The ultimate function of art in human evolution is a mystery, but there is no mystery about what art does: it communicates, it evokes, it alters the observer. From the profound power of the Lascaux cave images to the spattering of Jackson Pollock, art calls to something within the observer. In the case of Luxor and the images of Ramses, the art is highly stylized, symbolic, and uniform. Even to today’s observer, it carries a deliberate message of divinity and eternity, of awe and majesty— which must have been so much more powerful to the ancient Egyptians. On another level, to the sculptor who has worked in stone and to the technologist whose job it is to shape adamantine materials, it calls out a question and issues a challenge: “What am I? How did I come to exist? Build another just like me.”
It challenges: “Don’t just gape in awe and wonder, shake your head, and walk away. Bring me back to life! Know me—who I was and what I was. The only way to do this is to understand what I am and build another! Why am I smiling? Don’t think for a minute that I am content sitting here on my pedestal, misunderstood by the droves that have passed by for centuries. There is more here than meets the eye.”
The Ramses challenge was issued in ancient Egypt again and again, from Memphis and Cairo to Luxor and Abu Simbel. Exact replicas of Ramses’ image were crafted in limestone, sandstone, quartzite, granite, and diorite. Some pieces, such as the Colossi of Memnon, weigh more than 1,000 tons. Other statues at Luxor weigh 600 tons. In fact, just the crowns that top the statues each weigh more than a ton. The statues are massive—a significant challenge to move and, because they are intricately carved, an even more significant challenge to sculpt. What distinguishes the Ramses statues is the iconic imagery of the perfect face. It seems that no matter which of the Ramses statues we look at, the same smiling face gazes through you, into infinity.
In order to accomplish this effect, the ancient sculptors worked to a uniform system of measurement and a design scheme. Just as today we replicate designs using uniform measures and consistent methods of manufacturing, in ancient Egypt there was a system of design, measurement, and manufacture used to create the Ramses statues. We can then ask the question: What was the fundamental scheme that the ancient Egyptians used to create and re-create this iconic image in stone?
In 1986, I visited Memphis, near Saqqara, and gazed down at the statue of Ramses in the open-air museum. Looking down the length of the statue, it struck me as peculiar that the left and right nostrils were identical mirror images of each other. It is common knowledge that no adult walking the earth has nostrils that are identically shaped. I thought it was noteworthy, but did not follow up and research it further as my focus at the time was on engineering, not art. I was there to study the pyramids and had not planned to visit any temples during my visit. I didn’t realize at the time, though, how important my observation would become to my future research.
My interest in the Ramses statues was rekindled when I visited Luxor in November 2004. Though I had been to Egypt four times before and learned to love the Egyptian people for their hospitality and sense of humor, this was my first visit to the temples in Upper Egypt. Words cannot describe my feelings of wonder and awe as I absorbed the temples not only from a philosophical and spiritual aspect but also with my engineer’s brain. These temples impressed upon me indelibly that they were incredibly important from an engineering and scientific perspective.
For an engineer or artisan, to walk through the Temple of Luxor is an exercise in humility. Combining the logical, rational, and objective attributes of left-brain functions with the intuitive, subjective, and holistic qualities of the right brain, the experience of seeing these temples is suffused with profound sadness for a civilization that had risen to great heights and then suffered a cyclic decline.
In exploring what is left—the mere skeletons of the Egyptians’ achievements—and then going beyond, a veil is lifted to reveal the incredible material loss of a people who created perfectly crafted buildings and statues from the hardest stones known to humankind. This ancient culture accepted the challenge to develop the tools to work glasslike stone—stone that was created by tremendous forces within the earth and spewed, or squeezed, from its fiery belly—to a high order of magnitude, proportion, and exactitude.
Basalt, diorite, and granite yielded to these ancient tools—the quartz crystals abundantly present in the granite and diorite gave way to the application of ancient technology now lost. Perfection was the goal, and the ancient Egyptians’ stone-working craft, as we shall see, was perfected to the extent that exactness was achieved.
Even if our mind is not normally turned toward philosophy, a visit to Egypt soon finds our thoughts seeking refuge in ruminations of wonder at what once was and what could have (or must have) been had there not been an interruption. From the perspective of a philosopher, the mortality of physical existence is reinforced. We slowly realize that civilizations are like the human body—they have a life cycle. This is a discomforting thought for those who are faced with the implications of what Egypt’s accomplishments mean. We become comfortable to the extent that we can master our environment, but eventually we all must yield to the ultimate master. The natural cycles of the universe and their concomitant forces of nature unleash death and destruction with as much indifference and impartiality as they provide what is necessary for life to exist.
The Temple of Luxor holds a message for our civilization—one that reaches across millennia through the ravages of time, and, though shaken, crippled, and on its knees, it implores us to pay attention.
I was with a delightful, eclectic group of people on a tour of Egypt in November of 2004. The tour was arranged by Andrea Mikana-Pinkham of Body Mind Spirit Journeys, and presenting on the journey were my good friends Stephen Mehler and David Hatcher Childress. A broad range of people from various backgrounds, including engineers, a pilot, salespeople, a doctor, a nurse, a minister, and, from Florida, a sassy barmaid with an infectious laugh, milled around the bus every morning in anticipation of another great day in the field. Everybody was having a wonderful time, and we all had one thing in common: a deep respect for the Egyptian culture and its monuments. Good humor and jokes flew around the bus like the swallows that swirl around the Great Pyramid at dawn.
Before 2004,1 had not paid much attention to the temples in southern Egypt. Instead, I focused my attention on the pyramids and what I considered to be their more technical engineering attributes. As a part of this tour, I was fascinated by the story given by the Egyptologist tour guide, but I was not so fascinated that when an object caught my attention, I refused to wander off to do some exploring on my own.
When you are part of a tour group, your visits to temples are strictly controlled. Generally, the tour operator takes you to Luxor at a time when it is the most visually stimulating: at night, when the temple is lit up with carefully designed and directed lighting. When you walk among the massive columns that reach to the sky like giant redwoods, the chattering of numerous tour guides fades as the power of the temple imposes its own majesty and voice onto your consciousness. This effect became more meaningful to me later, as my interest peaked and I began to learn more about the symbolic and philosophical interpretations that the temple has evoked from the hearts and minds of other researchers.
World History
