The entrance to the temple today is through a narrow doorway in the northeast corner of the enclosure wall. A path leads south past mudbrick storerooms into the Second Court, and one should turn left (east) there and proceed across a small grassy field to the First Pylon. Several innovations in temple design were introduced at the Ramesseum. The most impressive is the use of sandstone instead of mud brick for the huge First Pylon, 67 meters (220 feet ) wide and originally about 24 meters (78 feet) high. The pylon is badly damaged, in part because it was built in the flood plain on weak foundations, but traces of decoration can still be seen in late afternoon light on its inner (west) face. Like many other monuments of Rameses II, the scenes deal with a military campaign against the Hittites in his fifth regnal year. On the left (north) tower, one can see a dozen Syrian fortresses. Near them, the Egyptians are encamped and soldiers lounge about, drinking, talking, and wrestling with each other. Freight wagons filled with baggage approach the camp, donkeys graze nearby, and the king is shown in council with his sons and advisors. Here, all appears calm. But on the right (south) tower, the Battle of Kadesh rages and Egypt’s enemies flee in panic from Rameses II and his army.

THE FIRST COURT

Between the First and Second Pylons, an attractive open space is covered with wild grass, and home to a beautiful tamarisk tree and several species of birds. On the south side of the court there once stood a double row of columns, and behind them, a doorway that led into the king’s palace. The plan of the palace is very similar to that at the memorial temple of Sety I and to the first version of the palace of Rameses III at Madinat Habu. Behind the palace lie the remains of recently excavated kitchens, bakeries, and a slaughterhouse that served the needs of the temple priesthood and the royal family. On the west side of the court, next to what remains of the Second Pylon, the colossal statue of the deified Rameses II, one of the most famous statues in all Egypt, has fallen in the dirt. Originally 17.5 meters (57 feet) high (not including its base), this seated figure of the king weighed over one thousand tons, and is the largest monolithic statue ever sculpted. It is so large that one ear is more than a meter (3 feet) long and the shoulders are over 7 meters (23 feet) broad. It is made of granite. Whether this statue was one of a pair intended to stand before the Second Pylon or whether it stood alone is not known; there is no physical evidence of a second statue. It is also unclear if Rameses II
commissioned the statue especially for installation here, or if it had originally been ordered by Amenhetep III for his temple, then usurped and moved by Rameses II. Exactly when the statue collapsed is also unknown, but we do know that it was standing when Diodorus Siculus visited the site in the first century AD. It may have fallen because of quarrying activity around its base. (See more below.)

THE SECOND PYLON

The Second Pylon has fared even worse than the first, and only part of its north tower remains today. It was built on bedrock nearly two meters (6 feet) higher than the floor of the First Court and was reached from that court by a staircase cut in its western face. Around the Second Court, a portico stands with rows of Osirid pillars on the east and west sides and columns on the west, north and south.

The western face of the Second Pylon behind this portico is carved with further scenes of the king’s military campaigns in western Asia. It is a brilliant
depiction of the chaos of battle, a huge canvas covered with figures of terrified horses and dead and dying soldiers. The Hittitte infantry is trampled beneath the king’s cavalry, and men throw themselves into the Orontes River in vain attempts to escape. One of their leaders has nearly drowned in the river, and his men hold him upside down and pound his chest, attempting artificial respiration. Paint is still preserved on the wall and the light blue Orontes meanders across the scene, its shores covered with Egyptian and Hittite cavalry, archers, and spear-carriers. At the far right, a remarkably- drawn crowd of over a hundred soldiers watches the battle. The group is so densely packed together that only the soldiers’ heads can be seen, and their intense stares and furrowed brows register shock as they focus on the grisly scene before them. The scene may be unique in Egyptian art. In contrast to these scenes of mayhem, the upper register shows harvest festivals for the god Min. Birds are being released into the air, each with a small piece of papyrus hanging around its neck that bears an announcement of the king’s coronation. These “carrier-pigeons” were meant to spread the good news around the world.

