Transcript Ramesside Buildings

Ramesside Buildings
Dynasties 19 and 20
• The Ramesseum is the mortuary temple of Pharaoh
Ramesses II. It is located in the Theban necropolis in
Upper Egypt, across the River Nile from the modern
city of Luxor. The name – or at least its French form,
Rhamesséion – was coined by Jean-François
Champollion, who visited the ruins of the site in 1829
and first identified the hieroglyphs making up
Ramesses's names and titles on the walls. It was
originally called the 'House of millions of years of
Usermaatra-setepenra that unites with Thebes-the-city
in the domain of Amon'.
• Unlike the massive stone temples that Ramesses
ordered carved from the face of the Nubian mountains
at Abu Simbel, the inexorable passage of three
millennia was not kind to his 'temple of a million years'
at Thebes. This was mostly due to its location on the
very edge of the Nile floodplain, with the annual
inundation gradually undermining the foundations of
this temple, and its neighbours.
Dedication to the gods by Ramesses