Abu Simbel Temples: Where Time Stands Still

Travel with us to a place where history comes alive and time seems to pause. Abu Simbel Temples, with their colossal statues and remarkable stories, are a window into the past. In this blog, we’ll walk you through the fascinating world of these temples and the incredible tales they tell.

Abu Simbel Great Temple

It’s a huge construction that took about 24 years. It was dedicated to the God Amun, Shepherd Harakhty, Ptah, and also to Ramses II. It is engraved into a giant rock. There are four statues at the entrance of the temple, each of which is 20 meters high, to decorate the facade, which is 35 meters wide.

After this splendid entrance, there are eight other statues, 10 meters high, and you will find clear inscriptions that tell of the Kadesh battle and Ramses II’s victory. As for the interior of the temple, it consists of a group of rooms and corridors and on the walls, you see inscriptions and pictures of Ramses II and many Pharaonic deities.

Iconic view of Abu Simbel Great Temple

Abu Simbel smaller temple:

It is also called the Temple of Hathor and Nefertari. It was dedicated to goddess Hathor, the goddess of love, beauty, and sky, and also to Ramses II and his wife Queen Nefertari. It is 150 meters from the largest temple. This temple is considered the second one in history to be dedicated to a Queen. The first time was dedicated to Queen Nefertiti, and it was built for her by King Akhenaten. Throughout history, the statues of wives were much smaller than the statues of kings, but in Abu Simbel, the statues of Nefertari are almost the same size as the statues of Ramses II, which shows his great love and respect for her.

 

King Ramses II carved a temple for his wife Queen Nefertari and the goddess Hathor and adorns its facade, which is 28 m in width and 12 m in height with six huge statues, two of them of King Ramses Ii on the side of the double crown of the royal commission, then two statues of Queen Nefertari, on the north side a statue of the King wearing Ramses II in the form of the god Ptah and the Southerner of the King with the double crown And right in the center are 6 columns with crowns in the form of the goddess Hathor.

 

The entrance leads to a square pillared hall with a lady’s face and a cow’s ear. And on the side of the entrance in the hall is King Ramses II beating the enemies in front of Amun Ra and RA’s sister. The scenes depicting the King and Queen making offerings in front of the gods are distributed in the temple, and on top of them, The goddess Hathor is at the vestibule and the hall leading to the Holy of Holies. Another Hall follows it with the same previous views, then the Holy of Holies, where there is a statue of the goddess Hathor.

Hidden gem: Abu Simbel Smaller Temple

The sand covered the temples of Abu Simbel over time.

The sands covered the height of the large statues at the entrance of Abu Simbel Temples. It also covered its statues’ knees. The temple was forgotten until 1813, when the Swiss GL Bochardt discovered it. He used the Italian explorer Giovanni Pelonzi to discover and enter the temple. Still, they failed, and after years, Pelonzi returned to Egypt in 1817 and succeeded in entering the temple for the first time after hundreds of years.

 

It is said that the one who guided the explorers to these temples in the middle of the quicks was a young boy called Abu Simbel, and the temples were named after him and a lineage for his merit in this discovery. The temples were completely dismantled and moved in 1964 by the Egyptian government and UNESCO. It was built on a plateau 60 meters high in order to save them from drowning after Lake Nasser was formed upon the completion of the construction of the High Dam.

The theory of the sun’s orthogonality on the face of Ramses II

Sunlight aligns on Ramses II’s face

Dr. Ahmed Saleh Abdullah, Director General of Abu Simbel Temples Antiquities and Nubian temples, said that the sun’s perpendicular to the face of King Ramses II inside his temple in Abu Simbel on October 22 coincides with the beginning of the farming season in ancient Egypt as the beginning of the farming season in the days of the Pharaohs begins on the 21st of the month, and the sun’s perpendicular to the King’s face on February 22 occurs on the occasion of the beginning of the harvest season. 

Precise sunlight on Ramses II’s visage

He added that what is known about the phenomenon of the sun’s baptism occurring on the day of the King’s birth and the day of his coronation is something that has no scientific basis, pointing to the difficulty of determining any date for the King’s birthday or the day of his coronation because there was simply no record of births in ancient Egypt.

