{"it":{"id":"EGY-RAM","kind":"site","sub":"Africa","name":"Ramesseum (mortuary temple of Ramesses II)","place":"Egypt","lat":25.728,"lon":32.611,"date":"19th Dynasty, Ramesses II (13th c BCE)","mat":"sandstone, granite (syenite) colossus, mudbrick","nfacts":10,"tags":["Africa","Temples"],"sum":"The fallen granite colossus at the Ramesseum, near Luxor, is estimated at about 1,000 tonnes (single-source estimate), and once stood some 16 to 19 m high.","why":"A fallen granite giant of Ramesses II, once more than 60 feet high, now lies in pieces.","src":[427],"nsrc":6,"yt":"A granite colossus of about 1,000 tons was raised by Bronze Age workers. Are we underrating ancient organisation?","rel":["EGY-003","EGY-017"],"hook":"A colossus of Ramesses II, over 60 feet high, lies broken at the Ramesseum."},"S":{"427":["Wikipedia: Ramesseum","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesseum"]},"rec":{"id":"EGY-RAM","alias":[],"ms":[{"f":"site point","a":"elevation (DEM SRTM 30 m)","v":"84","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"NASA SRTM via OpenTopoData","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"NASA SRTM via OpenTopoData","pg":"","url":"https://api.opentopodata.org/v1/srtm30m","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"at sites-table coordinate","id":"M3284"},{"f":"colossus","a":"material / mass","v":"syenite granite; ~1000 t","u":"t","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ramesseum&oldid=1374056371","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3348"},{"f":"colossus","a":"height","v":"16-19","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ramesseum&oldid=1374056371","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3349"},{"f":"pylons","a":"width","v":"~60","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ramesseum&oldid=1374056371","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3350"},{"f":"hypostyle","a":"dimensions","v":"41 x 31","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ramesseum&oldid=1374056371","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3351"},{"f":"hypostyle","a":"columns standing","v":"39 of 48","u":"count","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ramesseum&oldid=1374056371","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3352"},{"f":"granaries","a":"dimensions","v":"32 x 3.7 x 3.5","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ramesseum&oldid=1374056371","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3353"},{"f":"mudbricks","a":"size","v":"40 x 20 x 12-14","u":"cm","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ramesseum&oldid=1374056371","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3354"},{"f":"Younger Memnon bust","a":"dims / mass","v":"2.7 m H x 2 m W; ~7.25 t","u":"m/t","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Younger Memnon","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Younger Memnon","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Younger_Memnon&oldid=1364983579","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"now British Museum","id":"M3355"},{"f":"W21L Dunn 2010","a":"Ramesseum Ramses bust mass","v":">7","u":"tons","o":"","unc":"","by":"Christopher Dunn","yr":"2010","m":"not stated [Dunn 2010 p.74; quote W21LQ049]","c":"W21LS01;W21LS13; Dunn, Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt","pg":"Dunn 2010 p.74","url":"file:books/upload5.pdf ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesseum","b":"S","bb":"advocate single source (Dunn 2010); as stated","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"staging W21LM049; advocate source (Dunn 2010)","id":"M3983"}],"lab":[],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[{"a":"key_structure_dims","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"largest_block","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"slope_face_angle","r":"no published face/slope angle in sources reached (often n/a for non-pyramidal sites)"},{"a":"wall_batter","r":"no published batter survey in free sources"},{"a":"orientation","r":"no published azimuth reached"},{"a":"corner_precision","r":"no published precision survey in free sources"},{"a":"levelness","r":"no published levelling survey in free sources"},{"a":"geochem_petro","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"quarry_source","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"mortar","r":"dry-stone construction or no binder analysis in free sources"},{"a":"tool_marks","r":"no tool-mark study in free sources reached"},{"a":"dating","r":"no absolute date extracted"},{"a":"volume_labor","r":"no volume/labour estimate in sources opened"},{"a":"construction_phases","r":"no phase sequence in sources opened"},{"a":"lab_date_material","r":"no lab date with dated material in sources opened"},{"a":"hydrology_acoustics","r":"no published hydrology/acoustic measurement in sources opened"},{"a":"magnetic_radiation","r":"no published magnetic/radiation survey found (searched