Abu Simbel travel guide
Egypt · Top sights · trending spots
Abu Simbel is a pair of temples cut into a sandstone cliff for Ramesses II around 1264 BC, the larger fronted by four seated colossi twenty metres high.
Between 1964 and 1968 UNESCO had both temples sawn into blocks and rebuilt sixty-five metres higher, ahead of the rising Lake Nasser. On 22 February and 22 October the sunrise reaches the statues in the inner sanctuary.
Top 6 sights in Abu Simbel
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- © https://www.flickr.com/photos/10647023@N04/ (Mr. John Campana) · CC BY 2.0
Ballana
A cemetery in Lower Nubia where Walter Emery, digging ahead of the raising of the Aswan dam between 1928 and 1931, found a hundred and twenty-two tombs under great earth mounds. Silver crowns, horse harness and sacrificed servants came out of them, from a Nubian kingdom that had no written history.
Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae
The temples strung along the Nile from Abu Simbel down to Philae, listed by UNESCO in 1979. Most were cut apart and moved to higher ground during the international campaign of the 1960s, when the Aswan High Dam raised Lake Nasser over their original sites.
- © Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0
Great Temple of Abu Simbel
Ramesses II cut this temple into the sandstone cliff in the 13th century BC, fronting it with four seated colossi some 20 metres high. Twice a year the rising sun still reaches the sanctuary 60 metres inside; the whole face was sawn apart and lifted 65 metres up the hill between 1964 and 1968.
- © Ad Meskens · CC BY-SA 3.0
Small Temple of Abu Simbel
The smaller of the two rock temples, cut for Ramesses II's queen Nefertari and dedicated to Hathor. Six standing figures ten metres high front it, and unusually the queen is carved to the same height as the king; it was moved with its neighbour during the 1960s rescue.
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