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When it arrived in England, this was by far the largest Egyptian sculpture that the British had ever seen, and it was the first object that gave them a sense of the colossal scale of the Egyptian achievement.
它初抵倫敦之時，是當時英國公眾所見過的最大的埃及雕像，也是第一件讓他們感受到埃及人輝煌成就的物品。
The upper body alone is about eight or nine feet high, and it weighs about seven tons.
雕像僅上半身便高二點五米，重達七噸。
This is a king who understood, as never before, the power of scale, the purpose of awe.
這是一位對規模的力量及敬畏的作用有著空前了解的國王。
Ramesses II ruled Egypt for an astonishing 66 years, presiding over a new golden age of Egyptian prosperity and imperial power.
拉美西斯二世統治埃及的時間長達六十六年，正值埃及國力強盛、 經濟繁榮的黃金時代。
He was lucky-he lived to be over 90, he fathered around 100 children and, during his reign, the Nile floods obligingly produced a succession of bumper harvests.
他極有福氣，享年超過九十歲，兒女近百人。他在位期間，尼羅河的洪水帶來了一連串的大豐收。
But he was also a prodigious achiever.
同時，他的成就驚人。
As soon as he took the throne in 1279 BC, he set out on military campaigns to the north and south, he covered the land with monuments, and he was seen as such a successful ruler that nine later pharaohs took his name.
公元前一二七九年，他一坐上王位，便立刻向南北方派遣軍隊，在疆土上樹滿了紀念碑。為了紀念他的功業，后世共有九位法老繼承了他的名字。
He was still being worshipped as a god in the time of Cleopatra, over a thousand years later.
在一千年后的克里奧佩特拉時期，他仍被當作神靈崇拜。
Ramesses was a consummate self-publicist, and a completely unscrupulous one at that.
拉美西斯極擅宣傳自己，不擇手段。
To save time and money, he simply changed the inscriptions on pre-existing sculptures so that they bore his name and glorified his achievements.
為節省時間和金錢，他常將以 前雕刻的銘文抹去，換上自己的名字和光輝成就。
But all across his kingdom he erected vast new temples-like Abu Simbel, cut into the rocky sides of the Nile Valley-and the huge image of himself there, sculpted in the rock, inspired many later imitations, not least the vast faces of American presidents carved into Mount Rushmore.
在王國各處，他也修 建了極多廟宇，如坐落于尼羅河岸邊巖壁上的阿布辛貝神廟。他在此處的巖壁上雕刻了自己的巨幅雕像，引來后世無數的模仿者，美國拉什莫爾山上的巨大總統頭像便是其中之一。
