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 Ramesses II built his fabulous mortuary temple on the site of Seti I's ruined
temple, where he identified himself with the local form of the God, Amun. It was
begun early in his reign, and took twenty years to complete. It was described by
Diodorus as the 'tomb of Ozymandia' which inspired a verse by the great poet,
Percy Bysshe Shelley. Diodorus also mentions a 'sacred library' at the temple,
though modern Egypologists have found no evidence to support this claim. This great
temple reportedly rivaled the wonders of the temple at Abu Simbel, and is very
similar both in reliefs and architecture to Ramesses III's mortuary temple at
Medinet Habu. However, Ramesses built
the temple too close to the Nile and the flood waters took their toll. Only a single colonnade
remains of the First Courtyard.
The main building where the funerary cult of the king was
celebrated was a typical stone-built New Kingdom temple. It
consisting of two successive courtyards with pylon
entrances, and a hypostyle hall with surrounding annexes.
The pylons, some of the oldest examples of such structures,
are decorated with scenes from the Battle of Qadesh
(Kadesh).
These scenes show Ramesses fighting the Hittites. He is
depicted in a heroic counterattack, standing in his chariot
firing arrows with deadly precision at the fleeing
Hittites.
 The second court is much more complete then the
first. It is flaked both east and west by pillarered
porticos with Osiride statues of Ramesses. These statues
show Ramesses being summoned to rebirth in anew life,
tightly wrapped in a shroud with his arms crossed, holding
his scepters.
The hypostyle hall has a well preserved ceiling in the
center. It was lit by traceried windows. Behind the facade
on the interior (south) wall is a scene showing the capture
of the Syrian fortress of Dapur, while across the hall at
the far end of the west wall, Ramesses Ii si depicted
receiving his scepters from Amun-Re. The Hall lead to a room
for the sacred bark (a ritual boat) and sanctuary.
The remains of the complex include a royal palace and a
large number of mud-brick granaries and storerooms, as well
as a small temple dedicated to Ramesses' mother, Tuya, and
wife, Nefertari.
Beneath the floor of the mortuary temple is a shaft tomb
of a Middle Kingdom priest that was excavated by James
Quibell in the late nineteenth century. This very
interesting find revealed religious and magical artefacts,
including a statuette of a woman wearing a lion mask and
holding two snake wands (now in the Manchester Museum), an
ivory clapper, a section of a magic rod, a female fertility
figure, a bronze cobra wand (now in the Fitzwillima Museum,
Cambridge) and a box of papyri in scribed with a wide range
of religious, literary and magical texts.
 It is also likely that there was a school for scribal
training in the complex, as evidenced by a large pile of
ostraca. A number of papyri of the Third Intermediate Period
have been found at the site, as well as an elite cemetery of
about the same time period.
In front of the ruins is the base of the colossus of Ramesses
that once stood 17m (about 69 feet) high. The statue would have weighed more than 1,000
tons and was bought from Aswan in one piece. On the granite
colossus's shoulder is an inscription describing Ramesses as
the "sun of Princes". The statue
fell into the Second Court and the head and torso remain there, but the other broken pieces
are in museums all over the world. It is this statue that Shelly's poem, though
completely incorrect, alludes to:
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 work, ye Might, and despair!?
Nothing beside remains, Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and leve sand stretch far away.
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