Interior of the Great Temple of Ramesses II, Egypt
10mon 28d ago by lemmy.world/u/PugJesus in historyruins
Spookky! I think the following may be -almost- the biggest (but unfinished) Rameses statue ... it's in Memphis.
https://liliontheloose.com/2017/03/06/museum-colossus-ramses-ii/
Looks like it's about a meter shorter than this one. Both found, buried or in pieces, in the 1800s.
The Abu Simbel statues seem to be biggest in the world, about 2x the height of the one in the WP link.
As for the ones in the OP pic, assuming it's not stretched horizontally, they certainly have the most unusual proportions I've ever seen in Egyptian statuary. That is-- squat, unusually thick front-to-back, and with disproportionally large heads. Interesting!
Oh sure, forgot about that place!
Yep that photo's a bit ... twisted-looking. Here's a ton of others to compare ... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Interior+of+the+Great+Temple+of+Ramesses+II&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images&kp=-2&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fc8.alamy.com%2Fcomp%2FJ12TK9%2Finterior-shot-with-statues-of-the-great-temple-of-ramesses-ii-abu-J12TK9.jpg
Ah, thanks. However, seen from different angles, the statues still appear unusually squat to me, as if the figures were little more than 5' tall.
Checking with Google's AI, I'm surprised to learn (tentatively) that the average Ancient Egyptian male was in fact about 5'6," which creates a little bit of a mystery, here. What's more, Rameses II himself evidently stood about 5'11" in his prime(!)
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Agreed. Good question! Were the 5x-lifesize ones trying to compensate? Beyond my pay-grade! Haven't ever seen one, and haven't seen much actual data on these figures. (Maybe Zawi's got that cornered!)