Egyptian art - Ramses the Great as a deified statue - Museum replica

Ramses II

Dimensions :-

Height - 24 cm / 9-1/2 inches

Width - 18 cm / 7 inches

* Combined postage offered if you would like to add other items to your parcel.


On offer here for the first time is an unusual piece from the archive.

At first glance it may look like a standard representation of a king or a god but when you look at it carefully this ancient replica will tell you much more.

The shoulders of this figure are shown in profile instead of the typical full frontal style so well known when thinking of Egyptian paintings and carvings.

It is certainly a carving of a human figure but it is not showing a living person but a gigantic statue of the king standing on a small platform. Statue worship was one way to communicate with the person depicted and this is an unusual way for the owner of the stele to achieve this.

An ancient artist must have been so impressed by the scale of the statue he encountered that he decided to capture the essence of it in a small carving. It was important to him. It was probably just one of the many giant statues of Ramses that began rising along the Nile valley and perhaps this artist from a provincial town, wanted to share what he saw with his family on his return from a journey to a big city.

Ramses the Great, Ramses the builder....no king has more imagery to survive the ages than this illustrious 19th dynasty ruler.

We don't know which actual statue impressed the ancient artist but one particular one that still exists in Memphis Egypt, modern day Mit Rahina, comes to mind.

It is one of several colossal statues in this museum precinct and it towers over the grounds sharing the pose of the statue shown in this stele.

This design was carved quickly, with an economic use of the chisel. The marks are unsmoothed and clearly seen. It is the equivalent of a sketch, in sculptural terms.

The name of Ramses is present in the top right of the image forming what is known as the royal cartouche.

An offering table is set up directly in front of the statue and this supports an urn and a huge lotus flower.

Behind the figure of the king rises a stylized papyrus and inbetween this stalk and the back of the king is a line that indicates the edge of the support beam of the statue which reaches the top of the crown. These support beams gave greater strength to the statue from an engineering perspective.

This is a very rare offering for the deep dive collector. Made of a limestone and quartzite composition stone it has a delicately aged light ochre patina.