Unearthed statues depict 'Ramses the Great'

[Alexander]

Unearthed statues depict 'Ramses the Great'

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Archaeologists discovered a pharaonic sun temple with large statues believed to be of King Ramses II under an outdoor marketplace in Cairo, Egypt's antiquities chief said Sunday.

The partially uncovered site is the largest sun temple ever found in the capital's Aim Shams and Matariya districts, where the ancient city of Heliopolis -- the center of pharaonic sun worship -- was located, Zahi Hawass told The Associated Press.

Among the artifacts was a pink granite statue weighing 4 to 5 tons whose features "resemble those of Ramses II," said Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Also found was a 5-foot-high statue of a seated figure with hieroglyphics that include three tablets with the name of Ramses II -- and a 3-ton head of a royal statue, the council said in a statement.

The green pavement stones of the temple's floor were also uncovered.

An Egyptian team working in cooperation with the German Archaeological Mission in Egypt discovered the site under the Souq al-Khamis, a popular market in eastern Cairo, Hawass said.

"The market has to be removed" as archeologists excavate the entire site, Hawas said.

King Ramses II, also known as "Ramses the Great," ruled Egypt for 66 years from 1270 to 1213 B.C. He erected monuments up and down the Nile with records of his achievements, as well as building temples -- including Abu Simbel, erected near what is now Egypt's southern border.

Numerous temples to Egypt's sun gods -- particularly the chief god Ra -- were built in ancient Heliopolis. But little remains of what was one the ancient Egyptians' most sacred cities, since much of the stone used in the temples was later plundered.

The area is now covered with residential neighborhoods, close to a modern district called Heliopolis, in Egypt's packed capital.

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In case you didn't know, Ozymandias was Ramses II Greek name. He was the subject of the classic Shelley poem:

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Edited February 27, 2006 by Alexander

[jazzbo]

Interesting.

Velikovsky claims that Egyptian chronology as the West pieces it together is really convoluted and wrong, and he in fact places Ramses II as ruling seven hundred some years earlier, in the sixth century BC. Sometimes i think he may be right. . . .