Ramesseum

The Ramesseum was a Mortuary Temple built by Ramesses II (1279-1212 BCE), which took 20 years to build and was completed c. 1250 BCE.
The ruins of the Ramesseum are located on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor (Thebes) in Egypt.

The Temple is built of sandstone from a quarry south of Luxor.
It covers an area of 6 hectares with two stone Temples at its centre surrounded by three enormous annexes consisting of storerooms, workshops and vaults, including one storeroom that seems to have served as a treasury.

The Temple storerooms could hold a massive amount of grain, representing enormous wealth.

‘The Mansion of Millions of Years’
- This was the name Ramesses II gave to the Temple.
- It was dedicated to Amun.
- It served as a model for the ‘Mansion of millions of years’ built by his son, Ramesses III at Medinet Habu.
Tomb of Ozymandias
- This was the name given by Diodorus Siculus (writing between 60-30 BCE).
- Ozymandias was the Greek name for Ramesses II.
‘The Memnonium’
- This was the name given by two French engineers, Jollois and deVilliers, who recognised it as the Tomb of Ozymandias, after Napoleon’s Invasion of Egypt in 1799.
The ‘Ramesseum’
- This was the name finally attributed to the Temple by Champollion during his visit to Egypt in 1829.
- He also made an inventory of the ruins and copied many of the texts.
- Jean Francois Champollion became world famous in 1822, when he successfully deciphered the Egyptian Hieroglyphs.

This was an impressive giant statue of Ramesses II carved in limestone. It was 60 feet high (18 m) and weighed 1,000 tons. The shattered remains of the statue lay in pieces around the Temple.
Only the Giant Head and Shoulders remain and are inside a small museum built to cover the statue.
It was one of several Giant Statues situated throughout Egypt that Ramesses II made of himself.

An image of this ruined statue may have inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley to write the famous sonnet ‘Ozymandias’, published in 1818, prior to the arrival of a similar statue at the British Museum.

The Temple was described in detail with its massive statues, by the Roman Historian Diodorus Siculus in his ‘World History’ written between 60-30 BCE.
He referred to the Ramesseum as the ‘Tomb of Ozymandias’, the Greek name for Ramesses II.
Diodorus mentions a Sacred Library at the Ramesseum, which carried an inscription which read ‘Healing Place of the Soul’. So far no such Library has been found.

Recently discovered, these texts date from the around the 18th century BCE and are numbered III, IV and V.
The Text was written in vertical Hieratic Script, except for Text V which was written in Egyptian Hieroglyphs.
- Text III covers an eruption of a volcano, possibly Santorini, and how to deal with burn victims.
- Text IV covers gynaecological issues, childbirth, new-born babies, and methods of contraception.
- Text V covers relaxation exercises.

The Ramesseum, Luxor