Quick questions on Writing, literature and monumental art and architecture in Ramesside Egypt (HSC Ancient History Section II)

A folktale surviving on Papyrus d'Orbiney (British Museum), copied by the scribe Ennana and traditionally dated to around the reign of Seti II (c. 1203-1197 BC). It follows Bata, falsely accused by his brother Anubis's wife, who flees, transforms through several forms (a bull, two trees) and is eventually restored to life and to the throne.

Preserved on Papyrus Moscow 120 and conventionally set toward the very end of the Twentieth Dynasty, this account follows Wenamun, an official of the Temple of Amun at Karnak sent by the High Priest Herihor to buy cedar wood from Byblos for Amun's sacred barge. Wenamun is delayed, robbed of his funds along the way, and, on arrival, is kept waiting and openly lectured by Tjeker-Baal, the ruler of Byblos, who questions why he should supply Egypt at all. Whether the text is a literal administrative report or a literary composition set in this period is genuinely debated among Egyptologists, but either way it is treated as strong evidence for Egypt's collapsed international prestige at the close of the New Kingdom.

Collections such as Papyrus Chester Beatty I preserve personal lyric poems in which lovers address each other as "brother" and "sister," using garden and nature imagery. This genre is unusual among surviving ancient literatures and shows a private, intimate strand of Ramesside literary culture alongside the grand royal and religious texts.

Didactic works such as the Instruction of Amenemope gave moral and practical advice for scribal pupils and, notably, share close thematic and structural parallels with the Biblical Book of Proverbs (chapters 22-24), making it a significant text for comparative ancient literature.

Ramesside literacy was concentrated in scribal schools and "houses of life" attached to temples, where students copied model letters, praise of the scribal profession and extracts from earlier wisdom texts in collections modern scholars call Late Egyptian Miscellanies. At Deir el-Medina, ostraca show that literary texts, not only administrative documents, were copied and circulated among literate artisans, extending literary culture beyond the formal scribal elite.

Seti I began the decoration of the hall's northern half; Ramesses II completed and decorated the southern half. The hall holds 134 massive sandstone columns across roughly 5,000 square metres: 12 central columns with open papyrus capitals rise to about 21 metres, flanked by 122 shorter columns (about 15 metres) with closed papyrus-bud capitals. The height difference creates a raised clerestory, a band of stone-grille windows that lights the central aisle.

Ramesses II's mortuary temple on the Theban west bank was fronted by a colossal seated granite statue of the king, originally around 17 metres tall and estimated at close to 1,000 tonnes, now fallen and fragmented.

Ramesses III's mortuary temple, closely modelled on the Ramesseum and enclosed by fortified walls, is famous for its extensive relief cycles recording his land and naval victories over the Sea Peoples and Libyans (c. 1175 BC).

Ramesses II's two rock-cut Nubian temples: the Great Temple's facade carries four seated colossi of the king, each about 20 metres tall, and is aligned so that, twice a year, the sun illuminates statues of Ra-Horakhty, Amun and the deified Ramesses in the inner sanctuary, while the statue of Ptah, god of the underworld, remains deliberately in shadow.

Ramesses II founded this new Delta capital, "House of Ramesses, Great in Victory," at Qantir, reorienting Egypt's administrative and military centre of gravity toward Asia after Kadesh. Excavation by Manfred Bietak and Edgar Pusch identified Qantir as the site, resolving earlier confusion with nearby Tanis, where much of Pi-Ramesses's stone was later reused.