Foundations, Warehouses of King Ramses II Temple Uncovered

The archaeological expedition team operating at the Ramses II Temple in Abydos, affiliated to New York University, revealed the foundations and warehouses of the Ramses II Temple.

Dr. Mustafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that the mission team, which is headed by Dr. Sameh Iskandar, searched in the southwest corner of the temple, and uncovered samples of panels engraved with the throne name of King Ramses II, painted in blue or green, models of building tools, pottery, and stones of an oval quartzite. He pointed out that those were all buried in 1279 BC at the time of the ceremonies and rituals of the establishment of the temple.

On his part, Dr. Ayman Ashmawi, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Sector at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, noted that the mission also found ten large warehouses connected to the temple palace and built with mud bricks. Those were originally carrying tiled roofs built with mud bricks, used as silos and warehouses to preserve the temple’s needs of offerings, tools, and others. Inside it, a group of bulls' heads and bones were found cut inside niches dating back to the Ptolemaic era, in addition to finding a complete skeleton of a bull buried neatly under the floor of the temple palace.

Dr. Iskandar, the supervisor of the mission, explained that these findings prove that this temple was actually built during King Ramses II reign and not earlier during the period of his father's reign, King Seti I, stressing that these discoveries changed the form of the archaeological map of the region of Abydos and added to a further understanding of the nature of the temple in ancient Egypt and its economics during the period of the 13th century BC.

Dr. Iskandar pointed out that placing many bulls' sacrifices inside the walls of the temple warehouses, dated to the Ptolemaic period, reveals that the temple was still sacred among the masses of Egyptians until that period and that the memory of Ramses II was still vibrant in Egyptian thought after a thousand years of his rule.