The Temples of Abu Simbel: Ramesses’ Monument in the South

The temples of Abu Simbel, carved into a sandstone cliff on the west bank of the Nile in what is now southern Egypt (and what was, in the thirteenth century BCE, the Egyptian province of Nubia), are among the most spectacular monuments of the ancient world. They were built by Ramesses II in the middle of his long reign, beginning in the 24th year of his reign (c. 1264 BCE; the chronology follows Kitchen, Pharaoh Triumphant, 1982, pp. 113-128), and they are the most visible expression of his propaganda genius. There are two temples, the larger dedicated to Ra-Horakhty and to Ramesses himself, the smaller dedicated to his queen Nefertari and to the goddess Hathor. For the broader context, see our guide to the Abu Simbel temple complex.

Why Abu Simbel Was Built

By the time of Ramesses II, Nubia had been an Egyptian province for more than a century. It supplied Egypt with gold, ivory, ebony, incense, and exotic goods, and it formed a critical strategic corridor between Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa. The southern frontier was also a place of memory: it was the road to the Land of Punt and the heart of the Egyptian cult of the sun god Ra.

The choice of Abu Simbel as the site of a great monument was both strategic and symbolic. The cliffs of the area offered a natural place to carve a temple into living rock, in the manner of the great rock-cut tombs of the Valley of the Kings, but on a vastly larger scale. A temple cut into a cliff, overlooking the Nile, was visible for miles. To every Egyptian official, trader, or soldier sailing south, it announced the presence of the pharaoh in stone.

The Great Temple of Abu Simbel

The larger temple, the Great Temple of Abu Simbel, is the most famous. The façade is about 30 meters (100 feet) high and 35 meters (115 feet) wide. Four colossal seated statues of Ramesses II, each more than 20 meters (65 feet 6 inches) tall, making them among the largest rock-cut statues in the world, are carved directly from the rock of the cliff. They depict the pharaoh wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, with a small figure of his chief queen, Nefertari, and several of his children at his feet.

Below the colossi, an inscription in hieroglyphs proclaims the king’s identity and titles. Above the entrance, a niche contains a statue of the falcon-headed Ra-Horakhty, flanked by a mummiform figure of Amun-Ra on one side and a figure of the deified Ramesses on the other.

The interior of the temple extends 60 meters (200 feet) into the cliff. It is laid out in a series of halls, each smaller and lower than the one before, ending in a deep sanctuary cut into the rock itself. The walls are covered in painted reliefs showing the king’s military victories, his religious devotion, and, most famously, his role in the Battle of Kadesh.

The Sun Miracle

The most celebrated feature of the Great Temple is the twice-yearly “Sun Miracle.” The temple is aligned so that, on two days of the year, traditionally said to be 22 October and 22 February, the rays of the rising sun pass through the entire length of the temple and illuminate the four statues in the inner sanctuary: Ra-Horakhty, Amun-Ra, the deified Ramesses, and, mysteriously, the god Ptah, who is associated with the underworld and is usually depicted in darkness. The other three figures, including that of the king, are lit by the sun. Modern scholars note that, after the temple was moved in the 1960s, the dates of the illumination have shifted by one day.

The Small Temple of Hathor and Nefertari

Beside the Great Temple, cut into the same cliff, is a smaller temple dedicated to the goddess Hathor and to Ramesses’ chief queen, Nefertari. It is the only ancient Egyptian temple in which a private individual, the queen, is depicted at the same scale as the pharaoh.

The façade has six standing colossi, four of Ramesses and two of Nefertari, each about 10 meters (33 feet) tall. Above the entrance, a niche contains a figure of the cow-eared Hathor. The interior is decorated with scenes of Nefertari making offerings to the gods, and with depictions of the king and queen in intimate domestic scenes that are rare in Egyptian royal art.

A small scholarly point worth knowing. The older textbooks describe the small temple as a “Hathoric” temple, that is, dedicated to Hathor above all, with Nefertari present as a kind of divine consort. There is a recent counter-argument, associated most strongly with the German epigrapher Dieter Kurth, that the goddess depicted is really a different one: a syncretic Isis-Hathor-Nefertari figure, with Nefertari as the central divine presence and Hathor as a secondary epithet. The iconography of the chapel is more consistent with the second reading than the first, in my view, and I think the orthodox description will quietly be revised over the next generation.

The History of the Site

Construction of the temples began in about 1264 BCE, in the twenty-fourth year of Ramesses’ reign, and was completed about twenty years later. After the end of the New Kingdom, the temples were gradually abandoned, and the encroaching sand eventually covered them almost completely.

The site was rediscovered in 1813 by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt and first entered in 1817 by the Italian explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni. Belzoni had to dig out the entrance, but found the inner chambers and the great statues in remarkable condition. For the next 150 years, the temples became one of the most famous tourist destinations in the world.

Saving Abu Simbel

In the 1960s, the construction of the Aswan High Dam threatened to submerge the temples under the rising waters of Lake Nasser. A massive international rescue operation, led by UNESCO and supported by more than 50 countries, cut the temples into more than 1,000 massive blocks, lifted them 65 meters higher up the cliff, and reassembled them on an artificial hill overlooking the lake. The relocation, completed in 1968, was one of the great engineering achievements of the twentieth century. For the full story, see the relocation of Abu Simbel.

The Modern Site

Today, Abu Simbel sits in the far south of Egypt, near the border with Sudan, more than 280 kilometers (175 miles) from the nearest large city. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of the most visited monuments in Egypt, and a powerful symbol of the country’s pharaonic past. Twice a year, on the dates of the sun miracle, thousands of spectators gather in the temple to watch the ancient alignment, a tradition that the Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and others have helped popularize through the work of the Ministry of Antiquities.