THE
RAMASSEUM
The Ramasseum or Ramesseum (also known as the ‘Memnonium’) was the mortuary temple of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. It lies in ruins on the west bank of the Nile near Luxor in the place known as Western Thebes. It’s my favourite building in Egypt and one of my favourite ancient buildings from anywhere. The ruins are beautiful and retain a sublime sense of majestic power while also showing that all things must pass. I first visited the temple in September 1983 and I have just been back.
HISTORY
Ramesses II (c. 1279-1212 BC) was the third pharaoh of the XIXth Dynasty. His grandfather, Ramesses I (1293-1291 BC) and his father Seti I (1291-1278 BC), initiated a programme of restoration and reform to turn the clock back to before the Amarna revolution led by Akhenaten and the unsettled events of its aftermath. His reign of 67 years was one of Egypt’s longest. He had two principal wives: Nefertari and Istnofret, and many lesser wives. As a result he had more than 100 children.
His most famous exploit was holding the Hittites to a draw at Kadesh in 1275 BC. Both sides called it their own victory, but Ramesses turned it into a propaganda campaign. Exaggerated tales of his prowess at the battle were repeated on the many monuments he built. Indeed, Ramesses II was the greatest builder in Egypt’s history. To his own monuments he added others by simply having his own name carved over those of his predecessors. The most grandiose of all was Abu Simbel, way to the south, where four colossal statues of the pharaoh were cut into the living rock.
THE TEMPLE
Ramesses
began his temple in 1278 BC and the work took some 20 years to complete. The
main core of the temple was entered through the first pylon decorated with
scenes from Ramesses’ ‘victory’ at the Battle of Kadesh in 1275 BC. Beyond was
the First Court off which to the south lay a palace. A ramp led up through the
second pylon to the Second Court around which a series of Osirid pillars stood.
Behind the Second Court were the hypostyle halls and at the back the barque
shrine. All around, and covering an area around four times as much as the
temple were the mud-brick magazines packed with stores and grain, as well as
offices and rooms used to manage the temple.
Like most of the mortuary temples at Thebes, the Ramasseum
did not last long before stone began to be removed for other buildings. Some
ended up at Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Ramesses III, to the south.
Today what remains include the crumbling first pylon, the wreckage of the
colossi, some of the Osirid statues (above) and parts of the hypostyle halls.
THE FIRST COURT
Between the first and second pylons in the
first court stood what was once the largest freestanding statue ever carved,
reaching around 20 m (66 ft) in height and weighing over 1000 tonnes. Carved from
solid Aswan granite, it’s a magnificent testimony to the folly of man. The plan
was probably originally to have two such statues but only one was ever carved
and set up in the Ramasseum. Perhaps the work was just too much. At any rate,
the statue was destroyed by an earthquake in antiquity and today it lies
exactly where it fell, shattered into hundreds of pieces. In this photograph,
taken from across the Second Court, the head is at lower left, then the right
shoulder. The statue has snapped off at the waist.
On the other side lie the feet and hands. This
view of the colossus was taken looking west from the top of the first pylon
across the First Court. You can see the feet just left and below the centre. As
you can see, the second pylon is almost non-existent now.
THE SECOND COURT
Beyond the second pylon in the second court there were
two more colossi – somewhat smaller, and of unequal size. Today the lower half
of the larger one sits in its original place on the south side of the entrance
to the hypostyle hall. A few yards away on the north side the head of the
smaller one sits on the ground (pictured left).
The upper half of the southern statue, known as
‘Young Memnon’, was taken from the temple by Giovanni Belzoni in 1816 for the
British Consul-General Henry Salt and has been in the British Museum in London
since 1817. In September 2004 I photographed it there, and a week later I
photographed the lower half in the Ramasseum. I’ve joined the two images
together so that you can see what the statue might have looked like once. Of
course the Museum half is clean, and the surviving base is dusty and outdoors.
Note how the statue was carved from a slab of Aswan granite where a black vein
met a red vein. The sculptors have carefully made sure the head of Ramesses was
in the red half.
LEFT: all that’s left of Young Memnon on site at the
Ramasseum today. Picture taken from the Second Court looking west towards the
hypostyle hall beyond.
RIGHT: Young Memnon digitally
restored with the British Museum’s piece. The upper section is 2.67 m high, so
the whole statue was once around 6 m (19 ft) tall. The earthquake that broke
the statue of course meant some pieces were shattered at the join so of course
they don’t line up perfectly but it’s pretty close.
There’s a famous poem that’s supposed to have been stimulated by the giant colossus. However, it describes something more like the remains of Young Memnon and the head of the small colossus near it, so I imagine all three statues contributed to the idea. Here it is:
I met a traveller
from an antique land
Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert …near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works ye mighty and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), written in 1817
THE HYPOSTYLE HALL
Beyond the courts lie what remains of the hypostyle hall and the barque shrine flanked by chapels. There were once 48 columns. This view is south-west from the modern entrance to the temple. At the very far left you can see the bottom half of ‘Young Memnon’ (see above). Note the clerestory windows above the hypostyle hall to light the chamber.
Left: inside the hypostyle hall. Despite the temple’s ruinous state, some of the colour has survived.
Left:
the reliefs in the hypostyle hall show Ramesses II with gods and also attacking
the Hittite stronghold of Dapur.
THE PHOTOGRAPHS ON THIS PAGE WERE TAKEN AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM
AND THE RAMASSEUM IN SEPTEMBER 2004.
The cartouches at the top
of the page show the names of Ramesses II. They read:
(left) Ra-ms-sw – mery –
Amun. ‘Ramesses, beloved of Amun’
(right) Wsr-maat-re-setepen-re
– which means something like ‘powerful truth Re, chosen of Re’
GUY DE LA BEDOYERE