
Our journey began with a flight from Cairo to Aswan, the closest town to Abu Simbel. Aswan is a dream nestled beside the Nile, just below the site of the old British-built dam. Its inhabitances flow to the rhythms of the river: slow, graceful, and steady. Time gets all jumbled there, as it’s not uncommon to see someone using a cell phone while sailing a felucca.

There are a number of temples and tombs in and around Aswan to explore, most notably, the temple at Philae. We took a boat out to this island and spent an interesting few hours admiring the stone monuments. The temple of Isis was by far the most interesting of the structures, but to be honest, we can’t remember much of what we saw there.
We took a 25-minute flight from Aswan, to visit the two temples at Abu Simbel. These structures, built in the 13th century BC, are situated in the middle of the desert on the western shore of lake Nasser, with virtually nothing else around them but sand and water for 300 kilometers. The temples are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the “Nubian Monuments” which include a number of less significant temples scattered down river from Abu Simbel to Aswan.
Upon first seeing the Temple of Re-Herakhte, we both experienced a sense of awe, gazing at the four colossal statues of Pharaoh Ramses II wearing the double crown, symbolizing upper and lower Egypt. They form the temple’s facade, two on each side of the temple’s entrance. At first we just couldn’t believe the shear size of the carved sandstone monuments. Each figure is 65 feet high and hewn from the cliff face. Between their massive legs are the smaller figures of members of the royal family. And between the two pairs of Ramses statues, in a niche above the temple entrance, is a falcon-headed sun god. The entire façade is 108 feet high and 125 wide
From the Hypostyle Hall, we entered a second, smaller pillared hall, which has four pillars decorated with beautiful scenes of offerings to the sun god. There are also depictions of Ramses and his queen, Nefertari. A remarkable thing about this temple, besides its shear size, are the hieroglyphics in the second Hall. Not only is the detail extraordinary, but the color is still vibrant, more so than any of the hieroglyphics we’ve seen in all of Egypt.
From the second hall, we entered into the back sanctuary. Here, on the black wall, are stone sculptures of four seated god figures: Ra Harakhti, the deified king Ramses, Amun Ra and Ptah. There was very little light in this back chamber, which gave it an eerie feeling. Twice a year, on October 22 and February 22, the first rays of the morning sun would shine down the entire length of the temple cave to illuminate the innermost shrine where the statues of the four gods are seated.


Abu Simbel, Egypt time
*Memories: Felucca through the Cataracts, The road to Abu Simbel, Tea at Sunset
*Visits: Fall 1996, Winter 2000, Spring 2001
*Links: World Heritage
3 comments:
Looks like you had fun, I just love everything about Egypt.
Egypt has many historic places, It is one of the oldest places in the world. I have not know about this temple before, because Egypt is known due to Pyramids.
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