Colossal bust of Ramesses II

The sculptor used the natural colours within one stone block to give Ramesses II a pink face above darker shoulders. The royal headcloth, called a nemes, frames his face. A damaged cobra circlet crowns the forehead. Hieroglyphs on the back pillar give the king’s names and titles and part of a dedication to Amun-Ra. This fragment belonged to one of a pair of statues placed before a doorway at the Ramesseum, the king’s mortuary temple at Thebes. Its height today is about 2.67 metres. The original figure continued below the broken torso, and the lower body and legs remain at the site in Egypt. Giovanni Belzoni collected the fragment in the nineteenth century. Henry Salt and Johann Ludwig Burckhardt donated it in 1817. Known as the Younger Memnon, it is displayed in Bay 9 of Room 4. Give yourself room to see the whole fragment before moving closer to the face and the changes in the stone.