THE SECOND COURT

The Second Court is paved with large stone blocks but its walls, columns, and pillars are largely destroyed. On the western side of the court, three broad, low staircases lead to a portico and a hypostyle hall. The portico is fronted by ten Osirid pillars and ten columns. On the wall behind, the king is led into the temple by Atum and Montu, and at the right he kneels before the Theban Triad. In other scenes the king offers to Ptah and to Min. Below,
a line of royal sons walk in the procession. The central staircase was flanked by two huge statues of Rameses II. The upper part of one statue was carted away by Giovanni Belzoni in 1816 and sold to the British Museum. Its arrival in London and the publication of Belzoni’s Egyptian activities inspired Percy Bysse Shelley to pen his famous poem, “Ozymandias,” a reference to the fallen colossus in the gateway of the Second Pylon. (The name “Ozymandias” is a Greek rendering of one of Rameses II’s names, UserMa’at-Ra.) “I met a traveler 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.”

Seventeen centuries before Shelley, Diodorus Siculus had wrongly claimed to have seen an inscription on the fallen statue that read: “I am Ozymandias, king of kings; if any would know how great  I am, and where I lie, let him excel me in any of my works.”

HYPOSTYLE HALL

Three doorways behind the portico each lead into a grand hypostyle hall with forty-eight sandstone columns. The central two rows of six are taller than the others to accommodate clerestory lighting. On each column, Rameses II makes offerings to the gods. On the front (east) wall, the king in his war chariot leads an attack on a Hittite fort at Dapur. Soldiers using ladders scale the fort’s walls and quickly overcome its guardians.

Scenes like this have given military historians a wealth of detail about ancient military tactics. On the rear (west) wall, below scenes of the king standing before Amen and Mut, a long procession of royal princes and one princess marches forward, nineteen figures on the left (south) side, twenty-three on the right (north) side. The princes are shown in birth order, as they are in other processions that Rameses II had carved in a score of temples in Egypt and Nubia.West of the Hypostyle Hall, a doorway leads into the Astronomical Hall. Eight columns support a ceiling decorated with scenes that show constellations and the thirty-six groups of stars, called “decans,” into which the Egyptians divided the night sky.

On the front (east) wall priests carry the sacred barks of Amen, Mut, Khonsu, Ahmes-Nefertari, and Rameses II. On the rear (west), Rameses II and Atum are seated beside apersea tree. At right, the goddess Sefkhet-’Abwy stands with the god Thoth, writing the king’s name on leaves of the tree. (The eighteenth century Danish traveler Frederick Norden believed this was a drawing of Adam and Eve beside the Tree of Knowledge.) Beyond the Astronomical Hall, in the so-called Hall of Litanies, the king makes offerings to Ptah and Ra-Harakhty. The rooms at the rear of the temple are badly damaged.

OUTBUILDINGS

Around the perimeter of the temple a series of remarkably well-preserved vaulted mudbrick chambers were used as storerooms for the agricultural surpluses and foreign tribute the temple amassed and redistributed. These storerooms are described in an inscription on an architrave in the Hypostyle Hall: “...He has caused that his temple may be like Thebes, it being supplied with every good thing, the granaries reaching the sky, an august treasury with silver, gold,
royal linen and every kind of real gemstone, which was brought for him by the King of Upper and Lower Egypt...” Administrative offices and workshops were also located here.

On the north side of the temple lie the scanty remains of a small chapel originally built by Sety I. Some believe that the presence of this earlier temple was the reason Rameses II chose this site for his own monument. Later it became a mammisi (birth-house) honoring Tuy, mother of Rameses II, and his wife, Nefertari. A colossal statue of Tuy stood in its courtyard.

Not long after the end of the New Kingdom the Ramesseum was stripped of its wealth by hungry and unruly citizens, and its buildings were used as quarries for the construction of other monuments. Tombs for major and minor court officials were cut into the bedrock beneath it, small shrines built from its stones, and eventually a Christian church built within the ruins.

From" The Illustrated Guide to Luxor" by kent R.Weeks ,published by the American University in Cairo Press. Copyright © 2005 White Star S.p.a