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Relief of Ramses II |
Date: about 1279-1213
B.C. (New Kingdom, Dynasty 19, reign of Ramses II) Condition: very good. Fragment includes Ramses II’s head, chest, right arm, and upper left arm; also several hieroglyphs and a partially preserved cartouche. |
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Description. This sunk relief depicts Ramses II, identified by the cartouche inscribed on our left. He holds a hes-vase, possibly containing beer or wine (Zauzich 48; Scepter II 19). He wears the nemes, a striped cloth pulled tight across the forehead with a long lappet hanging down the right side of his chest (Shaw, Nicholson 74). The front of the nemes has a uraeus, the serpent-image of kingship. The uraeus is associated with the goddess Wadjet, the patron deity of Lower Egypt. The cobra-goddess had the ability to spit venom on the king’s enemies. Thus, the uraeus indicated the pharaoh’s rule over Lower Egypt and also protected him (Shaw, Nicholson 67, 95, 302). He wears bracelets on both upper arms and a beaded broad collar. A long aquiline nose accents his distinctive profile. Bothmer (1987) proposed that this relief was sculpted early in the reign of Ramses II because of the portrait’s facial similarity to his immediate predecessor, Sety I. Hieroglyphs. The hieroglyphs in the upper left corner portray a male, sedge plant, half-moon shaped bun, and water. They read as nesut and are part of Ramses II’s title, “King of Upper Egypt.” Below is a cartouche, an encircling oval that contains hieroglyphs of one of Ramses’ names; the cartouche protected the name and set it apart from the profane world (Freed 1987, 31). Like most pharaohs, Ramses had five names and the one in the cartouche is his “throne name,” or praenomen, User-maatre-setepenre (Zauzich 47-50). The name probably means “Strong in Right is Re, Chosen of Re” (Zauzich 47-50; Freed 1987, 31). The Nelson-Atkins cartouche includes the following hieroglyphs: a jackal head (user, meaning strong); a goddess of right, Ma’at, wearing a feather and carrying the sign for life; a sun representing the god Re; a partially preserved adze (setep, meaning chosen); and another sun (Re). The cartouche is cut deep to make the process of usurpation more difficult (Dorman 1994, 2000). Provenance and function. Although red quartzite was rarely used, scholars have not determined the relief’s function. Dorman (1994, 2000) suggests that hard-to-cut red quartzite was the preferred material for naoi (small shrines) and for pedestals that held sacred barks. Bothmer (1987) knew of comparable red quartzite reliefs in the back of the Cairo Museum and in Ismailia. (Freed [1995] finds that this relief is not part of the red quartzite Naos Paponot in the Louvre because Ramses II’s proportions are slightly different and his broad collar is missing teardrop forms in the final row.) Ramses the builder. Ramses II’s 66-year reign was one of great prosperity for Egypt. A relentless builder of colossal statues, Ramses II’s projects also included temples at Memphis and Abydos, his mortuary temple (the Ramesseum) in Western Thebes, the rock-cut temples at Abu Simbel, the court and pylon of the Luxor temple, and the famous columned hypostyle hall in the Temple of Amun at Karnak (called “The Place Where the Common People Extol the Name of His Majesty”). Ramses II also established a new capital in the Delta called Pi-Ramses. Kings of the 21st Dynasty (about 1075-945 B.C.) dismantled the ancient metropolis and used the stone to build a new capital at nearby Tanis (see, for example, Smith 1981, 358-67; Freed 1987, 34-6). Ramses as warrior and politician. Ramses II fought the formidable Hittites in the Battle of Kadesh, and although this ended in a draw, Ramses II was repeatedly celebrated as victorious on the walls of his major temples throughout Egypt and Nubia. After more confrontations with the Hittites, Ramses II established a nonaggression, mutual-defense treaty with its ruler and married a Hittite princess, resulting in 50 years of peace for Eastern Mediterranean countries (Faulkner 226-9). So famous was his rule that nine other kings of the 19th and 20th Dynasties (about 1292-1075 B.C.) were named Ramses. New discoveries. Ramses II had at least 90 children by his several wives (Freed 1987, 47). In 1989, investigating an area beside a road for tourists in Thebes, Dr. Kent Weeks, an American archaeologist, rediscovered the burial place of Ramses II’s many sons (see kv5.com). This, the largest tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings, contains over 110 corridors and chambers dug hundreds of feet into the hillside. Ramses II’s family mausoleum is one of 62 tombs that have been discovered in the Valley of the Kings since the early 1800s (Weeks 1997; 1998, 16). Published: Handbook 1933, 114, 116; Handbook 1993, 113. Note also Bernard Bothmer, visit, September 26-27, 1987; Peter Dorman, visit on July 17, 1994 and conversation on September 22, 2000; Rita Freed, conversation, July 17, 1995. Other cited sources: R.O. Faulkner, “Egypt: From the Inception of the Nineteenth Dynasty to the Death of Ramesses III,” in I. E. S. Edwards, N. G. L. Hammond, E. Sollberger (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History II, 2 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 217-47; Rita Freed, Ramesses the Great: His Life and World (Memphis: Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, 1987); Scepter II; Shaw, Nicholson; Smith 1981; Kent Weeks, “The Theban Mapping Project,” http://kv5.com (On-line. 1997); Kent Weeks, “Valley of the King,” National Geographic (Sept. 1998), 2-33; Karl-Theodor Zauzich, Hieroglyphs Without Mystery: An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Writing (Austin: Texas University Press, 1992). Other useful sources: Richard Fazzini, Images for Eternity: Egyptian Art from Berkeley and Brooklyn (New York: Publishing Center for Cultural Resources, 1975). (EAM) Previous | Homepage | Royal Portraits | Private Portraits | Funerary Objects | Frequently Cited Sources |
