{"it":{"id":"W21LA06","kind":"artifact","sub":"Authenticated","name":"Ramses II colossus, Memphis (Mit Rahina)","place":"open-air museum, Memphis","mat":"limestone (per Dunn p.78)","dims":">300 t (Dunn est.)","loc":"open-air museum, Memphis","acc":"not given","find":"Memphis","flag":"genuine ancient","src":[198],"tags":[],"sum":"You see it from a gallery above, a giant lying on its back: King Ramesses II, carved in limestone, about 10 m long, with his feet and base broken away. It is the centrepiece of the open-air museum at Memphis, the old royal capital 20 km south of Giza.\n\nGiovanni Battista Caviglia found it in 1820 near the south gate of the temple of Ptah. It was one of a pair. Its partner stood for decades in Ramses Square in central Cairo from the 1950s. Ramesses reigned from 1279 to 1213 BC.\n\nWhat is hard to grasp is the scale. A king carved this large, in fine detail, then moved and raised in front of a temple, asks for planning, labour and skill on a level we rarely ask of stone today.\n\nThe engineer Christopher Dunn has studied Ramesses statues closely. Working from photographs of a Ramesses at Luxor, carved in red Aswan granite, he flipped and overlaid them and wrote that the two sides of the face mirror each other with a symmetry he did not expect from hand carving. Limestone answers part of that here: it is soft enough to shape with copper and stone tools, and a workshop that made colossi for decades had both the rules and the practice to get faces right.\n\nThe open question is human. What did these giants say to the people who walked past them, and how many hands did one king's image take?","why":"One of the largest Ramesses statues you can stand above, with its find story and its place in the machining debate.","nfacts":1,"nsrc":1,"yt":"Compute volume from dimensions.","rel":["EGY-RAM"],"hook":"A limestone Ramesses II about 10 m long lies on its back, its feet broken off, in the old capital Memphis."},"S":{"198":["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","file:books/upload5.pdf"]},"rec":{"id":"W21LA06","alias":[],"ms":[{"a":"Memphis Ramses colossus mass / material","v":">300 t (estimate); limestone","u":"tons","unc":"estimate","by":"Christopher Dunn","yr":"2010","m":"not stated [Dunn 2010 p.72; quote W21LQ048]","b":"S","t":"MEASUREMENT","id":"W21LM048","s":["W21LS01"],"c":"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","url":"file:books/upload5.pdf"}],"lab":[],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[],"dat":[],"aa":[],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"art":{"claimed_anomaly":"3-axis symmetry","mainstream_reading":"sculptor grid canon (not opened)","provenance_flag":"genuine ancient","current_location":"open-air museum, Memphis","find_circumstances":"Memphis","claimant":"Christopher Dunn","status":"no data","dimensions":">300 t (Dunn est.)","material":"limestone (per Dunn p.78)","date":"","culture":"","museum_accession":"not given","b":"S","s":["W21LS01"]},"sub":[],"src":[{"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":"VW21LA06-2","t":"Ancient World Magazine: A colossal statue of Ramesses II at Memphis","u":"https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/colossal-statue-ramesses-ii-memphis/"},{"id":"VW21LA06-3","t":"Christopher Dunn, GizaPower: Ramses (believer page)","u":"https://www.gizapower.com/ramses.html"}],"qs":["How do you move and raise a statue this size with ropes, sledges and people?","Ramesses filled Egypt with colossi like this. What did they say to his people, and what do they say to us?","Do we underestimate what organised human labour can do, or overestimate it?"]},"img":null,"md":{"h":"img/m/W21LA06-16x9.webp","w":1600,"hh":900,"alt":"Ramses II colossus, Memphis (Mit Rahina), open-air museum, Memphis — Ramses II colossal statue in the Memphis open air museum in Egypt.","by":"Wknight94 talk","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","lu":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0","p":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ramses_II_colossal_statue_in_Memphis_2010.jpg","g":false,"ct":true,"cap":"","sec":[]},"hh":[{"v":">300 t (Dunn est.)","h":"Recorded dimensions","s":[269]},{"v":"Limestone","h":"Made of: Limestone (per Dunn p.78)","s":[269]},{"v":"Memphis","h":"Where it was found","s":[269]},{"v":"open-air museum","h":"Held at: open-air museum, Memphis","s":[269]}],"hs":{"269":["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","file:books/upload5.pdf"]}}