site name + magnetometry/radiation; Wikipedia, Google Scholar snippets)"},{"a":"metals_clamps","r":"no metal/clamp evidence reported in sources opened"},{"a":"excavation_history","r":"no excavation history row yet"},{"a":"artifacts_found","r":"no finds row yet"}],"dat":[],"aa":[{"id":"AA054","a":"~1000 t monolith beyond ancient capability","who":"see anomaly_claims","main":"quarried/moved granite colossi (cf. Memnon 720 t quartzite moved 675 km)","ms":"","st":"supported-explained","n":"mass figure single source (Wikipedia)","nl":4}],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[{"id":"W21LQ049","th":"Ramesseum Ramses bust mass","loc":"Dunn 2010, p.74 (pdf 118)","q":"The bust weighs more than 7 tons","s":["W21LS01"],"b":"S"},{"id":"W21LQ074","th":"material","loc":"Dunn 2010, p.78 (pdf 122)","q":"the Memphis statue was crafted from limestone instead of granite","s":["W21LS01"],"b":"S"}],"sd":[],"sub":[],"site":{"age":"19th Dynasty, Ramesses II (13th c BCE)","dm":"historical/stylistic (INTERPRETATION)","lab":"NO","weak":"no lab date opened","unesco":"","dens":"STUB"},"co":{"lat":"25.72778","lon":"32.61056","src":"Wikidata/enwiki (Q311581)","agree":"agree","b":"V","note":"Wikidata/enwiki (Q311581) vs OSM way 89828305 delta 0.0006 deg","osm":"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/89828305"},"src":[{"id":null,"t":"NASA SRTM via OpenTopoData","u":"https://api.opentopodata.org/v1/srtm30m"},{"id":null,"t":"Wikipedia Ramesseum","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ramesseum&oldid=1374056371"},{"id":null,"t":"Wikipedia Younger Memnon","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Younger_Memnon&oldid=1364983579"},{"id":null,"t":"W21LS01;W21LS13; Dunn, Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt","u":"file:books/upload5.pdf ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesseum"},{"id":"W21LS01","t":"Christopher Dunn, Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs (Bear & Co 2010, ISBN 978-1-59143-102-2); printed-page refs","u":"file:books/upload5.pdf"},{"id":"W21LS13","t":"Wikipedia: Ramesseum","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesseum"},{"id":"VEGY-RAM-7","t":"PBS, Egypt’s Golden Empire: Ramesseum, second court","u":"https://pbs.org/empires/egypt/special/popup/ram_sec_court.html"},{"id":"VEGY-RAM-8","t":"David Roberts, Egypt and Nubia vol. II: Fragment of the great colossus at the Memnonium, Thebes","u":"https://www.musicksmonument.com/EGYPT_%26_NUBIA_VOL._II/FRAGMENT_OF_THE_GREAT_COLOSSUS_AT_THE_MEMNONIUM,_THEBES..html"},{"id":null,"t":"Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library, trans. G. Booth, vol. I (London, 1814), Book I, ch. 47.","u":"https://archive.org/details/historicallibra01bootgoog"},{"id":null,"t":"Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias” (The Examiner, January 1818), in The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Project Gutenberg eBook 4800.","u":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4800"},{"id":null,"t":"Karl Baedeker, Egypt and the Sûdân: Handbook for Travellers, 7th ed. (Leipzig, 1914), pp. 306–309.","u":"https://archive.org/details/egyptsdnhand00karl"},{"id":null,"t":"Giovanni Battista Belzoni, Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries… in Egypt and Nubia (London: John Murray, 1820), pp. 33–34, 61–72.","u":"https://archive.org/details/recentdiscovpyra00belz"},{"id":null,"t":"James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt (New York, 1905), pp. 442–444, fig. 161.","u":"https://archive.org/details/historyofegyptfr00brearich"},{"id":null,"t":"British Museum, “The Younger Memnon,” statue EA19, collection record.","u":"https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA19"},{"id":null,"t":"J. Norman Lockyer, The Dawn of Astronomy (London, 1894). Internet Archive.","u":"https://archive.org/details/dawnofastronomys00lockuoft"},{"id":null,"t":"Mosalam Shaltout and Juan Antonio Belmonte, “On the Orientation of Ancient Egyptian Temples: (1) Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 36 (2005), pp. 3–4, 12–13.","u":"https://webs.um.es/bussons/arqueoastronomia.pdf"}],"sum":"\"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!\" In January 1818 a London paper printed a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley about a traveller who found, in an empty land, a \"shattered visage\" half sunk in the sand, with those words carved on its pedestal. \"Nothing beside remains,\" the poem goes on, and the \"lone and level sands\" stretch away. \"Ozymandias\" became one of the most quoted poems in English, a warning about the vanity of power. Its subject was real. The broken king lies in a temple on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor, and the poet's version of it was, in one important way, wrong.