The Rammessium

The RAMMESIUM
The Mortuary Temple of Ramses 11
The Mansion of a Million years

My bike ride from the ticket office roundabout took me up a long winding hill; I glanced over as I passed the tombs of the Nobles, sweeping down the hillside on my bike I arrived at the Mortuary Temple of Ramses 11 known as The Rammessium. It was a 'Mansion of Eternity', dedicated to Osiris, Amun and Ramses 11.  Areas of the temple now lie in ruins due to the damage caused by an earthquake; restoration work is in progress in the main hall where original beautiful color can be seen again on the columns.



The Rammessium stands on the dividing line between life and death, fields of dark green sugar cane sway along the edge of the first pylon in the last remnants of fertile land, on the opposite side of the Rammessium behind the Hypostyle hall lays the barren desert lands and the domain of Osiris Lord of the underworld

Ramses 11 came to power at the age of 25, his popular title is ‘Ramses the Great,’ but his Pharonic name was ‘Ra has fashioned him Beloved of Amun.’  Ramses reigned for 67 years, and during his long reign he probably erected the most statues temples and obelisks of all the pharaohs, although he was also known to write over previous pharaoh’s inscriptions to embellish his own reign Some of his most impressive works included the Hypostyle hall at Karnack temple and his extension of Luxor temple, he was also responsible for completing one of the most unusual and impressive of all temples at Abu Simbel in Nubia. From an early age of ten Ramses was known as  ‘Eldest Kings Son',  he was brought up in the same military tradition as his father and his grandfather Ramses 1 after whom he was named. The mummy of his grandfather Ramses 1 can now be seen in the military wing of Luxor Museum.

My journey through the Rammessium starts with my arrival from a new side entrance that has been created and leads me into the second courtyard, I walked over to the nearest row of Osirid Statues, on the wall behind these Ramses can be seen driving his chariot at the battle of Kaddesh,   his magnificent plumed horses fearlessly charge across the battle ground, trampling his enemies underfoot. In large relief he becomes the fearsome warrior with his bow drawn, whilst at the side of his chariot his trained panther springs high into the air for the kill, chaos ensues across the battleground and as the scene progresses across the wall his enemies are mercilessly driven into the River Orontes where their helpless bodies drown within the swirl of the tide.

Ramses likes to portray the battle of Kaddesh as his victory, like many men of great power  he preferred his own version of the events to be recorded on his temple walls  to inspire his people of his invincibility, an opposite version of events of the battle of Kaddesh was portrayed by the Hittites, and according to their reports Ramses was lucky to survive the battle, the walls at Karnack temple record that his majesty found himself alone on the battlefield surrounded by the enemy as he had driven his chariot fearlessly into the enemy.  After the battle Ramses recognized the benefit of diplomacy, and he became the first known king to agree a peace treaty, which was drawn up between himself and the Hittite King, where respect and honor was paramount and each king would embrace the other as a brother striking down with a swift justice any person that would break their alliance. To seal the treaty Ramses also married a Hittite princess while his wife Nefatari also continued to strengthen the alliance by exchanging friendly letters to the Hittite queen herself.

When visiting the Rammessium most people are impressed by the broken statue of Rameses, its enormous head and shoulders lie collapsed against the temple wall and columns, having fallen against them during an earth quake. A set of wooden steps lead me over the side of the head and torso down into the first courtyard that faces the first pylon. As I walked up   the steps and over the head the awesome size of this devasted statue affected me. I was a mere ant compared to this giant of a king. The wooden staircase then led me down to the debris that the earthquake had scattered around the first courtyard, a pair of giant feet and graceful hands can be found between the boulders of this giant wreckage

 I walked over towards the first pylon, its main entrance had now been sealed off,  faint relief’s show prisoners acquired during the battle of Kaddesh, I walked down the side of the pylon and  found myself at the  small  entrance  tunnel within the pylon, its dark staircase rose at a steep angle, a staircase to the heavens,  a square shaft of daylight from the sky above beckoned me upwards,  temptation was too much, I had to climb the staircase up to the top of the  pylon, at the top a bit of mountaineering was required  as the pylon is damaged, from here I could see the whole area around the temple, down the side of temple are the ruins of stables grain storehouses, and the apartments of priests and workers

