The colossal statue of Ramesses II

The colossal statue represents Ramesses II, (about 1279–1213 BC), also known as Ramesses the Great, who reigned for 66 years during Egypt's New Kingdom. Known for his vast building projects and military triumphs, Ramesses left his mark across Egypt and beyond.

This statue represents the pharaoh in an idealised, youthful form, bare-chested and wearing a striped headcloth and royal crown. The sculpture's head and torso – now residing at the British Museum – once formed part of a larger, seated figure, which was damaged in later centuries.

The statue was cut from a single block of two-tone granite and granodiorite, among Egypt's hardest and most prized stones, chosen for its symbolism and durability. The artisans deliberately used the lighter pink granite for the face and crown, contrasting with the darker stone below to enhance its visual impact. The deep, dark stone likely evokes the fertile black soil of Egypt, while the pinkish granite resonates with solar associations.

The statue displays a high level of workmanship. The king's face features full, rounded cheeks, raised eyebrows, and cosmetic-banded eyes that gaze downwards. His aquiline nose and well-defined mouth, curved almost into a smile, convey calm authority. A ceremonial beard attached beneath the chin symbolises divine kingship, and he wears a broad decorative collar around his neck. Only part of the crown survives, but it still shows its striking details: rearing cobras topped with solar disks. The cobra on the king's forehead, his protective uraeus, was believed to shield the pharaoh, poised to strike down his enemies with fire and venom.

Traces of paint – blue and yellow on the headcloth, red on the skin, and black in the eyes – hint that the statue was once vividly coloured. However, it was more than just an object of beauty: it served as a 'cult statue' – a living image meant to house the pharaoh's ka, or life force, where offerings could be made and rituals carried out to sustain his spirit.

Where was it found?

The statue originally stood in the Ramesseum, Ramesses II's memorial temple on the West Bank at Thebes (modern Luxor). Facing the River Nile and the temples of Karnak and Luxor on the opposite shore, the Ramesseum was the pharaoh's 'mansion of millions of years', designed for his eternal worship after death.

The statue was the southernmost of a pair of colossal seated figures that flanked one of the entrances to the central part of the complex. The head of the northern statue still lies at the site, while the base of the statue now at the British Museum was re-erected there in the 1990s.

The Ramesseum was known in classical times as the Memnonium, which is why the statue at the Museum is sometimes referred to as the 'Younger Memnon'.

How big is the statue and how much does it weigh?

Even in its incomplete form, the statue is enormous, measuring just over 2.5 metres high from the headdress to the chest and more than 2 metres across the shoulders, and weighing around 7¼ tons.

When whole, the seated figure would have reached roughly 7 metres in height and weighed an estimated 20 tons. Few ancient sculptures rival such ambition.

What are the inscriptions on the Ramesses II statue?

Hieroglyphs on the back pillar and throne proclaim Ramesses' titles and his divine connection to Amun-Ra, the king of the gods.

One inscription reads:

The Horus, Victorious [Bull] beloved of Ma'at, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, great of monuments in Thebes, lord [of crowns], Usermaatra-Setepenra, Son of Ra, Ramesses-Meryamun, beloved of Amun-Ra, king of the gods; he is endowed with life!

Another, spoken by Amun-Ra himself, declares:

O my son, of my flesh, my beloved, Ramesses-Meryamun! I have given you millions of years, hundreds of thousands of jubilees, and all foreign lands are under your soles.

Scenes on the throne show personifications of the Nile's flood binding the lotus and papyrus plants – symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt – representing Ramesses' rule over a united land.

These inscriptions not only gave the statue its sacred identity but were thought to grant the pharaoh eternal life through the continual repetition of his names.

Who created the Ramesses II statue?

It would have taken several teams of people, each with a different set of skills, to create and install the statue.

Sculptors used hard stone hammers and copper or bronze chisels to carve the contours of the statue from a single block of two-tone granite and granodiorite quarried near Aswan, about 200km south of Thebes.

Another team of workers then moved the shaped block onto wooden sledges and pulled it towards the Nile, where it was loaded onto a river barge and sailed downstream to Thebes.

Artisans carved the fine details of the statue, before polishing it to a high sheen, in preparation for painting it in bright colours and gilding.

To an ancient visitor approaching the Ramesseum, it would have gleamed in the Egyptian sun, projecting a divine image of eternal youth and authority.

A prolific builder of temples and monuments, Ramesses II clearly understood the power of image. His colossal statues were not mere decoration – they served as political and spiritual tools. Each one was a permanent manifestation of the pharaoh's divine spirit, ensuring his presence throughout Egypt.

Positioned at temple gateways, these statues symbolically protected sacred spaces and greeted worshippers. To his people, they represented the visible body of a god-king; to the gods, they were vessels through which the pharaoh could communicate with a divine audience.

Ramesses' love of monumental art extended far beyond Thebes, from his rock-cut temples at Abu Simbel with their 21-metre-high seated figures, to statues spread across his empire. His sculpted likenesses, often inscribed with titles such as 'Ra-of-the-Rulers', projected both his human and divine identities and immortalised his authority for all time.

Did the Ramesses II statue inspire the poem Ozymandias?

Yes – indirectly. The classical historian Diodorus Siculus recorded an inscription at the Ramesseum that read: 'I am Ozymandias, king of kings; if any one wishes to know what I am and where I lie, let him surpass me in some of my exploits.' The Greek name 'Ozymandias' is derived from Ramesses' throne name, Usermaatra.

This ancient account likely inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley to write his famous 1817 sonnet Ozymandias, which reflects on the transitory nature of earthly power:

I met a traveller 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."

Shelley likely never saw the statue itself but news of the Younger Memnon's discovery and journey to Britain was widely reported by the European press, prompting friendly rivalry between Shelley and fellow poet Horace Smith, who each wrote and published a poem on the subject.

The 'shattered visage' of Shelley's poem can be read to represent the colossal ruins at the Ramesseum, while the Younger Memnon at the British Museum stands as the most tangible echo of Shelley's words today.

How did the Museum acquire the statue?

The journey from Thebes to London was an extraordinary feat of early 19th-century adventure and engineering. In 1816, the British Consul in Egypt, Henry Salt, and his agent, the Italian explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni – a former circus strongman known as the 'Patagonian Samson' – undertook the task of removing the head of the statue, which lay half-buried in sand.

Belzoni recruited local labourers, constructed wooden sledges, and painstakingly dragged the massive granite head to the Nile's edge, where it was loaded onto a barge and shipped north to Alexandria. From there it was shipped via Malta to London, arriving in 1818. The statue was installed at the British Museum the following year with the help of the Royal Engineers, immediately becoming one of its star exhibits.

Though some controversy inevitably surrounds such 19th-century acquisitions today, the removal and display of the 'Younger Memnon' marked a turning point in Western appreciation of Egyptian art, helping to establish Egyptology as a serious field of study.

Where is the Ramesses II statue in the British Museum?

The colossal head of Ramesses II has stood in the British Museum since 1819. It dominates the Egyptian sculpture gallery (Room 4), one of the Museum's most atmospheric spaces.

Positioned at roughly the same height it once commanded in the Ramesseum, the statue gazes serenely across the gallery, its calm expression and monumental scale conveying an enduring sense of divine majesty.

This article is based on the British Museum book The Colossal Statue of Ramesses II: Object in Focus by Anna Garnett.

The statue of Ramesses II features in the Egypt episode of the BBC series Civilisations: Rise and Fall, which you can watch on iPlayer.