a granite gateway cornice of the temple of Ptah claims that he erected a great pylon of fine stone.

[77] Overall, the Egyptologist Amin Amer characterises Ramesses VI as "a king who wished to pose as a great pharaoh in an age of unrest and decline".

[4] If fact, Ramessesnakht most likely oversaw the construction of the funerary building of Iset in the tomb complex K93.12,[83] and while, as the Egyptologist Daniel Polz puts it, "he and his relatives were the most powerful individuals in Egypt at the end of the Twentieth Dynasty", his activities were not directed against royal interests.

[83] Ramessesnakht often attended the distribution of supplies to workmen and controlled much of the activity connected with the construction of the king's tomb, possibly because the treasury of the high-priest of Amun was now at least partially funding these works.

[85] Ramessesnakht's monument, in Dra' Abu el-Naga', reused an earlier building dating back to the Seventeenth or Eighteenth Dynasty and was refurbished to show the political and economic standing of its owner.

[83] This effectively made Thebes into the religious capital of Egypt as well as an administrative one on a par with its northern counterpart,[83] laying the foundations for the rise of the Twenty-first Dynasty under Herihor and Pinedjem I, 50 to 70 years later.

He is the last king of the New Kingdom period whose name is attested on inscribed wall fragments as well as two pillars of the temple of Hathor[87] of the Serabit el-Khadim in Sinai,[88][4] where he sent expeditions to mine copper ore.[29] Egypt may nonetheless still have wielded some sort of influence or at least still had some connections with the remnants of its empire in the Levant,[29] as suggested by the base of a fragmented bronze statue of Ramesses VI discovered in Megiddo in Canaan,[89][90][91] and a scarab of his from Alalakh on the coast in southern Anatolia.

[note 17][79] Egyptian presence in Canaan was terminated during or soon after Ramesses VI's rule,[92][93] with the last garrisons leaving southern and western Palestine around the time,[94] and the frontier between Egypt and abroad returning to a fortified line joining the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.

[79] A 2017 archaeological study reached the same conclusion, namely that Ramesses VI's reign is the terminus post quem for the presence of the Egyptian military in Jaffa, which was twice destroyed around this time period.

[98] The Egyptian control of Nubia seems to have been much firmer at the time, owing either to the advanced Egyptianisation of the local population[99] or to the economic importance of this region.

[29] Ramesses VI's mummy was subsequently moved to the tomb KV35 of Amenhotep II during the reign of Pinedjem of the early Twenty-First Dynasty,[108] where it was discovered in 1898 by Victor Loret.

[110] In 1898, Georges Émile Jules Daressy cleared KV9, which had remained opened since antiquity, uncovering fragments of a large granite box as well as numerous pieces of Ramesses VI's mummiform stone sarcophagus, the face of which is now in the British Museum.