Ramesses II's greatest monument — two rock temples relocated 65 metres uphill by UNESCO to save them from Lake Nasser
Abu Simbel is a pair of rock-cut temples in Egyptian Nubia (280 km south of Aswan, at the shore of Lake Nasser), carved during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II (1279–1213 BCE) to commemorate the Battle of Kadesh and to intimidate the Nubian peoples to the south. The Great Temple has four colossal seated statues of Ramesses II (each 20 metres tall) at the entrance; the interior contains the Hall of Pillars with eight Osiris statues, coloured wall reliefs depicting the Battle of Kadesh, and the innermost sanctuary with four seated figures of gods (Ra-Horakhty, Ramesses II deified, Amun-Ra, and…
The Abu Simbel temples were largely buried under windblown sand by the 8th century CE and unknown to European scholars until 1813, when Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (the Swiss explorer who also rediscovered Petra) saw the top of the Great Temple's facade above the sand. Giovanni Belzoni (the Italian circus strongman turned Egyptologist) cleared the entrance and entered in 1817. The Aswan High Dam project (1960–1970) threatened to submerge both temples under Lake Nasser's rising waters; UNESCO's international campaign raised $80 million (contributed by 50 countries) for the relocation, completed i…