RAMSES AND PARTHENON
Uploaded by CaseyP on Feb 17, 2019
Art History: Compare and Contrast Temple of Ramses II and Parthenon
The temple of Ramses II and Parthenon are two well known architectural structures in the art history of Egypt and Greek respectively. The great temple of Ramses II is a rock-cut situated within the ancient Ybsambul or Wawat, in Nubia adjacent to the Sudan border, which is approximately three hundred kilometers from Swan. Initially, the great temple was carved out from the mountain rocks right on the west bank of the river Nile in between 1274 BC and 1244 BC, identified as of Abu Simbel complex. It was dedicated to the defined Ramses II as Ptah, Amun, and Horakhty, though Ptah was kept in darkness because it was an underworld-associated god.1 The temple of Ramses II is artistically designed with four large statues of Pharaoh of the New Kingdom dynasty of ancient Egypt on the front.3Parthenon temple is the dominating architectural structure on the Acropolis hill, in Athens. The temple was named Acropolis after the hill. The temple was initially constructed in the mid of 5th century 490BCE after which it was dedicated to Athena Parthenos, the then Greek goddess.2 As a great architecture in the art history and most visited archeological divine site in Greece, the temple of Parthenon is regarded as a symbol of the culmination of the Doric order development, which is the simplest in form of the three main classical order of the Greek architecture.4 In other words, being architectures built and archived in a common ancient period in the art history, the temple of Ramses II and Parthenon have certain similarities as well as differences in terms of artistic and sculpture makings in the features. Therefore, this paper compares and contrasts the temples of Ramses II and Parthenon by identifying and analyzing both the artistic differences and similarities between them ever observed in the art history.
Comparison
To compare, both of the temples of Ramses II and Parthenon are probably some of the most famous in the ancient complexes of Egyptian and Greece religions. Both temples of Ramses II and Parthenon were constructed at the onset of civilizations, which started at around the same times. For instance, the construction of temple of Ramses II begun very early in the rein of Ramses II, that is, by...