The Ramesseum is the memorial temple (or mortuary temple) of Pharaoh Ramesses II ("Ramesses the Great"). It is located in the Theban Necropolis in Upper Egypt, on the west of the River Nile, across from the modern city of Luxor.

It is the second largest temple in Egypt, occupying an area of .

It was originally called the House of millions of years of Usermaatra-setepenra that unites with Thebes-the-city in the domain of Amun. Usermaatra-setepenra was the prenomen of Ramesses II.

History

Ramesses II modified, usurped, or constructed many buildings from the ground up, and the most splendid of these, in accordance with New Kingdom royal burial practices, would have been his memorial temple: a place of worship dedicated to pharaoh, god on earth, where his memory would have been kept alive after his death. Surviving records indicate that work on the project began shortly after the start of his reign and continued for 20 years.

The design of Ramesses's mortuary temple adheres to the standard canons of New Kingdom temple architecture. Oriented northwest and southeast, the temple itself comprised two stone pylons (gateways, some wide), one after the other, each leading into a courtyard. Beyond the second courtyard, at the centre of the complex, was a covered 48-column hypostyle hall, surrounding the inner sanctuary. An enormous pylon stood before the first court, with the royal palace at the left and the gigantic statue of the king looming up at the back. As was customary, the pylons and outer walls were decorated with scenes commemorating the pharaoh's military victories and leaving due record of his dedication to, and kinship with, the gods. In Ramesses's case, much importance is placed on the Battle of Kadesh (ca. 1274 BC); more intriguingly, however, one block atop the first pylon records his pillaging, in the eighth year of his reign, a city called "Shalem", which may or may not have been Jerusalem. The scenes of the great pharaoh and his army triumphing over the Hittite forces fleeing before Kadesh, as portrayed in the canons of the "epic poem of Pentaur", can still be seen on the pylon.

This is all standard fare for a temple of its kind built at that time. Leaving aside the escalation of scale – whereby each successive New Kingdom pharaoh strove to outdo his predecessors in volume and scope – the Ramesseum is largely cast in the same mould as the ruined temple of Amenhotep III that stood behind the "Colossi of Memnon" a kilometre or so away, and Ramesses III's Medinet Habu which closely followed the plan of the Ramesseum. Instead, the significance that the Ramesseum enjoys today owes more to the time and manner of its rediscovery by Europeans.

Description

thumb|Plan of the Ramesseum

First courtyard

The Ramesseum was entered through a Pylon which led to the first courtyard. At its rear stood a pair of colossal statues, which flanked the second pylon. The larger of the two was called "Sun of the princes" and represented Ramesses, the smaller one his mother Tuya.

Second courtyard

thumb|The "other" granite head displayed in front of [[Osiris statues]]

Remains of the second court include part of the internal façade of the pylon and a portion of the Osiride portico on the right. Thirty-nine out of the forty-eight columns in the great hypostyle hall, which is , still stand in the central rows. They are decorated with the usual scenes of the king before various gods. Part of the ceiling, decorated with gold stars on a blue, ground has also been preserved. and by Karl Richard Lepsius four years later.

The upper register of the second western pylon, shows a processions where ancestors of Ramesses II are honored at ceremonies of the festival of Min. It contains 19 cartouches with the names of 14 pharaohs, listing less pharaohs than his kings list in Abydos. Notably, Hatshepsut and the Amarna pharaohs are omitted.

thumb|800px|centre|Drawing of the Ramesseum King list of Ramesses II

The scene is divided in two parts, one with 14 statues of the ancestral kings being carried in a procession on the left side. The second part is a procession led by six kings, but only the name of five remain.

{| class="wikitable" width="90%"

! colspan="3" style="text-align: center;" | Left procession

! colspan="3" style="text-align: center;" | Right procession

|-

| style="text-align: center; | #

| style="text-align: center; | Pharaoh

| style="text-align: center; | Inscription (throne name)

| style="text-align: center; | #

| style="text-align: center; | Pharaoh

| style="text-align: center; | Inscription (throne name)

|-

| 1

| Thutmose I

| Aakheperkare

| 15

| Horemheb

| Djeserkheperure-setepenre

|-

| 2

| Amenhotep I

| Djeserkare

| 16

| Amenhotep III

| Nebmaatre

|-

| 3

| Ahmose I

| Nebpehtyre

| 17

| Thutmose IV

| Menkheperure

|-

| 4

| Mentuhotep II

| Nebhepetre

| 18

| Amenhotep II

| Aakheperure

|-

| 5

| Menes

| Meni

| 19

| Thutmose III

| Menkheperre

|-

| 6

| Ramesses II

| Usermaatre-setepenre

| rowspan="9" colspan="3" |

|-

| 7

| Seti I

| Menmaatre

|-

| 8

| Ramesses I

| Menpehtyre

|-

| 9

| Horemheb

| Djeserkheperure-setepenre

|-

| 10

| Amenhotep III

| Nebmaatre

|-

| 11

| Thutmose IV

| Menkheperure

|-

| 12

| Amenhotep II

| Aakheperure

|-

| 13

| Thutmose III

| Menkheperre

|-

| 14

| Thutmose II

| Aakheperenre

|}

The scene remains in situ in the upper register of the second western pylon. The later Medinet Habu king list of Ramesses III is very similar in design, but only lists nine pharaohs.

