Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Usurpation was the practice by some Egyptian rulers of replacing the names of predecessors with their own on monuments such as temple reliefs and royal statuary. Usurpation was often carried out in connection with the damnatio memoriae of pharaohs such as Hatshepsut and Tutankhamen. Ramesses II usurped dozens of monuments of various Middle and New Kingdom predecessors, not to defame them but to promote his own kingship. In the later Ramesside Period, usurpation was again linked to damnatio memoriae. Usurpation for either reason continued in the Saite Period and, sporadically, into Ptolemaic and Roman times.