He explained that the Scottish Egyptologist Kyiv kechgen, specializing in the study of the era of Ramses II, said that the day of the King’s Coronation falls on June 18, as well as there are inscriptions and drawings in the Hall of the Holy of Holies in the temple depicting the birth of the God Amun to announce the beginning of the planting season and the beginning of the harvest season.

The discoverer of the Sun’s Orthogonality Phenomenon at Abu Simbel Temples

The discovery of the sun’s orthogonality at Abu Simbel Temples occurred during the winter of 1874. Emilia Edward, a British writer, and her team witnessed this phenomenon and documented it in her book titled “A Thousand Miles Over the Nile,” which was published in 1899.

Emilia Edwards: Uncovering history’s secrets

Moving Abu Simbel temples

UNESCO received an official request from the Egyptian and Sudanese governments In 1959 regarding the rescue of the unique temples of Abu Simbel. During the construction of the Aswan High Dam, the hypothesis of flooding two ancient temples with water resulting from the project and irreparably damaging them emerged. These two identical temples, one large and the other smaller, were built more than 3,200 years ago by Ramses II as a monument to him and Queen Nefertari. International fundraising for the project began in 1960. 

 

It was the Swedish company (Vattenbyggnadsbyrån) that solved the complex issue of how to save the temples. The temples were not built of Stone or any other material but were carved into a cliff. To move Abu Simbel Temples, the rock above the temple roofs must first be “stripped off”, and then the roofs, walls and facades of the temple must be cut into blocks weighing 20-30 tons each. Several Swedish companies participated in the rescue work, including Sandvik, Skanska Cement, sintap and Atlas Copco. Due to the fact that the temples are carved in porous sandstone, it became impossible to use explosives in an expanded way. 

 

The stone blocks above the roofs of the temple were, therefore, removed with bulldozers. The one-man pneumatic Crusher from Atlas Copco is a very useful tool, along with the use of compressors and drills. The walls, ceilings and facade were cut into blocks with hand saws made by Sandvik company because electric saws left a lot of waste when cutting porous sandstone. The cutting process cannot be allowed to distort the external appearance of the temples after reassembly.

 

The new site of Abu Simbel Temples is located about 200 meters away and rises to an altitude of 65 meters. Therefore, the alignment of the temples to each other should be observed exactly as before. The assembly process took place during certain hours of spring and autumn when the sun’s Rays continued to illuminate the statues in the larger inner halls of the temple, 60 meters from the cliff. The blocks were brought back into position one by one with extreme precision.

 

The permissible deviation did not exceed the limits of 5 mm plus or minus only. Here, too, Copco Atlas compressed air equipment was used. Its ease of Use and light weight made it possible to work with porous sandstone. The blocks were fastened together using reinforcing bars and drilled holes, and the joints were filled with synthetic material. The Atlas Copco KV-638 drill was one of the tools used for drilling holes. It was obvious that the temples could not be framed with natural Stone as in their original location, and this feature had to be produced artificially. Therefore, 30,000 cubic meters of Stone had to be removed to make room for reassembly.

 

 Giant domes were later erected on top of the roofs of temples, and stone blocks from previous excavations were used to make natural-looking mounds on top of the domes. About 330,000 cubic meters of Stone were laid on top of the domes. Work on the transfer of the Abu Simbel temples ended on September 22, 1968, with a grand opening ceremony. The entire project cost about SEK 200 million to complete (about SEK 1.7 billion in current monetary terms). In 1979, Abu Simbel Temples were placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Moving history: Abu Simbel Temples

Conclusion

In the shadow of colossal giants, the Abu Simbel Temples stand as a testament to the enduring spirit of human ingenuity and artistry. As we conclude our journey through this timeless masterpiece, we are reminded that history’s echoes can still be heard in the hallowed halls of these ancient wonders. Abu Simbel remains an extraordinary tribute to Egypt’s rich past and an everlasting source of awe and inspiration for all who are fortunate enough to visit.