Doorjamb from a Temple of Ramesses II

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These colossal blocks come from a large gateway erected in commemoration of one of Ramesses II's royal jubilees. Two offering scenes are set one above the other. In the upper scene Ramesses II is depicted presenting drink offerings to Amun-Rein the form of Kamutef, "Bull of his Mother," who was identified with the fertility god Min. In the lower scene the king is making a prayer for offerings to Ptah-Tatanen, the patron of the royal jubilee. The right side is inscribed with the names and titles of Ramesses II. At the bottom of the doorjamb Ramesses III, a Twentieth Dynasty king, has roughly incised his own cartouches. The blocks were discovered in 1912-1913 by the Museum's Egyptian Expedition where they had been reused in the foundations of a gargantuan temple undertaken by Ramesses IV in the Asasif valley. The temple was laid out over the eastern part of the causeways of Mentuhotep and Thutmose III, leaving uncovered only the causeway to Hatshepsut's Deir el Bahri temple. The construction was continued by Ramesses IV's two successors, but never completed. Ramesses IV seems to have sought to reemphasize the Theban ritual landscape, and the Asasif temple may have been understood as a monumental bark station for the visit of Amun's bark to the Deir el Bahri temple during the Beautiful Festival of the Valley.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Metropolitan Museum of Art