Abu Simbel

Today we got up early for a three-hour bus ride to Abu Simbel a temple complex built by Ramses II (Ramses the Great) at the southern border of Egypt during his reign.

The drive down is through the desert. There is a big power line running along the road and a lot of sand. At one of the few rest stops along the way, we got to get out of the bus and stretched our legs for a few minutes.

Abu Simbel is a pair of temples carved into the cliff side. When the high dam was built in the 1960s, Lake Nasser would have flooded the temples. UNESCO worked with Egypt in to move the temples up 60 meters and back 200 meters. The temples were cut up into 20-30 ton blocks often sawed by hand and numbered. They were moved up to the top of the cliff and reassembled. The temples have several rooms in them carved back into the cliff side. Once the temples were reassembled, concrete domes were poured over them and the concrete was faced with the original cliff facing. YouTube has a documentary on the move.

Nefertari was Ramses II’s great royal wife, not to be confused with Nefertiri, Akhenaten’s wife.

Inside the temples, the artwork is still in good condition. These temples were never lived in, they were covered in sand when rediscovered in the early 1800s.

In the second room, you can see to the third room in the back. On October 22 and June 22 of every year, the sun will shine all the way back into this third room, illuminating the gods and Ramses.

There are side rooms off of the first and second rooms in the primary temple. The artwork in these rooms is in great condition, although some rooms were not finished. Perhaps Ramses saved room for additional feats to be recorded?

We had a late lunch at a resort near Abu Simbel.

On the ride back, our guide lead us through a long discussion about the Arab Spring in Egypt. It started with a history lesson. He went back to the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood, the deposing of King Farouk by the Free Officers, and the policies of the various Presidents through Mubarek. All these leaders came from the Egyptian army. The Arab Spring protests were in Tahrir Square, which was a block from our hotel in Cairo.

Cell towers are hidden in fake ’trees’ in Egypt as well.

After supper on the boat, there was a Nubian dance show featuring live music and a Nubian whirling dervish.