\n\nThe temple is the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple of Ramesses II, the Nineteenth Dynasty king who reigned in the thirteenth century BC. A mortuary temple was not a tomb. It was where the dead king's cult would carry on for eternity, not where his body lay. James Henry Breasted called it \"another beautiful sanctuary for his own mortuary service,\" \"known to all visitors at Thebes as the Ramesseum.\" Its pylon gateways are about 60 metres wide. Its hypostyle hall, a hall roofed on columns, measures 41 by 31 metres, and 39 of its 48 columns still stand. Its walls show the battle of Kadesh, the king charging in his chariot as Hittite soldiers are hurled into the river Orontes, and the storming of the Hittite fortress of Dapur with scaling ladders.\n\nThe Greeks knew it by another name. The historian Diodorus of Sicily described a great tomb at Thebes belonging to a King Osymandyas, with a seated statue before it, \"the greatest in all Egypt,\" whose foot alone was more than seven cubits long. He reported its inscription: \"I am Osymandyas, king of kings,\" and anyone who wished to know how great he was had to \"excel me in any of my works.\" Baedeker's 1914 guide confirms that this \"tomb of Osymandyas\" is the Ramesseum, and the pillar statues of its second court appear in Diodorus's account.\n\nThe giant he described still lies here. It was carved from a single block of granite, a type often called syenite, brought down the Nile from Aswan. Baedeker measured it at 22½ feet from shoulder to shoulder in a straight line, with a nail on its middle finger 7½ inches long, and judged the whole figure to have been about 57 feet high; other estimates give more than 60 feet, or 16 to 19 metres, the height of a five- or six-storey building. Its weight is usually given as about 1,000 tons. Breasted captioned its fragments the \"thousand-ton colossus of Ramses II.\" A nineteenth-century account citing the scholars Samuel Birch and John Gardner Wilkinson put it nearer 900. The gap between the two figures is itself a reminder of how loose the old estimates are. Either way, it was one of the largest statues ever carved in Egypt. Its face, Baedeker wrote, \"is completely destroyed.\" Accounts disagree even about where it sat, in the first court by Breasted's caption, by the stairs into the second court in others, where its head and broken body now lie.\n\nRamesses built on this scale everywhere. Breasted noted that few great temples in Egypt lack some hall or pylon with his name, and added that the king \"stopped at no desecration\" of older monuments to put it there. The Ramesseum was propaganda in stone, a palace of memory for a king who meant to outlast every rival and every successor. The colossus was its loudest sentence.\n\nHow such a statue was brought here and raised is the question visitors have asked since Giovanni Belzoni stood beside it two centuries ago. He wondered at the labour of bringing \"such a mass of granite from Assouan to Thebes,\" and judged it harder than shipping Pompey's Pillar to Alexandria. The mainstream answer is that Egypt's state could organise such work: granite colossi were quarried and moved, and the Colossi of Memnon, some 720 tons of quartzite, were carried about 675 kilometres. The idea that a thousand-ton monolith was beyond ancient capability is, on that evidence, explained. But explained is not the same as described. No source in the record shows how this particular statue was moved or how it was stood upright.\n\nIts destruction is just as murky. One nineteenth-century account argues that an explosive force was likely used on its lower part, though by what means is unknown, and suggests the damage may date to Persian times. Later, local people cut pieces out to make millstones. Belzoni would not say who had broken it; he only noted that it was called \"Memnon, or Sesostris, or Osymandias,\" so many names \"that at last it has no name at all.\"\n\nBelzoni had come for something smaller. Near the temple lay a granite bust known as the Young Memnon, which Burckhardt had long wanted sent to England. Belzoni found it \"with its face upwards, and apparently smiling on me.\" His whole equipment from Cairo was fourteen poles, four ropes of palm leaves and four rollers, \"without tackle of any sort,\" and local labourers dragged it over the sand to the Nile. The British Museum now holds it as \"The Younger Memnon,\" 2.7 metres high and weighing about 7¼ tons. It was one of a pair placed before the temple's door, its lower body and legs are \"still in situ,\" and traces of colour seen in 1817 suggest it \"may have, therefore, been painted red in antiquity.\"\n\nThe ceiling holds another puzzle. The astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer read the Ramesseum's table of months, with \"the Bull, the Lion and the Scorpion,\" as star lore far older than the king, knowledge \"perfectly familiar 5000 years ago.\" The mainstream reply is chronological: the temple and its ceiling belong to Ramesses II, and Mosalam Shaltout and Juan Antonio Belmonte note that Lockyer's related solstice theory for Karnak \"collapsed\" once the old chronology failed. Old star lore copied onto a new ceiling remains possible. A lost age of astronomers is not shown.