The Ramesseo
| To understand Ramses’s celebrative restlessness it’s necessary to visit the Ramesseo ruins. Although only a part is still up today, the complex on the left bank of the Nile, in the Tebana region, is certainly the pharaoh’s most impressive work. It was his funeral temple but it wasn’t destined to receive his body after death, but to celebrate the ceremonies of his cult once he died.Closed in a massive surrounding wall, this kind of religious town included, besides the main temple, a series of buildings, some of which were destined as residences. There were also some shops, warehouses and even schools of scribes where the archaeologist have found various papyruses. As he had done before, to build his funeral temple Ramses ordered to use parts of ancient monuments, but this was the same destiny that even the Ramesseo had the pharaoh’s greatness and his great reign for the following centuries, was instead partly dismantled, for the same reason, by other sovereign. |
