Osiride Pillars, Ramesseum, Thebes

Date1880s

MediumAlbumen print from collodion negative

Credit LineGift of Margaret A. Carver in memory of Charles H. Carver, Emory '39

Dimensions8 3/16 x 10 11/16 in. (20.8 x 27.1 cm)

Object number1984.011.024

Label Text"Of all Theban ruins, the Ramesseum is the most cheerful."

Amelia Edwards, A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, 1877

The mortuary temple of Ramesses II was dubbed the Ramesseum by Jean Francois Champollion, the scholar who deciphered the Rosetta Stone. In this court the pillars are formed in the guise of the god Osiris whose crossed arms bear the crook and flail. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the fragments of two colossal granite statues of Ramesses were found in this courtyard. The arrival of the head of one of these in London in 1818 inspired Shelley's sonnet, "Ozymandias:"

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works ye mighty and despair."

Ozymandias is actually an ancient Greek corruption of one of Ramesses' names, User mare meramun, which means "Beloved of Amun, given dominion."
Exhibition HistoryThe Fascination With The East: Early Photographs of Egypt (travelling show), Emory University Museum of Art and Archaeology, November 18, 1986 - February 28, 1987; Louisiana Arts and Sciences Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, September 19 - December 31, 1987; Red Mountain Museum, Birmingham, Alabama, April 10 - May 8, 1988
Along the Nile, Michael C. Carlos Museum, May - September 1993; June - September 1994
Souvenirs of the Nile: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Egypt, Michael C. Carlos Museum, July 1 - September 24, 2000
Published ReferencesMonique Seefried and Mary Cozine Woodward, The Fascination with the East: Early Photographs of Egypt (Atlanta: Emory University Museum of Art and Archaeology, 1987), 7, 15.

ProvenanceEx coll. Maria Hersey (1843-1927), Portland, Maine. Thence by descent.

MarkingsReverse: "Ramesseum Sale de Colonne"

Status

Not on view

Collections