 The
Ozymandias Colossus at the Ramesseum.
This is a photograph of the second, or "festival," court of
the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple of Ramesses II, called by the ancient
Egyptians "The Temple of Millions of Years United with Thebes."
Classical travellers referred to the temple, already much quarried away,
both as the "Tomb of Ozymandias" and as the "Memnonium."
It was Jean-François Champollion who correctly identified the ruins
as those of Ramesses's mortuary temple and coined the name "Ramesseum."
On the right lies the toppled torso of a seated colossal statue of Ramesses
II carved in red granite, called the Ozymandias colossus, originally about
20 meters high and weighing roughly 1,000 tons. Ozymandias is a Hellenized
form of the prenomen of Ramesses II, Usermaatra. Shelley's famous poem
"Ozymandias" appears to have been inspired by Diodorus Siculus's
description of this Ramesseum colossus.
«
previous
8 of 10
next
»
|
