Ramesseum (mortuary Temple Of Ramesses Ii)

This magnificent mortuary temple was built on the site of Seti Is ruined temple and

was described as the tomb of Ozymandia, which later inspired poetic verse by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The Ramesseum is the memorial temple (or mortuary temple) of Pharaoh Ramesses II (Ramesses the Great, also spelled Rameses and Ramesses). The name or at least its French form, Rhamession was coined by Jean-Franois Champollion, who visited the ruins of the site in 1829 and first identified the hieroglyphs making up Ramesses names and titles on the walls. 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.

Only fragments of the base and torso remain of the syenite statue of the enthroned pharaoh, 62 feet (19 metres) high and weighing more than 1000 tons. This was alleged to have been transported 170 miles over land. This is the largest remaining colossal statue (except statues done in situ) in the world.

In the court the few Osiride pillars and columns still left can furnish an idea of the original grandeur. Scattered remains of the two statues of the seated king can also be seen, one in pink granite and the other in black granite, which once flanked the entrance to the temple. The head of one of these has been removed to the British Museum. Thirty-nine out of the forty-eight columns in the great hypostyle hall (41m x 31m) 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.

A cache of papyri and ostraca dating back to the third intermediate period (11th to 8th centuries BC) indicates that the temple was also the site of an important scribal school. The site was in use before Ramesses had the first stone put in place: beneath the hypostyle hall, modern archaeologists have found a shaft tomb from the Middle Kingdom, yielding a rich hoard of religious and funerary artefacts.

by: hassan.sh

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