Ramses II, seated

I admired the little statue of Ramses II for its detail even though it has an odd face that looks not Egyptian. It looks goofy. The face on the original statue really is like that and the space inside the hook really is filled like that, and there are no hieroglyphics on the side of the throne on the original either, itself an hieroglyphic symbol, nor on the back even though there usually are hieroglyphics there, come on, they are loathe to waste such perfectly good flat space to put bragg-y claims and long strings of royal epithets. So I bought it.

It does waste a lot of writing space that could have been used for bragging and for epithets like Diana Troi introducing her mother, Lwaxana, Daughter of the Fifth House of Betazed, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed. The statue wastes space for all kind of formulaic stuff like that.

True as the replica is, the statue is missing a few things. I can see that right off. There are not nearly enough hieroglyphics but they are too tiny for me to read, it seems to be missing the names on the shoulders, and I know what the necklace looks like; one outer row of teardrop gems with five inner rows of parallel bar-shaped gems. I think. Maybe seven rows. A lot of rows. I have the little statue sitting right here in front of me like a paperweight in the semi dark, while having dinner,  appreciating its fidelity to the original in the Museo Egizio at Turin even though it is so small and I would really like to peer in closely to check how deeply true its authenticy-tah.

I'm using the camera to look closer at detail. I cannot see so well in IRL as this lens shows, it's better than a magnifying glass. This statue is excellent proportion and detail. I'm impressed. Very close to the original. But no cigar. There is only one row of these teardrop gems in the original and several rows of small long narrow bullet-type jewels, more as beads.

Too bad.

Here, this is the necklace on the original statue. You can enlarge the photograph of the statue onscreen to impressive detail by clicking it and looking closely at the necklace. In the original, the background around the gems is chiseled away leaving a very shallow bas relief. Ha, six rows of parallel beads. Whereas on the tiny replica the beads are stamped with a tool, like a leather-working tool would be tapped with a hammer.

The shoulder shows a mark, but it is not the appropriate cartouche. It needs to be this cartouche, as the original. It reads ah, m-n, n, m-r "Amun beloved," (the god) Re, M-s, s.

This is what we need to see on the shoulder:

Ramses beloved of Amun. This is his main name. The three fox skins stick out as belonging to members the Rameses dynasty. The rest you see everywhere but the three fox skins, for "mes" is fairly unique to Ramses pharaohs. When you see these fox skins, inside a cartouche you go, "Aha! A Ramses pharaoh." To specify which Ramses pharaoh precisely with no mistaking, another cartouche on the other shoulder will pinpoint him. The tiny replica statue does not have it.

User, I learned long ago, "Waser" and "Weset" the jackel-dog head on a stick is a deity that refers to the West, to the land of the dead. Maat, the goddess depicted seated and identified by the feather on her head stands for "balance," Re, of course, a circle. So far, "UserMaatRe" 

The circle is Re, the god again, but now a circle and not a seated deity of a falcon with this circle on its head and holding an ankh as the previous cartouche, that is an overly elaborate version of something that can be shown much more simply as this circle. Why did they go to all the trouble of chiseling all that when they could get by with a circle? 

They were paid by the month. 

They did it to line up the symbols by height. For aesthetics. This name can be and is written in different ways. The "Re" can be a circle and the final "S" can be another symbol drawn horizontally rather than vertically. Different versions are seen. It is an individual scribe's choice. 

The "re" symbol is in ligature with an adz on a block, the adz symbol stands for the triliteral sound S-T-P, easily remembered by the fuel additive. The zig-zag water symbol means the sound "n," so, "setep-en-Re," both together, "UserMaatRe SetepenRe" 

These are the two cartouches that should be on the shoulders of the replica as they are on the original in Turin. But they are not there. And to show that you do see "gold" everywhere, unabashedly plastered all over, just stuck in places as word-decoration, the symbols appear under each cartouche for Ramses II, in monumental form, and drawn as a seat more than as a necklace, and fairly well showing the names for Ramses II are seated on gold. 

Ugh. Okay, now I know. This would be a Dj-re ligature. It is clearly a tool stamp. Kind of wish I didn't see this. This explains everything else. The snake does not match either of two hieroglyphic snake types, not the horned asp, nor the longer desert snake that denotes "eternity" in royal offering formulas, otherwise a 'Dj' sound. 

* bowl with handle = "k" sound. Without a handle it would mean "lord" 

* eye = "ib" I believe it means "to make" 

* h-k-r, hookah, easy to remember because it is a shepherd's hook, "dominion," it is also the object the king is holding. He is holding an hieroglyphic symbol of dominion and power, as a shepherd. 

* h-k-r has a "q" in front of it. It is the side of a hill, a cutaway view of a hill, so then literally, "q+h-k-r" does not make sense in this context.

* Dj-re This ligature could be "given by re" it appears to be nonsense in this context.

This is the place on the skirt band where we need to see a royal cartouche and it's not here. Preferably with a "mes" symbol in it that will convince us on sight we reading "Ramses." 

But what do we have?  Sun and duck standing for "Re" and "son" It is a common "son of Re" ligature that precedes a royal cartouche, but there is no royal cartouche on the replica. 

Rope twisted into three loops is a hard "H" sound. The flag = N-T-R, meaning "God." So, H-god, it is meaningless. 

The next symbol is a necklace, it means N-B-U, for "gold" a very common symbol seen everywhere in tombs. Gold is extremely important to Egyptian royals. They thought about it constantly, all of them had gold fever and had it badly, and they wrote about it all the time and all over the place. They chiseled their affection for gold in stone. Bragged about how much of it they used. They show deities sitting on seats, and the seat is this symbol for gold, so the symbol is tucked inside pictures as if is not even a word and yet there it is yelling GOLD! 

It's easy to remember from Naboo planet in Star Wars. 

The last two symbols shown on the replica's skirt band is a feather, "eh"  and a lasso, "wah." It means nothing.

It is a weird little statue because of his goofy unEgyptian face and because he is wearing the khepresh, the war crown, the blue crown. It is always weird when a child wears a war crown. What are they trying to prove? 

And what is weird also today, we Egyptologist-types call the khepresh  "blue" war crown no matter what color it is. We know it is supposed to be blue, never mind our lying eyes are showing us the crown is red, we know the crown is supposed to be blue.

We tell ourselves the blue wore off. We convince ourselves there are faint vestiges of the original blue color.

Conclusion: The statue is splendid in its proportion and in detail to a point. The necklace is bogus, although still nicely detailed, and so are the hieroglyphics, bogus but still nicely detailed.. Too bad for these minor flaws. Otherwise it is a fine little statue, surprisingly true to original form.