Although Ramses I ruled only two years, his descendants of the Nineteenth Dynasty continued for another century (ca. 1295—1186 BC). His son, Seti I, and especially his grandson, Ramses II, presided over a particularly powerful period in Egyptian history.
Ramses II is especially well known. He reigned sixty-seven years (ca. 1279—1213 BC), with administrative centers at Thebes and at Per-Ramses in the Delta. He built some of the best surviving and largest of Egyptian monuments, famously clashed with the Hittites, and has been associated with the biblical story of the Hebrew exodus (this last is controversial). He avidly promoted his own glory through his building projects, supplemented with wall decorations and colossal statues of himself. We have already noted his additions to the Temples of Amun at Luxor and at Karnak. One more monument of his merits our attention: the remarkable temple at Abu Simbel, located in a remote spot near the southern frontier of modern Egypt.
This temple, and an accompanying smaller temple of his queen, Nefertari, were carved out of the sandstone cliffs that lined the Nile in Nubia. Like the fort at Buhen, these monuments lay in the region destined for flooding after the construction of the High Dam in Aswan. But these temples met a kinder fate than Buhen: an international team under the aegis of UNESCO cut the temples into blocks and reassembled them on dry land, some 210m inland and 65m higher.
Ostensibly honoring the gods, in actuality this shrine at Abu Simbel glorifies Ramses II — a monument to royal power exceptional even in a culture in which rulers rarely shrank from public display of their greatness. The facade of the larger temple overwhelms the visitor with its four colossal seated statues of Ramses II, each 20.1m high (Figure 6.18). Everyone else is smaller and subordinate: the wives and children who stand by his lower legs, the prisoners paraded beneath his chair in front of the entrance, even the god Re-Harakhte placed above the doorway. Inside, the temple consists of four rooms on axis, a larger hall, a smaller hall, a vestibule, and the sanctuary. Several side chambers, probably used as storerooms, lie off this axis. The large hall is
Dominated by two rows of columns carved with the standing likeness of the king as Osiris, the important god of the afterlife. The side walls show reliefs of the king’s military triumphs, including the Battle of Qadesh fought in Syria against the Hittites. Scholars believe this battle was actually a stand-off, but Ramses II had no interest in being objective about the result. The sanctuary at the rear contains four seated states, Ramses II and three major gods, Re-Harakhte, Amun, and the supreme god of Memphis, Ptah. The temple was aligned so that twice a year, in February and October, the sun’s rays would reach the rear of the temple and shine on the three gods and the pharaoh. The first date may correspond to Ramses II’s coronation day, or perhaps the date of his first jubilee, since the temple was built to celebrate this event.
World History