The Rammessium mortuary temple was created to ensure that Ramses' name would live for eternity after his death, when the priests would make offerings for his Ka. Thousands of years passed and centuries of silence had shrouded the Rammessium in the silence of the desert, the ancient  words written on its walls were silenced, the priests were driven away,   the gods and Ramses’ were forgotten, then sadly the earthquake destroyed parts of the Rammessium,  I believe the exploits of Belzoni and Napoleon inspired the world once more and woke  Ancient Egypt from its slumbers, it is alive  again, and Ramses name will live for eternity his star has risen in the heavens once more and travelers  flock to this antique land again. As I stood in the courtyard  I tried to imagine how such an enormous    statue could have been erected in the first courtyard, a giant so large it emitted Ramses power and strength to the world, it must have been an   awesome sight when it had arrived from Aswan in one piece, it  stood taller than the seated statues of the Colossi of Memnon, which was probably another reason for its downfall it did not have the throne of two lands to counterbalance its weight and height when the earth quake struck.

In 1816 the Italian adventurer called Giovanni Belzoni arrived in Luxor, he had originally started his career as a strong man in the circus, when things became hard to earn a living by this means Belzoni grasped the chance to work in Egypt using his knowledge of hydraulics, when this also failed he then accepted work from Thomas Salt to track down and collect antiquities that Salt then sold onto The British Museum. When Belzoni arrived at the Rammessium he enlisted the help of one of the local village chief's, who provided him with men to help him pull the head of a statue known as the ‘young Memnon’ to the banks of the Nile, the young Memnon was one of two smaller seated statues of Ramses that sat in the second courtyard each side of the steps that lead into the hypostyle hall. When Belzoni arrived in Egypt there was no protection for the antiquities and the local village people were not interested in the ancient temples, so with payment for their labors they happily helped him to remove the head of the young Memnon.

Belzoni moved the head in the same way that the ancient Egyptians had completed all their heavy stone moving tasks. He laid the head on a sledge of rolling logs with the aid of pulleys. For three weeks the troop of eighty men pulled the largest known colossal head weighing seven and a half tons, and still they only covered two and a half miles. Belzoni became ill with sun blindness and the head was abandoned. When he recovered the locals considered him crazy as he wanted to continue with his plan to get the head to the Nile, for Belzoni the task had now become more urgent as he realized that his illness had set him back, and he knew that it would soon be time for the annual Nile flood. He convinced the chief to help him again, and triumphantly they finally reached the Nile a few weeks later where the head was put on a Felucca and sailed to Cairo to add to Salt's collection. Belzoni then went into The Valley of the Kings in search of more treasure.

As I walked across the courtyard another set of Osiris statues

loomed towards me in solemn silence, I realized all their heads were missing, and yet with their arms crossed holding both the flail and scepter they still affected me with their majesty and presence. A singular large head carved from granite appears to have dropped into the courtyard beneath their feet, it sits slightly lob- sided, and I stopped to gaze on the beautiful face of Ramses, the whisper of a smile touches the corners of a perfectly formed mouth.  I decided that the poet Shelley was wrong when he wrote in his poem ‘Ozymandias’ that the face of Ramses portrayed a sneer of cold command, with a frown and wrinkled lip, the romance of the period he lived in had created an impression of a king that was nothing like the face that gazed back at me, there was no sneer of haughty command that his poem described, so I smiled back at Ramses and I felt he acknowledged my affection. Standing there I suddenly realized that I wasn’t alone, an elderly attendant  had come to stand beside me, he then walked towards  the head, he pointed and gestured to my camera,  his hands telling me what his words could not, he created an imaginary frame with his hands around the head, all the time pointing to my camera, a large grin  then escaped on his face and the laughter lines crinkled around his eyes, ‘Action!’ he suddenly declared,  I was so surprised I had to laugh, it seemed so comical to find my own film director, come action scene camera assistant within the grounds of a temple, and so having taken my photo I followed  him with good humour  to see all that he wanted to show me.  We walked up the central staircase at the side of the osirid statues and in large relief on the wall before me Ramses kneeled at the feet of the gods Amun Mut and Khonsu, he was blessed as the Lord of a million years, beneath this scene are a row of his sons.

