Olympic Medals, Social Identity, and Ramses The Great – Yes, There Is A Connection
I’ve been pondering something about the Olympic Games following a conversation at a party at a friend’s house. During the course of the night, we touched on various topics and naturally at one point, the subject of the Olympic Games came up. As one would expect, almost everyone got rather excited as we talked about our country’s surge in medals and the hopes for more in the upcoming days. I say almost everyone as my friend’s wife wasn’t as interested, interjecting at one point that she couldn’t see why everyone was getting excited over sporting events they normally don’t even watch, something she could attest to being the case with her husband. I can’t remember who said it, but I do recall hearing that reply that often comes up to address this kind of query – people do because it’s the Olympics.
While the conversation did continue for awhile longer on the Olympics before veering into the next topic du jour, I must admit that one question and the typical reply had me lost in thought. Why DO we watch the Olympics with such fervour? Why is it that every four years, we’ll willingly watch shot put, water polo, or gymnastics if there’s a chance our country will win a medal? And why does that medal matter so much to us, especially as it’s being won by people we don’t even know? I found the answer to all this back in Ancient Egypt during the reign of Ramses II, most often known as Ramses The Great. Don’t believe me? Well, read on.
Ramses II is probably one of the most renowned pharaohs from Ancient Egypt, in part due to the large number of massive temples and other structures built in his honour. As was the case with the other rulers of Ancient Egypt, Ramses’ constructions were designed to glorify and immortalize his reign over his people, serving as records of his accomplishments as the Ruler of the Two Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt. Additionally, these works served toward the deification of the pharaoh, an important factor that helped him maintain control and order over his expansive domain, if not also his sphere of influence on the international front.
Two noteworthy temple constructions of Ramses, in relation to this discussion, are the Ramasseum and the temple at Abu Simbel. Both of these works contain within them wall reliefs that tell the story of the Battle of Kadesh. Kadesh was a city-state located in what is now modern-day Syria which during the reign of Ramses’ father, Seti I, fell to their long-time foes, the Hittites. In the fifth year of his reign, Ramses set out northward with his army to recapture this city-state and reassert Egypt’s control over the area. Along the way, Ramses met up with two nomads who told him that the Hittite king, Muwatallis, had headed north of Kadesh with his army. Based on the information given by these nomads, Ramses headed directly toward Kadesh and set up camp to prepare his attack on the fortified city. However, what Ramses didn’t know was that these nomads were actually Hittite spies that were sent to lure Ramses and his army into a trap, a ploy Ramses soon learned about upon the capture of two Hittite scouts outside his camp. But before Ramses could do anything about this revelation, his camp was attacked by Muwatallis’ army. Suffering heavy casualties from the attack, Ramses and his Egyptian army were about to be defeated when the arrival of an Egyptian reserve force caught the Hittites off-guard and Ramses was able to regroup his forces leading to an eventual stalemate, with the Hittites still firmly in control of Kadesh.
And yet, if we look at the inscriptions written in the wall reliefs of these temples Ramses had built, he declares he won a great victory in the Battle of Kadesh. And while he admits in this Egyptian retelling that their forces were at one point overwhelmed, he actually blames his soldiers for this, claiming that they abandoned him out of fear of the enemy and that it was only due to his strength as pharaoh and warrior, and his inherent link to the state god Amun, that he was able to keep the Hittite forces at bay until reinforcements could arrive to aid Ramses in his fight. Certainly, it is difficult to see what this great victory that Ramses is claiming in the Battle of Kadesh could be, considering how he not only failed in his objective to recapture Kadesh, but also how the Hittites afterwards were able to push further south into Egyptian territory and claim it as now being part of the Hittite kingdom. And the only positive development that really came out of this battle for Ramses and Egypt happened sixteen years later, when the Egyptian and Hittite kingdoms signed the Kadesh Agreement, the first international peace treaty in human written history, a replica of which now hangs appropriately enough in the headquarters of the United Nations.
