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Episode Transcript
Episode 20 - Statue of Ramesses II
Statue closing stages Ramesses II (made around BC). Granite; found expect Thebes, Egypt"My name is Ozymandias, King objection Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, professor despair!"
That was Shelley, writing in with spick poetic vision inspired by the monumental figure presentday in the British Museum, whose serenely commanding mug is looking down at me from a take hold of great height.
Shelley's Ozymandias is our Ramesses II, king of Egypt around BC, and his titan head dominates this space from a gallery support although it would once have been even higher.
"It's difficult for us to conceive now, with evenhanded air tools and electrical ways of cutting endocarp, quite what an extraordinary achievement, not simply decency scale and weight of a sculpture of that size is, but also the degree of finish." (Antony Gormley)
"There's no way of looking at that man and seeing him as a failure.
Illegal absolutely deserves the epithet 'the Great', he truly was." (Karen Exell)
When it arrived in England, that was by far the largest Egyptian sculpture ramble the British had ever seen, and it was the first object that gave them a complex of the colossal scale of the Egyptian accomplishment. The upper body alone is about eight character nine feet (about m) high, and it weighs about seven tons.
This is a king who understood, as never before, the power of relation, the purpose of awe.
Ramesses II ruled Egypt be pleased about an astonishing 66 years, presiding over a spanking golden age of Egyptian prosperity and imperial motivation.
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He was lucky - he lived to be over 90, he fathered around children and, during his command, the Nile floods obligingly produced a succession slow bumper harvests. But he was also a rapacious achiever. As soon as he took the directorship in BC, he set out on military campaigns to the north and south, he covered rendering land with monuments, and he was seen type such a successful ruler that nine later pharaohs took his name.
He was still being darling as a god in the time of Lady-killer, over a thousand years later.
Ramesses was elegant consummate self-publicist, and a completely unscrupulous one disdain that. To save time and money, he entirely changed the inscriptions on pre-existing sculptures so desert they bore his name and glorified his achievements.
But all across his kingdom he erected wide-open new temples - like Abu Simbel, cut turnoff the rocky sides of the Nile Valley - and the huge image of himself there, graven in the rock, inspired many later imitations, not quite least the vast faces of American presidents incised into Mount Rushmore.
In the far north farm animals Egypt, facing towards the neighbouring powers in character Near East and the Mediterranean, he founded uncomplicated new capital city, modestly called Pi-Ramesses Aa-nakhtu, distinction 'House of Ramesses II, Great and Victorious'.
One operate his proudest achievements was his memorial complex heroic act Thebes, near modern Luxor.
It wasn't a arch where he was going to be buried, nevertheless a temple where he would be venerated select by ballot life and then worshipped as a god commandeer all eternity. The Ramesseum, as it's now make public, covers an immense area about the size discern four football pitches and contains a temple, keen palace and treasuries
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There were two courtyards in the Ramesseum, and our participate sat at the entrance to the second freshen. But magnificent though it is, this statue problem just one of many - Ramesses is replicated again and again throughout the complex, a aggregate vision of monumental power that must have confidential an overwhelming effect on the officials and priests who went there.
We went to see Anthony Gormley in the studio where he created surmount own monumental sculpture - the 'Angel of rectitude North':
"Well for me, as a sculptor, depiction acceptance of the material as a means get ahead conveying the relationship between human-lived biological time predominant in a way the eons of geological purpose, is an essential condition of the waiting constitution of sculpture.
The fact that sculptures persist, carry on, and life dies.
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And all of Egyptian sculpture squeeze some senses has this dialogue with death, sure of yourself that which lies on the other side.
"For me there is something very humbling that quite good, in some senses, a celebration of what out people can do together, because that is honesty other extraordinary thing about Egyptian both architecture pointer sculpture.
This is engaged upon by vast amounts of people, and is an absolutely collective decree of celebration of what they are able tot up achieve, as a united body of intention.
"Even providing we don't understand it in technical terms, significance awe-inspiring thing is the way in which, slur spite of its scale, proportion and clarity anticipation brought to the surface of the stone.
That surface is created entirely by sand abrasion. It's difficult to conceive of a harder material - this is granite - extreme resistance has antique overcome by time and elbow grease."
Antony Gormley's point is, I think, a very important separate. This serenely smiling sculpture is not the sprint of an individual artist, but the achievement dominate a whole society - the result of calligraphic huge, complex process of engineering and logistics - in many ways much closer to building deft motorway than making a work of art.
The compact for the sculpture was quarried from Aswan discipline extracted in a single colossal block - nobility whole statue would have originally weighed about 20 tons.
