Abu Simbel

Abu Simbel is two temples cut into a sandstone hill on the west bank of Lake Nasser, in Egypt's far south close to the Sudanese border. Ramesses II had them carved in the 13th century BC, at the Second Cataract where Egypt met Nubia, and they were meant to be seen from the river as a statement of pharaonic power. The Great Temple honours the state gods Ra-Horakhty, Amun and Ptah alongside the deified king; the Small Temple, about 100 m to the north-east, is dedicated to the goddess Hathor and to Nefertari, the king's chief wife.

The façade of the Great Temple is four seated colossi of Ramesses, each about 20 m tall and wearing the double crown. The second from the left lost its head and torso to an earthquake not long after it was carved, and the pieces still lie at its feet where they fell. Inside, eight pillars shaped as the king in the guise of Osiris line the first hall, and the walls show Ramesses at the Battle of Kadesh. At the back sit four statues: Ra-Horakhty, Ramesses, Amun and Ptah. Twice a year, around 22 February and 22 October, the rising sun travels more than 60 m through the temple and lights three of them, leaving Ptah in shadow. At the Small Temple the queen's statues are the same height as the king's, a rare thing in Egyptian art. Graffiti on the colossi's legs, left by Greek and Carian mercenaries of Psamtik II in the 6th century BC, are a reminder of how long travellers have been leaving their mark here.

The temples you visit are not quite where Ramesses put them. When the Aswan High Dam threatened to drown them, an international campaign cut both temples into 1,036 blocks in 1965–1966, and reassembled them 65 m higher and about 200 m back from the old riverbank, under an artificial hill built over concrete domes. The engineers kept the original orientation so that the solar alignment still works. The rescue was finished in 1968, and its success helped lead to the creation of the UNESCO World Heritage List. Before that, the temples had been half buried in sand: Johann Ludwig Burckhardt saw the tops of the statues in 1813, and Giovanni Belzoni finally got inside in 1817.

Getting there

Abu Simbel Airport (ABS) is about 4.5 km from the temples and was built in the 1970s to serve them; flights connect mainly with Aswan. By road, Aswan is roughly 300 km away (about 230 km in a straight line), and most visitors make the trip as a long day out from there. The nearest town over the border, Wadi Halfa in Sudan, is not a practical base.