Medinet Habu: The Pharaoh’s Bargain with Chaos

A fortress built on the first land of creation, where a king’s victory over apocalypse was devoured by a conspiracy of the heart.

This is not just another temple.  This is a lesson in the cost of power.  It’s a story that begins at the dawn of time and ends with a prince’s face frozen in an eternal scream.

Part I: The Primordial Fortress

Ramses III did not choose this site.  He answered it.  He built his fortress-temple upon the Primordial Mound—the very first piece of land to emerge from the waters of chaos at the beginning of creation.  He wasn’t just building on sand; he was plugging his last bastion directly into the source code of the universe, channeling the power of first creation to save his kingdom from annihilation.

His enemy was the Sea Peoples—a Bronze Age apocalypse made flesh.  His victory was so desperate, so complete, it demanded a monument not of glory, but of pure survival anxiety.

Part 2: The Economy of Brutality

Walk the walls. See his “victory.”  It’s not inspiration; it’s frantic, obsessive documentation.  Piles of severed hands.  Then, a shift.  Piles of severed phalli.  Why?  Because Ramses was a shrewd, paranoid accountant of war.  He knew hands could be faked.  But a circumcised penis from an uncircumcised Libyan or Sea Peoples enemy?  That was irrefutable, grotesque proof.  This is the level of brutal pragmatism we’re dealing with.  A king who trusted nothing, not even his own soldiers’ tally of the dead.

This is part of the real Egypt I want to show you—not to shock you, but to introduce you to the other aspects of Egypt that living here has shown me.  And after a day taking in stories like Medinet Habu (Mortuary Temple of Ramses III), you need a place to just… process it all.  That’s what Mara House can do—it’s not a fancy international hotel that makes you forget where you are.  It’s a boutique hotel that reminds you:  you’re still in Egypt—the decor, the atmosphere all keep you connected.  It’s the kind of place where you can sit with a cup of tea and let everything you’ve seen during your day truly sink in—and talk to us about it.

Part 3: The Bargain with a Dark God

To fight absolute chaos, Ramses III did the unthinkable: using the power of the ancient Heka magic he publicly invoked the master of it.  Here, at Medinet Habu, he carved images of Set (Seth)—the god of storms, violence, and isolation—in a protective role.  This was heresy to some, genius to others.  Set was the murderer of Osiris, a dangerous, untamable force.  But he was also power in its rawest form.  Ramses wasn’t worshipping evil; he was making a desperate bargain to harness the hurricane to save the city.

This is a bargain I understand.  When I first came to Egypt, I hated confrontation.   I saw anger as a failure.  Then I saw Egyptian women, who hold the real power in the home, wield their anger like a scalpel—precise, terrifying, and effective.  They taught me that anger, unleashed, is power.  I learned to shout, to let the storm out.

But a storm is wild.  It causes collateral damage.  The real lesson, the one Pharaoh Seti I somehow knew when he faced Set and declared “I will not serve!”, came next: to sheath it.  To learn to control the anger before it controlled me.  To summon that fierce, physical energy only when absolutely needed—to command the storm within, not to serve it.

Ramses III tried to use Set’s chaotic power.  But he could not command it.  He was consumed by it.

👉 Explore all my transformative travel stories from Egypt

Part 4: The Lioness at the Gate

Before you even reach the tales of apocalypse and betrayal, a silent sentinel waits just inside the gateway.  Twin statues of Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess, stand guard, one on either side of the passageway, with an aura of formidable power.  It’s a place my grandson, a young explorer in his own right, couldn’t wait to document—a familiar face in a formidable fortress.

But her presence here is no accident.  Ramses III, the paranoid king who bargained with the chaotic god Set, would never leave his fortress’s entrance undefended. Sekhmet was his ultimate strategic choice.

She is the paradox of divine power: the goddess who can unleash a devastating plague with a breath, yet who is also the master physician, the only one who can cure it.  For a king who had just survived a world-ending invasion, this dual nature was precisely what he needed.

By placing Sekhmet at the threshold, Ramses III wasn’t just asking for protection.  He was performing a symbolic act of apotropaic magic—warding off evil.  He was channeling her destructive potential outward, toward any enemy who dared approach, while harnessing her healing power inward, to safeguard the temple’s sacred interior and, by extension, the soul of Egypt itself.

She is the divine protector, the scorching eye of the sun, hired to stand guard over a kingdom’s fragile victory.  She is a final, fierce warning to any force, seen or unseen, that wishes this place harm.

You might enjoy delving further into the magic of Heka with my article on it – Heka: The Ancient Egyptian Magic That Still Shapes How We See, Behave, and Believe

Part 5: The Betrayal Within the Walls

The greatest threat was never the enemy outside.  It was the chaos within.

In the perfumed rooms of his own harem, a lesser wife, Tiye, envied the heir born to a more senior queen.  She plotted with court officials to murder Ramses III during the lavish Heb-Sed festival.  They almost succeeded, slashing his throat so deeply that his mummy, discovered millennia later, was still wrapped in the linen bandages applied by the ancient embalmers.

The coup failed.  The conspirators were put on trial in a brutal show of force.  But the truth was laid bare: the king who had harnessed chaos to save a nation could not control it in his own house.

And this kind of story—of power, ambition, and family drama—isn’t just ancient history.  If the story of Ramses grabs your attention – so will the stories that weave the fabric of the modern era egyptian dynasty founded by Muhammad Ali of Kavala, whose extensive collection of family photos adorn the walls at Mara House

Dive deeper in the story of the screaming mummy

Part 6: The Echo in the Stone

Ramses III tried to use Set’s chaotic power.  But unlike the pharaoh Seti I a generation before—who, the mystic Egyptologist Omm Sety revealed, was brought face-to-face with Set and shouted “I will not serve!”—Ramses III could not command it.  He was consumed by it.

This is the heavy silence that hangs over Medinet Habu.  It’s the energy that makes visitors—like a man I once hosted at Mara House—break down in tears at the gate, overwhelmed by a sadness they cannot name.  It is the residue of a failed bargain, a family tragedy, and a warning etched into stone: you cannot harness the storm without risking being destroyed by it.

This temple doesn’t ask for your worship.  It asks if you can feel the weight of that choice.  It asks if you can stand on the Primordial Mound, inside a fortress against the apocalypse, and hear the echo of a scream that has lasted 3,000 years.

I won’t promise you’ll feel this. I can’t.  But I can promise I will bring you here with a great guide and we create the conditions for the magic to happen, if you are ready to see it.  This is the intention behind all the journeys I design.

Ready to step inside the stories?  Medinet Habu is just one of the stops on our West Bank tour  and my bookings are direct via my email which is maraegypt@gmail.com

Continue Exploring the Medinet Habu Series:

• The People: Step into the daily life before the fall in The Palace of Shadows: The Family of Ramses III

• The Place: Take a sensory walk through the fortress itself in Walking Through the Nerve Center: A Guide to Medinet Habu’s Three Faces

• The Event: Uncover the dark conclusion in The Harem Conspiracy & The Screaming Mummy

And if you are still in the planning stage and might even think of coming on one of my longer tours in Egypt – just have a look at my complete range of offerings here