 My eyes were drawn to the corner of the relief, where the bold graffiti of Carlos viola Italiano 1820 is brazenly gouged into the stone, it reminded me of the signature an artist would put in the corner of his canvas. My new friend then guided me to the broken granite sitting statue that I had passed as I came up the steps, and pointed to graffiti carved within the cartouche of Ramses and I recognized the name Belzoni and the year 1816 had been cut into the granite between the cartouche of Ramses on the back of the statue, this was the same statue that Belzoni had come to the Rammessium to collect the head of the younger Memnon from. Its twin had just smiled at me on the lower courtyard; I turned and entered the final steps into the hypostyle hall, where further battle scenes are shown on the south east wall detailing the campaigns of Ramses showing the battle at the Fortress of Tounip and Dapour where Archers reign arrows down from a higher fortress and men clamber up wooden ladders for the assault.

The Egyptian campaigns during this period brought many slaves into the Nile Valley, they were employed in various services, and some were sent to the legions, some to the sea, some to royal palaces and others to work for the temples. The king’s name was branded on them to prevent their escape and assist recapture. It is considered that Ramses 11 was the father of the oppression and the father of the un-named princess who found Moses in the little papyrus barque among the rushes in the river. Moses eventually led the Hebrews out of the land of bondage to the land of promise under the reign of Ramses 13th son Pharaoh Merneptah 11 As I walked through the Hypostyle hall I arrive at the back wall to see one of my favorite relief’s, the beautiful Goddess Sheshat the inventor of writing holding the palm of years in her hand as she stands at the side of the tree of life, and draws a cartouche for the king in the presence of her husband Thoth the scribe of the gods. The god Amun Ra is seated and he tells Ramses ‘I make your years on earth last in unending numbers, I make your lifespan more secure than the lifespan of heaven remaining in your own temple. I write your name in the holy Ished tree with my own hand, I have proclaimed you king on my throne’.

As I walked towards the central doorway within the wall I spotted another piece of Graffiti naming Belzoni and underneath his name the name of Salt. I looked up to the dark painted ceiling was in awe as I as I looked at the heavenly barques passing through the cosmos with the gods of the sky and beautiful astronomical records.

During his long reign Ramses took eight principal wives, but Nefatari was his first and favorite among them, she was his chief queen until her death in about the 24th year of his reign. Nefatari bore his first son, and at least three other sons and daughters. The most outstanding tomb in The Valley of the Queens is the tomb that Ramses created for his beloved wife Nefatari, theirs was a story of love not duty, Nefataris tomb is vibrant with color, and above the entrance to the burial chamber Maat the Goddess of truth kneels with her protective outstretched wings, her royal cartouche is written down the side of the lintels. Nefataris tomb is in The Valley of the Queens-QV 66.

After Nefataris death, Ramses second wife Istnofret took her place, it was her son Merneptah that later became Ramses successor. Ramses had outlived many of his sons, Kent weeks the English archaeologist has re-discovered KV5 which is the largest tomb in the Valley of the Kings that Ramses began to house the remains of his many sons. The tomb was originally discovered by James Burton an English Egyptologist who mapped the first few chambers
Ramses died at about 92 years of age, which was very unusual , he had outlived many of his own sons, and  his Tomb had been prepared for  many years in the Valley of the Kings, and like many kings his mummy was not found in his own tomb but  hidden in the great cache of Royal Mummies discovered in 1881 at Dier El Bahari,  To protect   his mummy  from the threat of tomb robbers Ramses had been taken from the Valley of the Kings and hidden  within a secret tomb in the mountainside near Hatshepsuts Temple, thousands of years later  the Rassul  brothers, a family later noted for  tomb robbery discovered the cache.
In 1977   Ramses was flown to Paris where a Great Ramses 11 Exhibition was staged. The journey was arranged to offer the mummy the best conservation treatment possible as deterioration had been noticed, with the invasion of beetle larvae.  In the shimmering heat at Cairo airport the coffin of Ramses passed onto the plane whilst a guard of Honor saluted the King.  On arrival in Paris Airport Ramses was again greeted with a full presidential guard of Honor even though   he had been dead for nearly 3,200 years.

