Temple of Ramesses II at Abydos

Temple of Ramesses II at Abydos

The Temple of Ramesses II - About 300 m from the temple of Seti I at Abydos, on the western edge of the village of Beni Mansur, Ramesses II built another temple for himself. This temple was dedicated mainly to the Osirian cult, but was a more conventional design than the parent temple. It was built while Ramesses II was still co-ruler with Seti I. The walls of the temple of Ramesses are now very low, measuring only about 2 m high, but the plan of the structure is still clearly visible. The greatest attraction is the magnificent coloured reliefs, which are probably the best reliefs of all the monuments built by Ramesses II.

The temple walls are built of limestone, the pillars of sandstone. The first pylon and court are destroyed, and a granite portal leads straight to the second court, surrounded by a colonnade of pillars on its north, east and the sides to the south. None of the pillars retains its full height, and the statues of the king lack heads and arms.

The wall to the north of the court shows a procession of priests and bearers of offerings of decorated bull and gazelle, as well as soldiers - Libyans and Nubians. The northern wall has several interesting paintings. At the back of the court on the western side is a raised portico of two chapels dedicated to Seti I and the ancestor kings on the left, and chapels of the gods of the Ennead and Ramesses II (and Osiris Khenty-Amentiu) on the right. The ancestor sanctuary contained a king list on its northern wall, part of which (the "Second Abydos List") is now in the British Museum.

Only the lower parts of the outer walls still exist. The northern and western walls show the battle of Ramesses. On the southern wall of the temple, in the lower part, is a calendar of festivals listing the equipment to be presented during the festival.

Ramesses describes his temple and seems to be accurate in what remains of the text. He describes a pylon of white limestone and granite, and sanctuary doors of pure alabaster, which must have been very beautiful in their time.

Nearby monuments
To the north-west of the temple of Ramesses II, in an area called Kom es-Sultan, stood an ancient mud-brick temple dedicated to the god Khenty-Amentiu, otherwise called "Foremost of the Westerners", who later became associated with Osiris as the god of the dead. Nearby there is also a small temple of Wepwawet.

King Senwosret III added to the Abydos temples on the western edge of the desert, south-east of the temple of Seti; sadly nothing remains above the sand today. Another cenotaph temple of Senwosret III lay further to the west.

Ahmose, the first king of the 18th dynasty, built a temple and terraced cenotaph against the mountain to the south-west of Abydos, as well as a small temple for his grandmother Queen Tetisheri. Long after his death, Ahmose was worshipped as a demigod at Abydos, together with his wife Ahmose-Nefertari.
On the south-western side of the walls of the temple of Osiris stands the limestone "Portal Temple", which probably formed the entrance to an ancient cemetery.

Recent excavations (1996) by the Pennsylvania-Yale Institute of Fine Arts uncovered a small limestone temple with very high-quality reliefs, built in the 18th dynasty, in the south-western part of the enclosure at Kom es-Sultan.