While it’s easy to just dismiss this retelling as that of an egotistical personality, let’s remember what the purpose of these works are. These are not supposed to be historically accurate documents; rather, they are at their most basic propaganda tools meant to ensure that the populace looks favourably on the pharaoh and his institutions. In the case of Ramses’ description in these reliefs of the Battle of Kadesh, what he’s basically trying to do is present to his people the idea that they are being ruled by a powerful and cunning warrior, a ruler who garners the support of their national deity. His descriptions of how the Hittite forces fell under his chariot serves to create the impression of Egyptian dominance as a way to ensure a perpetuation of pride and reverence for the pharaoh among the average Egyptians; that he has made sure their kingdom is still feared or envied by others in the region. Remember that in this ancient civilization, the only Egyptians who ever left the kingdom were the pharaoh and his soldiers. As such, the average ancient Egyptian had to rely on these tellings of outside events to gain an understanding of how their small part of the world measured up against others, albeit in a rather skewed fashion. In showing himself as the winner in these battles, Ramses not only secures the loyalty of the common people to his kingship, but he motivates the population to be willing participants in his plans for the kingdom under the banner of serving a winner.
And that is what the awarding of those Olympic medals to our fellow nationals do to all of us – it instills in us a sense of national pride that compared to other nations, we are the better one. And this is an important psychological part of our humanity – we all are driven by a desire to be a part of a winning team. The fact that we may not know the athlete or even watch the sport on a regular basis becomes inconsequential because we share the bond of a common nationality and so their win demonstrates to the world that we live in a winning country. Sure, it’d be nice to think that we’d put priority on who has the best education system or health care system. But the reality is that those are social establishments that we expect to be functional – we expect our children to gain proper education that will allow them to contribute and further build on our society’s achievements; when we are in need of medical help, we expect to get adequate medical treatment with minimal delay and cost. And while we will complain or be angered when we hear how poorly educated our children are compared to other nations, or how long and/or expensive medical treatments are here compared to elsewhere, no one’s expecting their country to get a gold medal when they do get these social institutions to work.
Again, looking to Ancient Egypt, it wasn’t the advancements in the medical or scientific fields made under the pharaoh’s watch that were heralded as being the envy of their neighbours and enemies. And this was a civilization that created the Pyramids at Giza, an engineering marvel in its own right. Instead, it was the physical might of their kingdom that was paraded around and glorified, an approach that carried on into Ancient Greece, Rome and onwards. Ramses understood that he couldn’t sell his people that they were living in the best kingdom because their basic needs were being met – the only way he could convince his people that their kingdom was the envy of the world was by claiming that no nation could beat them on the battlefield; that on that turf, they were the winners.
As many corporate executives know, success is difficult to achieve if your employees are not engaged in the company, if they don’t take the company’s successes and treat them as their own. The same is true for countries and their citizens – it is difficult to motivate your populace to being positive contributors to your society, to aid in making changes to help better the living conditions, if they feel like their country is not so great or falling apart. I’m sure we’ve all had that moment in our lives where we see something go wrong in our country and we just shrug our shoulders in resignation that it’s just another sign of our society going downhill. And yet, when we see that we are the envy of other nations, suddenly we’re more engaged and determined to not let things slide and lose that prized spot on the world stage. Without question, there is an inherent need in humans to feel like we belong to a group of people, and there’s no greater pull than the opportunity to belong to what others perceive as a winning team.
And that’s why I think it matters so much when our respective nation wins an Olympic medal – it serves as evidence to the rest of the world that this social grouping we belong to is a winning one. And while it’s a nice thought to think that our society should put more emphasis on the contributions of those who help to build its development, the reality is that humans have always put a far greater emphasis on physical accomplishments over intellectual ones. And as Ramses proved, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that since it can have a significant impact in how people perceive their society and can be a powerful motivator to encourage the populace to actively participate and build on the successes of their fellow denizens.
And if a society can accomplish that, there can be no question about who the winner will be.
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