The 1960s Relocation of Abu Simbel

The temples of Abu Simbel, built by Ramesses II in the 13th century BCE, were saved from destruction in 1964–1968 by one of the most ambitious engineering projects in the history of cultural heritage. The rescue campaign, carried out under the auspices of UNESCO and the Egyptian government, is now considered a landmark in the modern history of monument preservation. It is a story of international cooperation, technological ingenuity, and the recognition that the cultural heritage of humanity is a shared responsibility.

This page tells that story as a single narrative, from the first threat to the final reassembly, because the campaign is best understood as a connected sequence of choices, failures, and compromises.

The Threat of the Aswan High Dam

The crisis began in the late 1950s, when Egypt, under President Gamal Abdel Nasser, began the construction of the Aswan High Dam on the Nile about 13 kilometers south of the city of Aswan. The dam, completed in 1970, was designed to control the annual flood of the Nile, generate hydroelectric power, and expand the area of irrigated land. The project had a devastating side effect: the dam’s reservoir, Lake Nasser, would back up hundreds of kilometers of the Nile valley in southern Egypt and northern Sudan, drowning dozens of archaeological sites.

Among the sites in the danger zone were the temples of Abu Simbel, the temple of Isis at Philae, the temple of Taffeh, the temple of Dendur, and the temples of Kalabsha. Most of these were Nubian monuments built by the pharaohs of the New Kingdom. The total number of sites in danger was eventually estimated at more than twenty major monuments and hundreds of smaller ones.

The First Proposals

When the threat to the Nubian monuments became clear in the late 1950s, a number of possible responses were considered. The simplest was to leave the temples in place and let them be submerged, but this was immediately rejected. Another option was to build a dam that would not flood the monuments, but this would have required a redesign of the entire project. A third option was to leave the temples in place and build a dam higher up the river, but this was not feasible for technical and economic reasons.

A more creative option was to move the temples. The Polish–Egyptian mission that had been working on the site of the temple of Ramesses II at Gerf Hussein proposed in 1960 that the temple be moved to higher ground, and the idea of moving Abu Simbel was soon raised as well. In 1960, a Swedish engineering consortium (Vattenbyggnadsbyrån, or VBB) proposed that the temple of Abu Simbel be raised on a concrete platform above the new waterline. Other proposals suggested dismantling the temples and reassembling them in museums or in a new site above the lake.

The International Campaign

The campaign to save the Nubian monuments became a cause célèbre. In 1959, the Egyptian government appealed to the United Nations for help, and UNESCO launched an international campaign in 1960. The campaign had two parallel goals: to raise funds and to identify the most feasible means of saving the monuments. By 1964, more than 50 countries had contributed, and the total international contribution was about $80 million (the equivalent of more than $700 million in current dollars).

The work was organized by a committee of experts, with a steering committee of Egyptian officials and foreign specialists. The committee considered a range of options, and the final decision was to dismantle the temples, move them to a new site higher up the cliff, and reassemble them on an artificial hill. The plan was technically challenging but considered more feasible than any alternative.

The Dismantling of the Temples

The work of moving the temples began in 1964. The two temples were first cut into more than 1,000 individual blocks, the largest of them weighing about 30 tons. The blocks were numbered, photographed, and removed from the cliff with cranes and other heavy equipment. The interior decoration (the painted walls and the carved reliefs) was carefully documented and the blocks were transported to a site about 65 meters higher than the original location and 200 meters further back from the river. There, they were reassembled in a concrete and steel frame, with an artificial hill built over them to simulate the original cliff face.

The new site is about 65 meters higher than the original site and 200 meters further back from the river. The total height of the artificial hill is about 60 meters, with a base about 210 meters in diameter. The new site is at the same elevation as the original, so the orientation of the temples and the angle of the sun’s rays are essentially the same as they were in antiquity. The phenomenon of the “Sun Festival” still occurs twice a year, on 22 February and 22 October, although the exact dates have shifted slightly from the original alignment.

The Sun Festival: A Question of Dates

A persistent question is whether the alignment of the new site is identical to the original. When the temples were rebuilt on the artificial hill, the engineers had to estimate the original orientation. The result is that the sun’s rays now enter the sanctuary a few minutes later than they did originally. The dates of the “Sun Festival” in the new location are 22 February and 22 October, but the original ancient dates may have been slightly different. Some scholars have argued that the ancient alignment was based on the heliacal rising of a particular star, or on the dates of the king’s coronation and birthday. The question is still debated.

The Temple of Dendur and Other Gifts

The international campaign produced a number of other “gifts” of Nubian monuments to countries that had contributed to the rescue effort. The most famous of these is the Temple of Dendur, which was given to the United States and reassembled in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1978. The temple of Debod, a small temple originally built at the site of the same name, was given to Spain and reassembled in a park in central Madrid. The temple of Taffeh was given to the Netherlands and reassembled in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden. The gate of Kalabsha was given to Germany and reassembled in the Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin.

The Legacy of the Abu Simbel Rescue

The rescue of Abu Simbel is now considered a turning point in the modern history of cultural heritage. It demonstrated that international cooperation could save even the most monumental of monuments, and it established a set of principles and practices that have been applied to other heritage emergencies around the world. The campaign led directly to the creation of the World Heritage Convention in 1972, which has become the principal instrument of international heritage protection.

The temples of Abu Simbel themselves remain one of the most visited and most beloved monuments in the world. The visitor who walks through the new site today, past the reconstructed colossi and into the interior, sees essentially the same monument that Ramesses II built three thousand years ago, but at a different elevation, behind an artificial hill, in a landscape transformed by modern engineering.

A frank assessment: was the relocation a triumph or a loss? In purely engineering terms, an unambiguous triumph. In cultural terms, more complicated. The new site is clean, accessible, and structurally sound; the old site, had it survived, would have been the original monument in its original setting, with the desert approach that the ancient priests knew. The face you see at Abu Simbel today is not quite the face Ramesses carved, even though the stone is the same stone. The relocation saved the temples; it did not save their context.