Abu Simbel Temples

Three hundred and twenty kilometres south of Aswan, on the western shore of Lake Nasser, the two rock-cut temples of Abu Simbel stand as they have stood — with a brief four-year exception between 1964 and 1968, when they were sawn into pieces, numbered, catalogued, and lifted sixty-five metres above their original position — since the reign of Ramesses II, in the thirteenth century before the Christian era. They are, in the simplest physical sense, the southernmost monuments of Pharaonic Egypt, built at the frontier of the ancient empire as a declaration of presence to the peoples of Nubia. They are also, in a more modern sense, the emblems of the international cooperation that salvaged the antiquities of Lower Nubia from the reservoir of the Aswan High Dam. For the pass-holder who travels the full length of the Nile, no visit concludes the journey more fittingly.

I. The Great Temple of Ramesses II

The Great Temple was cut into the living sandstone cliff on the order of Ramesses II, probably completed around the twenty-fourth year of his reign. Its facade consists of four seated colossi of the king, each twenty metres in height, flanking a central entrance on which the god of the sun Re-Horakhty is carved in high relief. Inside, a pillared hypostyle hall leads through two further chambers to the innermost sanctuary, where four small statues — Ptah, Amun-Ra, Ramesses deified, and Re-Horakhty — sit on a stone bench at the very rear of the temple, seventy metres from the entrance. The orientation of the temple is astronomical: twice a year, on the dates 22 February and 22 October, the rising sun enters the sanctuary and illuminates the three solar gods, leaving only Ptah, who as god of the underworld remained properly in shadow. The alignment was calculated to coincide with, by traditional reckoning, the king's birthday and his coronation day. After the 1968 relocation, the dates shifted by one day. Egyptology, and the managers of cultural tourism, have had to adjust.

II. The Small Temple of Nefertari

A short distance north of the Great Temple stands the Small Temple, dedicated to Ramesses's chief queen Nefertari and to the goddess Hathor. The facade shows six standing colossi — four of the king and two of the queen — at unusual parity of size, since Egyptian royal iconography normally depicted the queen as much smaller than her consort. The interior, simpler than that of the Great Temple, is carved with scenes of the queen making offerings to Hathor, and with a rare image of Nefertari being crowned by the goddesses Hathor and Isis. It is one of the two temples in Egypt (the other being Hathor's at Dendera) dedicated primarily to a queen, and its affection is, across the centuries, still palpable.

III. The UNESCO relocation

The building of the Aswan High Dam, begun in 1960, would raise the level of the reservoir to a point sixty metres above the floor of the original Abu Simbel site. Between 1964 and 1968, an international team led by the Egyptian engineer Omar el-Hakim and the Swedish consortium Vattenbyggnadsbyrån (VBB) cut the temples into approximately one thousand and forty blocks, weighing between twenty and thirty tonnes each; lifted them, by crane and by reinforced-concrete slab, sixty-five metres up the cliff; and reassembled them inside two artificial domes of reinforced concrete, themselves disguised with sandstone quarried from the same cliff. The joints between blocks are still faintly visible to the close-reading visitor, but the temples read, in their present position, as they have always read. The total cost was approximately USD 40 million in 1968 currency, of which roughly half was contributed by Egypt and the other half by more than fifty nations through UNESCO. It was, and remains, the largest archaeological rescue operation in history.

IV. The sun festivals

On 22 February and 22 October of each year, a small cultural festival is held at Abu Simbel to observe the solar alignment. A crowd gathers before dawn; the gates open at five; the first ray of the sun enters the sanctuary at approximately 05:55 and illuminates the three gods in sequence, a phenomenon that lasts approximately twenty minutes. The experience is quieter than its photographs suggest. Attendance requires a scheduled arrival at the site the evening before, and the Mus Passes office can arrange an advance booking into the reserved viewing area for pass-holders on request.

V. Getting there

Most pass-holders reach Abu Simbel by the morning convoy from Aswan, which departs from a marshalling point near the High Dam at around 04:00 and arrives at the site by 07:30. The convoy returns at 10:00, giving two-and-a-half hours at the temples — sufficient for a thorough visit. An alternative is the short-hop flight from Aswan airport (approximately forty-five minutes), which allows for a more relaxed four-hour visit. Pass-holders on the Pharaonic Grand Pass may also cruise Lake Nasser by small ship, a three- or four-day itinerary that passes Kalabsha, Wadi el-Seboua and the relocated New Kalabsha temple on the way south; it is, we think, the finest way to arrive.

VI. A final thought

Abu Simbel is, for the pass-holder who has travelled down the Nile from Cairo through Luxor to Aswan, the terminus of a journey in space and in time. It stands at the geographical extreme of the ancient kingdom. It also stands as a monument to the idea that the past is worth the expense of preservation — that an international community will, on occasion, raise forty million dollars and four years of effort to save two thirteenth-century-BC sandstone temples from drowning. That idea is, in our opinion, still worth carrying home.