Décoration de l'entrée du grand Spéos d'Abousembil (Le Dieu Phré recevant les offrandes de Rhamsès-le-grand)
March 1850
Medium
Salted paper print from paper negative
Dimensions
Image: 8 11/16 × 6 5/8 in. (22 × 16.8 cm) Mount: 18 11/16 × 12 5/16 in. (47.5 × 31.2 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.376.147
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the sunlit grandeur of ancient Egypt with Maxime Du Camp's *Décoration de l'entrée du Spéos d'Abousembil (Le Dieu Phré recevant les offrandes de Rhès-le-grand)*, a salted paper print captured in March 1850. This evocative photograph documents the ornate entrance decoration of the Great Temple at Abu Simbel a rock-cut speos (cave temple) commissioned by Pharaoh Ramses II in the 13th century BCE. It depicts the god Phré—likely Ra-Horak, the solar deity—receiving offerings from the mighty ruler, symbolizing divine kingship and eternal devotion amid colossal sculptures and intricate hier...
About the Artist
Maxime Du Camp · 1822–present
Maxime Du Camp (1822–1894) was a pioneering French photographer and writer whose adventurous spirit and technical innovation bridged literature and visual art during the mid-19th century. Born in Paris on February 8, 1822, to a prosperous family—his father a successful surgeon—Du Camp received a solid bourgeois education at the Collège Bourbon (now Lycée Condorcet), where he cultivated interests i...