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The entry in the Concise Biographical Dictionary is brief - it states only that Rameses VIII is "one of a number of ancient pharaohs about whom nothing is known".
 
This is not to do justice to him. We know, after all, that he wasn't Rameses VII or Rameses IX, he wasn't a bird, or a bush, or a tree. We know that he wasn't any of us now alive on earth.
 
We know he was of a royal lineage in ancient Egypt, that he must have squinted in Egyptian sun. He ate figs, ate fish, was undoubtedly worshipped by multitudes - for a little while, at least.
 
We don't know for certain that on the day of his nineteenth birthday, having feasted, and around half-past two, he made love to a lovely dark-eyed maiden in the palace gardens, until the rouge ran down his painted cheeks, but I for one think it highly probable.
 
It is nonetheless true that he is now an enigma, and may even have been an enigma in his time. All monuments to him, it appears, are lost.
 
People have said that I am enigmatic, and this may well also be true. In this I feel much akin to Rameses VIII. I too belong to history, though, like him, not to one of its set-pieces, but its lacunae.
 
It is my fate perhaps to be included in a future edition of the Concise Biographical Dictionary, along with many others, maybe hundreds and hundreds of years from now.
 
I shall be there, Roger Caldwell, "one of a number of ancient poets about whom nothing is known".
 
Then there will maybe be an addendum: "It is believed that he wrote a poem about Rameses VIII, about whom also nothing is known. The poem is lost".