In the fields and undergrowth at the side of the Rammessium lie the ruins of a small chapel where a beautiful statue of the face of Merit –Amun was unearthed. The chapel is known as The Chapel of the White Queen, who was the eldest daughter of Ramses and Nefatari who also became one of her father's wives. Meritit-Amun was a priestess of Het-Hert  (Hathor) at the Temple at Dier El Medina, she held many beautiful titles and was obviously loved by her father to have her chapel so close to his mortuary temple. Meritit-Amun titles were; 

'The one who fills the forecourt with the scent of her fragrance',
'Superior of the Harem of Amun-Re' '
The Eldest daughter of the King and Nefatari with the splendid face, Magnificent in the Palace,
The beloved of the Lord of two Lands,
She who stands by her Master like Sophis is beside Orion, and
One is satisfied with what is said, when she opens her mouth to the Lord of the Two Lands'
Her tomb is in the Queens Valley no 68.

Riding away from the Rammessium Mortuary Temple I decided to stop at the Rammessium Rest Room to escape the heat and quench my thirst with a drink.  I had discovered that the restroom is owned by the Abd Rassul Family, whose forefathers were the tomb robbers that had discovered the famous cache of Kings and royalty at Dier El Bahari at the side of Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple. Regrettably tomb robbers have the same fascination for me as Cornish smugglers, I know it is wrong but their secret lives still entice me.This is my painting of Ahmed Rassul with his mother , daughter and granddaughter outside their tomb home, the painting was taken from an old black and white photo


 went into the Rammessium rest room and looked at the memorabilia on the walls and was drawn to the face of a young boy,  in the poignant black and white photograph a young boy wore around his neck one of the necklaces of Tutankhamun, the boy had worked for Howard Carter  as a basket boy when they emptied the treasures  from Tutankhamuns tomb , when I saw this photo I forgot about the treasures within the tomb, because this one photograph finally  emphasized the reality of a situation that had never really sunk in, that Tutenkhamun like this teenage boy wearing his necklace, was infact also a child  who had ruled a great civilized nation when other countries were still living in mud huts. The young boy in the photo became a sheik and was known as Sheik Abd Rassul, and until he died he told many tourists the stories of his grandfather the tomb robber, and his experiences of being part of the most exciting discovery of all time with Howard Carter. I was so inspired by this old black and white photograph that I decided to paint a canvas of the boy, and on a later trip to the Rammessium Temple I went back to the Restroom to give them my painting. As I entered the Rest room a man stood up in delight and declared ‘That’s my Grandfather’, ‘O’h good’, I said’ I am glad you recognized him ‘, I took a photo of the boy but lost it whilst working on my painting, so most of the portrait was from my imagination, but I think the glory of Tutankhamun is expressed with the canvas of the finished painting as the color regally blazes off from the canvas. Mohamed excitedly showed me photographs of Howard carter and Lord Carnarvon along with a photo of his great grandfather the tomb robber Ahmed Abd Rassul who had actually lived in a tomb with his family.

On a more recent visit to the Rammessium Temple, a man in a djellebar attached himself
to my brother and I as we made our way through the temple, most of the time I  find these men irritating as most of them can only speak Arabic, their knowledge about the temple they work in is often poor, and so I am not actually sure what their real function is, all they appear to do is try to encourage you over to show you something that they don’t really understand, and once you stand there and stare at what they are showing you the inevitable request for baksheesh is prompted. I must admit though as irritating as it can be, sometimes it can have an advantage, and on the trip I took with my brother through the Rammessium, I have never been so excited or privileged to see something as exciting before. The attendant encouraged us to follow him and he walked towards the arched grain and store rooms, archaeologists were working in the land at the side of the Rammessium, and it was obvious they had been working here too, as we passed several deep holes, eventually we arrived at the side of a mud brick wall and a hole that was lightly covered in corrugated iron, he lifted the sheet up and behold, two frail bodies lay in sarcophagus beneath us, I was overwhelmed, one had the body of a small infant, its skull shone in a small shaft of light, the larger body was still swaddled with its wrappings, debris surrounded them, it was the highlight of ten years of visiting Luxor to see these mummies and experience probably the same thrill that the archeologists had on discovering them. Every time I visit Luxor I see something new that I never noticed before even if I visit the same temples.