Storage

thumb|A true arch at the Ramesseum granaries

The storerooms surround the temple on three sides, forming three groups, with the oldest behind the temple. The site is notable for its true arches made of mud bricks that were not wedge-shaped as proper voussoirs, but simply held in place by mortar and thus prone to collapse, leaving very few examples still standing. Ramesseum has the oldest such arch still standing in Egypt ().

Each granary in the oldest group was approximately in length, wide and high, with a bottom wall thickness of . The springing level of a barrel vault at the height of approximately , with arcs build as four courses of mud bricks in size.

Excavation and studies

thumb|upright|The '[[Younger Memnon']]

The origins of modern Egyptology can be traced to the arrival in Egypt of Napoleon Bonaparte in the summer of 1798.

While undeniably an invasion by an alien imperialist power, this was nonetheless an invasion of its times, informed by Enlightenment ideas: alongside Napoleon's troops went men of science, the same whose toil under the desert sun would later yield the seminal 23-volume Description de l'Égypte. Two French engineers, Jean-Baptiste Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers du Terrage, were assigned to study the Ramesseum site, and it was with much fanfare that they identified it with the "Tomb of Ozymandias" or "Palace of Memnon" of which Diodorus of Sicily had written in the 1st century BC.

The next visitor of note was Giovanni Belzoni, a showman and engineer of Italian origin and, latterly, an archaeologist and antiques dealer. Belzoni's travels took him in 1815 to Cairo, where he sold Mehemet Ali a hydraulic engine of his own invention. There he met British Consul General Henry Salt, who hired his services to collect from the temple in Thebes the so-called 'Younger Memnon', the torso of one of two colossal granite statues depicting Ramesses II, and transport it to England. Thanks to Belzoni's hydraulics and his skill as an engineer (Napoleon's men had failed in the same endeavour a decade or so earlier), the 7-ton stone head arrived in London in 1818, where it was dubbed "The Younger Memnon" and, some years later, given pride of place in the British Museum.

thumb|The fallen Ozymandias Colossus

It was against the backdrop of intense excitement surrounding the statue's arrival, and having heard wondrous tales of other, less transportable treasures still in the desert, that the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley penned his sonnet "Ozymandias". In particular, one massive fallen statue at the Ramesseum is now inextricably linked with Shelley, because of the cartouche on its shoulder bearing Ramesses's throne name, User-maat-re Setep-en-re, the first part of which Diodorus transliterated into Greek as "Ozymandias".

While Shelley's "vast and trunkless legs of stone" owe more to poetic license than to archaeology, the "half sunk... shattered visage" lying on the sand is an accurate description of part of the wrecked statue. The hands, and the feet, lie nearby. Were it still standing, the Ozymandias colossus would tower 19&nbsp;m (62&nbsp;ft) above the ground,<!-- cites paragraph -->

<gallery mode="packed" heights="140px" widths="140px">

File:Thebes Rhamseion MET DP-13897-025.jpg|1844 daguerreotype by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey

File:John_Beasly_Greene_(American,_born_France_-_(Ramesseum,_Thebes)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg|Earliest photos, 1854 by John Beasley Greene

Image:S F-E-CAMERON EGYPT 2005 RAMASEUM 01320.JPG|Temple of Ramesses II, Luxor

Image:S F-E-CAMERON EGYPT 2005 RAMASEUM 01309.JPG|Hypostyle hall

File:Colossus of Ramesses II restored.jpg|The Younger Memnon in the British Museum digitally restored to its base in the Ramesseum

File:Luxor, West Bank, Ramesseum, first pylon, Egypt, Oct 2004.jpg|Pylon of Ramesseum

File:RamesseumPM13.jpg|Relief in the Ramesseum

File:Luxor_Ramesseum_R16.jpg|Ramesseum and surroundings

File:Pottery shred showing a monkey scratching a girl's nose. 20th Dynasty. From the so-called Artists' School at Ramesseum, Thebes, Egypt. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London.jpg|Potsherd showing a monkey scratching a girl's nose. 20th Dynasty. From the so-called Artists' School at Ramesseum, Thebes, Egypt. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London

File:Thebes, Luxor, Egypt, Ramesseum, Memorial Temple of Pharaoh Ramesses II.jpg|Panoramic view from Theban Hills.

</gallery>

See also

  • Ramesseum magician's box
  • List of largest monoliths in the world

References

Sources

  • University College London: Plan of the Ramesseum site
  • Ramesseum Digital Media Archive (photos, laser scans, panoramas), data from an Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities/CyArk research partnership
  • The Younger Memnon (British Museum)
  • 1830 drawing by Charles Franklin Head, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.