\n\nAnd Shelley was wrong about the emptiness. His traveller found \"nothing beside.\" Baedeker's visitors found halls, columns, storerooms and an astronomical ceiling. Behind the temple stand long brick granaries, some 32 metres long, and vaults that held wine jars. Belzoni saw the yearly flood reach \"quite to the propylaeon,\" the gateway. The ruin the poet imagined in a desert was a working temple estate, with its own stores and its own economy, built to feed a cult that was meant never to end.\n\nRamesses wanted his works to make the mighty despair. His face is gone, his name was garbled for two thousand years, and a poet turned the wreck into a parable. Yet the giant still lies in pieces where it fell, a granite shoulder broader than a room, a fingernail as long as a hand, a thousand tons of stone that someone once brought from Aswan and raised, and that someone else, much later, took the trouble to break.","qs":["A granite colossus of about 1,000 tons was raised by Bronze Age workers. Are we underrating ancient organisation?","Who would want to break a king's statue, and why?","Ramesses wanted to be remembered forever. What will survive of our monuments?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/SFEC_AEH_-ThebesNecropolis-2010-RamsesII-021.jpg/1280px-SFEC_AEH_-ThebesNecropolis-2010-RamsesII-021.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SFEC_AEH_-ThebesNecropolis-2010-RamsesII-021.jpg","title":"SFEC AEH -ThebesNecropolis-2010-RamsesII-021.jpg","lic":"CC BY 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0","by":"Steve F-E-Cameron","cap":"Temple of Rameses II"},{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/BM%2C_AES_Egyptian_Sulpture_~_Colossal_bust_of_Ramesses_II%2C_the_%27Younger_Memnon%27_%281250_BC%29_%28Room_4%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BM,_AES_Egyptian_Sulpture_~_Colossal_bust_of_Ramesses_II,_the_%27Younger_Memnon%27_(1250_BC)_(Room_4).jpg","title":"BM, AES Egyptian Sulpture ~ Colossal bust of Ramesses II, the 'Younger Memnon' (1250 BC) (Room 4).jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/","by":"Unknown","cap":"","alt":"BM, AES Egyptian Sulpture ~ Colossal bust of Ramesses II, the 'Younger Memnon' (1250 BC) (Room 4)"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Colossus_of_Ramesses_II_restored.jpg/1280px-Colossus_of_Ramesses_II_restored.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Colossus_of_Ramesses_II_restored.jpg","title":"Colossus of Ramesses II restored.jpg","lic":"CC BY 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0","by":"Bedoyere (talk) (Uploads)","cap":"The colossus of Ramesses II at Thebes, digitally restored with the upper part of the statue recovered by Belzoni and now in the British Museum. The upper part o"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/John_Beasly_Greene_%28American%2C_born_France_-_%28Ramesseum%2C_Thebes%29_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/1280px-John_Beasly_Greene_%28American%2C_born_France_-_%28Ramesseum%2C_Thebes%29_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Beasly_Greene_(American,_born_France_-_(Ramesseum,_Thebes)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg","title":"John Beasly Greene (American, born France - (Ramesseum, Thebes) - Google Art Project.jpg","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"John Beasly Greene (American, born France, 1832 - 1856) (1832 - 1856) – photogra","cap":"","alt":"John Beasly Greene (American, born France - (Ramesseum, Thebes) - Google Art Project"},{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Luxor%2C_West_Bank%2C_Ramesseum%2C_first_pylon%2C_Egypt%2C_Oct_2004.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luxor,_West_Bank,_Ramesseum,_first_pylon,_Egypt,_Oct_2004.jpg","title":"Luxor, West Bank, Ramesseum, first pylon, Egypt, Oct 2004.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 2.5","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5","by":"Przemyslaw \"Blueshade\" Idzkiewicz","cap":"The first pylon of the temple of Ramesseum, part of Theban Necropolis, Luxor, Egypt (Kemet)."}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"1,000","u":"t","h":"Ramesses' fallen syenite colossus, once 16–19 m tall","s":[160]},{"v":"1300 BC","h":"Oldest arch still standing in Egypt","s":[160]},{"v":"220","u":"km","h":"Colossus hauled from its quarry to the temple","s":[160]},{"v":"Sandstone","h":"Made of: Sandstone, granite (syenite) colossus, mudbrick","s":[160]}],"hs":{"160":["Wikipedia: Ramesseum (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesseum"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/EGY-RAM.webp","w":1280,"h":960,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/SFEC_AEH_-ThebesNecropolis-2010-RamsesII-021.jpg/1280px-SFEC_AEH_-ThebesNecropolis-2010-RamsesII-021.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}