Jubilee Relief of Ramesses II

Jubilee Relief of Ramesses II

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This deeply carved relief of Ramesses II shows the king wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt and seated within a shrine, the roof of which is decorated with uraei. It was part of a scene showing the king celebrating one of the sed festivals, or jubilees, of his long reign. Ramesses II, known as Ramesses the Great, ruled for sixty-six years and had an enormous impact both in Egypt and abroad. In his military campaigns, he confronted the expanding empire of the Hittites and eventually secured a treaty with them and married two Hittite princesses. He extended his rule far into Nubia, as the building of his huge rock-cut temple at Abu Simbel testifies. He built monuments as far north as Byblos in modern-day Lebanon and as far south as Jebel Barkal in the Sudan. He established a new capital at Piramesse in the eastern Delta. This relief was found by Flinders Petrie in a temple that Ramesses II built at Heracleopolis, in the northern part of Egypt near the Faiyum and dedicated to the local god Harsaphes.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jubilee Relief of Ramesses IIJubilee Relief of Ramesses IIJubilee Relief of Ramesses IIJubilee Relief of Ramesses IIJubilee Relief of Ramesses II

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.