# What a Royal Commemorative Temple Was For Source: https://luxor101.com/journal/what-a-mortuary-temple-was-for Language: en Explainer Reading time 3 min # What a Royal Commemorative Temple Was For Royal commemorative temples sustained worship and the king’s memory, during life and after death. At Thebes, they were separate from the royal tombs that held the burials. The Ramesseum and Medinet Habu are often called mortuary temples (a temple for royal commemoration and divine worship, active during a king’s life and after death). The term is useful, but can suggest a building concerned only with a king after death. These were also places of divine worship and royal celebration, with activity beginning during the king’s lifetime. The main royal burial lay elsewhere. The temple maintained ritual relationships between the king and the gods through offerings, festivals and images of kingship. That distinction concerns the original principal function; later burials and reuse can complicate the history of any complex. Walk through a court and notice how the king is represented: offering to gods, receiving authority or defeating enemies. These scenes present an ideal ruler maintaining order. They are evidence for royal ideology, not automatically a literal account of every event. The institution also needed resources. Stores, workshops and administrative spaces belong to the story alongside the monumental stone halls. At the Ramesseum, surviving mud-brick vaults help reveal this less familiar side of temple life. At Medinet Habu, the enclosure and later occupation show how a royal foundation acquired new uses over time. The Colossi of Memnon mark the entrance area of Amenhotep III’s once extensive temple. Much of that complex is less immediately visible than its two famous statues. Together these sites show different states of survival, not a simple ranking of royal ambition. For a first visit, pair one temple with a royal tomb and compare their spaces and imagery. You will see related ideas expressed for different ritual settings, and the west bank begins to feel connected. ## Ramesses II: a tomb and a temple KV7 in the Valley of the Kings was Ramesses II’s burial place. The Ramesseum was his commemorative temple nearer the cultivated land. Its courts, religious scenes and stores belong to an institution supplied for worship and royal remembrance. Connecting the two explains why visiting a king’s temple does not mean you have visited his grave. - [Explore the Ramesseum](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/ramesseum) > The stores and workshops belong to the temple’s story too. Approximate reading time, calculated from the English text at 200 words per minute. Arabic reading time may differ. Look for this ## At The Ramesseum, look for this. Explore related details in the site’s field guide. Current access still needs checking. 1. 1 ### The fallen colossus On the ground in the first court, at the foot of the second pylon The surviving upper part of a colossal granite statue conveys its original scale. View and photograph it from the permitted route; do not position someone among the fragments for scale. Fact — the statue, its material and its collapse. Uncertain — how a block of this weight was transported and raised, and its exact weight, which is an estimate. The surviving fragments convey the scale of the complete granite statue. Estimates of its original weight concern the whole colossus and should be treated as estimates. 2. 2 ### Mud-brick vaults still standing behind a fallen stone temple The long ranges north and west of the temple, behind and beside it Parallel storerooms roofed with brick barrel vaults. Look at the end of a vault: the courses are not vertical rings but leaning ones, laid at an angle against the end wall. Fact — the vaults and the way the courses are laid. Interpretation — reading the construction sequence from what is visible today. That lean is the whole trick — each ring is held up by the one behind it while the mortar is still wet, so the vault can be built with no timber framework at all. These are three-thousand-year-old roofs, and they are the surviving half of a temple’s economy: the granaries, the treasury and the workshops that made the religion affordable. 3. 3 ### A ceiling of stars and months The temple’s inner rooms; confirm the location and permitted viewing point with the site team A painted night sky: rows of star groups, the twelve months of the Egyptian year with their festivals, and the constellation figures the Egyptians used — a bull’s foreleg, a hippopotamus, a standing man. Fact — the ceiling and its content. Interpretation — reading it as a working administrative calendar rather than as a religious image. Look for astronomical imagery in the temple’s decoration. It connects the royal monument with celestial cycles; it is not, by itself, evidence that this room served as a working calendar office. 4. 4 ### The famous inscription is not on the statue Anywhere in the first court, standing over the fallen colossus Shelley’s Ozymandias is a poem, not a transcription of a surviving inscription here. It draws on a tradition transmitted by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, who described a royal colossus and an inscription boasting of the ruler’s greatness. Tradition Tradition — the inscription as quoted by Diodorus Siculus. No such text survives on the statue or anywhere in the temple. Fact — the statue itself, and the date and authorship of the poem. Keep the monument, the ancient literary account and the later poem distinct. They belong to the site’s history in different ways. [Open the The Ramesseum guide](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/ramesseum) Look closely, photograph only where permitted, and keep hands and bags clear of ancient surfaces. Follow barriers and conservation instructions. Continue reading ## Where this leads. 1–1 / 8 [Temple · West bank ### The Ramesseum Ramesses II’s mortuary temple, largely collapsed — including the colossus that put “Ozymandias” into English. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/ramesseum)[Temple · West bank ### Medinet Habu Colour survives here wherever the roof did — on a temple built by a king fighting to hold Egypt together. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/medinet-habu)[Monument · West bank ### Colossi of Memnon Two seated figures of Amenhotep III mark the entrance area of a once vast royal temple. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/colossi-of-memnon)[Temple · West bank ### Temple of Hatshepsut Terraces set straight into the cliff at Deir el-Bahari — and a reign that was later chiselled off its own walls. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/temple-of-hatshepsut)[Necropolis · West bank ### Valley of the Kings The royal burial landscape of the New Kingdom: rock-cut tombs tucked into a desert valley, separate from the kings’ major commemorative temples. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/valley-of-the-kings)[Person ### Ramesses II Sixty-six years on the throne, and his name cut into everything within reach. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/pharaohs/ramesses-ii)[Person ### Ramesses III The king behind Medinet Habu, whose reign left records of both military ambition and economic strain. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/pharaohs/ramesses-iii)[Person ### Amenhotep III A king whose monumental building programme reshaped Thebes. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/pharaohs/amenhotep-iii) Sources & further reading 4 Tier 2 The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt, Richard H. Wilkinson Thames & Hudson Tier 2 The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egyptian Architecture, Dieter Arnold I.B. Tauris Tier 2 Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II, K. A. Kitchen Aris & Phillips Tier 2 Thebes in Egypt: A Guide to the Tombs and Temples of Ancient Luxor, Nigel and Helen Strudwick British Museum Press Source review is incomplete. Consultation dates are shown only for checked references. Published works and institutional references for further reading. [Sources and review status](mailto:corrections@egyptmore.com?subject=Luxor101%20correction) [All stories](https://luxor101.com/journal)