# Ramesseum Granary Vaults

> Mud-brick barrel-vaulted storerooms at the Ramesseum in Luxor, built under Ramesses II in the 13th century BC; among Egypt's oldest standing true arches.

- URL: https://roof.wiki/ramesseum-granary-vaults/
- Topic: History of Roofing
- Also known as: Ramesseum storerooms; Ramesseum vaults; Ramesseum granaries
- Regions: Africa, Middle East
- First published: 2026-11-02 · Last reviewed: 2026-11-02
- Cite as: "Ramesseum Granary Vaults." roof.wiki. https://roof.wiki/ramesseum-granary-vaults/

## Key facts

- **Date:** 13th century BC (reign of Ramesses II), c. 1300 BC
- **Location:** West bank of the Nile, opposite Luxor
- **Room size (oldest group):** About 32 x 3.7 m (105 x 12.1 ft), 3.5 m (11.5 ft) high
- **Vault:** Four courses of 40 x 20 x 12-14 cm mud bricks

The storerooms of the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple of Pharaoh Ramesses II on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor, are a rare survival of ancient Egyptian mud-brick vaulting. Built in the 13th century BC, they show that Egyptian builders could roof long, narrow rooms with true arches of sun-dried brick, without stone and with very little timber.

## Layout

The storerooms and granaries wrap around the temple on three sides, arranged in three groups. The oldest group lies behind the temple. In that group each storeroom is about 32 m (105 ft) long, 3.7 m (12.1 ft) wide and 3.5 m (11.5 ft) high, with lower walls about 1.5 m (4.9 ft) thick.

## Construction

Each room is roofed with a barrel vault. The vault springs from about 2.5 m (8.2 ft) above the floor and is built of four rings (courses) of mud bricks measuring about 40 x 20 x 12-14 cm (15.7 x 7.9 x 4.7-5.5 in). The bricks are ordinary rectangular bricks rather than wedge-shaped voussoirs, so the arch depends on its mortar joints. Arches of this kind are prone to collapse, which is why few survive. The Ramesseum examples, dated to about 1300 BC, are cited as the oldest such arch still standing in Egypt.

## Significance

The vaults are an early, well-dated example of a roofing method that continued along the Nile for more than three thousand years. Mud-brick vaults built without centring remained the standard roof of Nubian villages into the 20th century, and the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy revived them in the 1940s (see Nubian vault). The Ramesseum vaults show that the basic idea of roofing with earth alone, where timber is scarce, was already mature in the New Kingdom.

## Conservation

Mud brick survives at the Ramesseum mainly because of the dry climate of Upper Egypt. Conservation studies of Egypt's adobe barrel vaults treat these storerooms as a key case for understanding how such structures behave and fail over time.

## Sources

1. Ramesseum — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesseum
2. The adobe barrel vaulted structures in Ancient Egypt: a study of two case studies for conservation purposes — Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry. https://grissh.gr/article/58affcd8557441a75300002d
3. Ancient Egyptian architecture — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_architecture