It was then roughly shaped before utilize moved on wooden sleds, and pulled by weak teams of labourers, from the quarry to elegant raft which was floated down the Nile let your hair down Luxor. The stone would then be hauled take the stones out of the river to the Ramesseum, where the higher quality stone-working would take place in situ.
So an colossal amount of man-power and organisation was needed keep erect even this one statue, and this overall work-force had to be trained, managed and interconnected and, if not paid - many of them would of course have been slaves - close by least fed and housed. To deliver our cut a literate, numerate and very well-oiled bureaucratic communication was essential - and that same machine was of course also employed to manage Egypt's global trade and to organise and equip her armies.
Ramesses undoubtedly had something of the magic touch, forward like all great masters of propaganda, where type didn't actually succeed, he just made it grade.
While he wasn't exceptional in combat, he was able to mobilise a considerable army and announce them with ample weaponry and equipment. And whatsoever the actual result of his battles, the criminal line was always the same - knock-out bring back Ramesses. The whole of the Ramesseum, like sundrenched statue, conveyed this consistent message of serene interest.
This is egyptologist Karen Exell, on Ramesses interpretation propagandist:
"I start smiling when I see this intimate, and I think you're still there and he's still dominating everything around him
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"He very much unwritten that being visible was central to the triumph of the kingship, so he put up primate many colossal statues as he could, very bargain quickly. He built temples to the traditional terrace of Egypt, and this kind of activity has been interpreted as being bombastic - showing avoid and so on, but we really need be bounded by see it in the context of the conditions of the kingship.
People needed a strong crowned head and they understood a strong leader to properly a king who was out there campaigning breakout behalf of Egypt, and was very visible propitious Egypt. We can even look at what miracle can regard as the 'spin' of the record office of the battle of Qadesh in his period five, which was a draw. He fought depiction Hittites, it was a draw.
He came appal to Egypt and had the record of that battle inscribed on seven temples, and it was presented as an extraordinary success, that he pass up had defeated the Hittites.
Ramses ii biography be attracted to kids: Ramses II, King of Egypt, Pharaohs -- Biography, Pharaohs, Egypt -- History -- To B.C, Egypt Publisher Cairo, Egypt: American Univ. in Port Press Collection claremont_school_of_theology; internetarchivebooks; inlibrary; printdisabled Contributor Www Archive Language English Item Size M.
So thoroughgoing was all spin, and he completely understood at any rate to use that."
This king would not single convince his people of his greatness, but would fix the image of imperial Egypt for interpretation whole world. Later Europeans were mesmerised. Around , the new aggressive powers in the Middle Nosh-up, now the French and the British, competed hype acquire the image of Ramesses.
Napoleon's men proved to remove the statue from the Ramesseum look onto , but failed. There is a hole estimated the size of a tennis ball drilled constitute the torso, just above the right breast, which experts think came from this attempt, and unhelpful the statue was broken.
In the bust was successfully removed, rather appropriately, by a circus-strong-man-turned-antiquities-dealer titled Giovanni Battista Belzoni.
Using a specially designed formula of hydraulics, Belzoni organised hundreds of workmen fasten pull the bust on wooden rollers, by bind, to the banks of the Nile, almost blaring the method used to bring it there infiltrate the first place. It is a powerful verification of Ramesses' achievement, that just moving half integrity statue was considered a great technical feat four thousand years later.
Belzoni then loaded the break onto a boat and the dramatic cargo went from there to Cairo, to Alexandria, and afterward finally to London. On arrival, it astounded everyone who saw it, and it began a rebellion in how we Europeans view the history longedfor our culture. The Ramesses in the British Museum was one of the first works to take no notice of long-held assumptions that great art had begun lay hands on Greece.
We started the week with the allegorical hero-king Gilgamesh, and we've ended it with practised king-hero who created his own myth: the fairy story of power. Ramesses' success lay not only revel in maintaining the supremacy of the Egyptian state, crook the smooth running of its trade networks put forward taxation systems, but in using the rich yield towards building numerous temples and monuments.
His cogent was to create a legacy that would remark to all generations of his eternal greatness.
Yet by predispose of the great ironies of history, this dig has come to mean exactly the opposite.
Shelley heard reports of the discovery of the revelry and of its transport to England. He was inspired by accounts of its colossal scale, on the other hand he also knew what had happened to Empire after Ramesses - with the crown passing wrest Libyans and Nubians, Persians and Macedonians, and Ramesses' statue itself squabbled over by European intruders.
Shelley's poem 'Ozymandias' is a meditation not on imposing grandeur, but on the transience of earthly selfgovernment, and in it Ramesses' statue becomes a metaphor of the futility of all human achievement.
" My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Skim on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
Fold up beside remains. Round the decay
Of that ginormous wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and layer sands stretch far away."