Image Details

University of Pennsylvania Museum (AD1999-131)

Almost entirely buried in debris around 1875 (as shown in Felix Bonfils’s photograph), two seated statues of Ramesses II (1279–1213 B.C.) flank the entranceway to a temple at Luxor, on the east bank of the Nile in ancient Thebes. Two obelisks once graced this entranceway, though only one remains in situ (its edge can be seen in the modern photograph, to the left of the statue at left). The other obelisk was removed to Paris’s Place de la Concorde in 1836.