section_path: Building projects and monuments
section_name: Building projects and monuments
paragraph_text: Building projects and monuments
  
  In the third year of his reign, Ramesses started the most ambitious building project after the pyramids, which were built almost 1,500 years earlier. The population was put to work changing the face of Egypt. Ramesses built extensively from the Delta to Nubia, "covering the land with buildings in a way no monarch before him had."
  
  Some of the activities undertaken were focused on remodeling or usurping existing works, improving masonry techniques, and using art as propaganda.
  
  Ramesses also undertook many new construction projects. Two of his biggest works, besides Pi-Ramesses, were the temple complex of Abu Simbel and the Ramesseum, a mortuary temple in western Thebes.