Egypt is an amazing, mysterious country of ancient civilizations. There, in any corner, you can find something very ancient and mysterious. Look at the photo - this is the temple of Ramses II Abu Simbel. When I found out about its peculiarity, I could not believe my eyes. I began to look for photographs of the temple from all angles and read documentary evidence of this. Everything turned out to be true.
Do you know its peculiarity?
Let's start from afar. The cave temple in Abu Simbel is one of the most famous monuments of ancient Egyptian culture. The huge, 20-meter-high statues of Pharaoh Ramses II the Great, framing the entrance to the temple, have become today the same symbols of Egypt as the pyramids and the sphinx. The construction of cave temples was widely developed during the reign of Ramses II, but Abu Simbel surpasses all other similar structures.
The ensemble of Abu Simbel is formed by two structures: the Great Temple dedicated to Pharaoh Ramses II and three gods: Amon, Ra-Horakhta and Ptah, and the Small Temple, erected in honor of the goddess Hathor, in the image of which the wife of Ramses II Nefertari-Merenmuth is represented.
Until the early 19th century, the temples of Abu Simbel were lost in the sands of the desert. Only on March 22, 1813, the Swiss historian Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, having landed on the banks of the Nile, came across the temple complex.
The historian expressed his impressions of what he saw in his notes as follows: “Statues carved into the rock opened to my eyes. All of them were half covered with sand … However, Ramses immortalized not only himself, but also his beloved wife Nefertari. The facial features of his wife are depicted on statues at the entrance to her temple.”
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Today Abu Simbel is probably the most researched monument of Ancient Egypt. The fact is that in the late 1950s, during the construction of the Aswan hydroelectric power station, Abu Simbel found himself on the territory of the future reservoir. Various projects have been developed to save the world famous monument, including the creation of an underwater glass dome over the temple. But as a result, they decided to dismantle all the structures of the complex and move them to a higher place. This unprecedented action, carried out under the auspices of UNESCO, was carried out in four years, and specialists from fifty countries of the world took part in it.
In the 60s of the last century, a real threat hung over them in the form of flooding. After the 1952 revolution, work began on the design of a second dam on the Nile River, near Aswan. The temples located on the banks of the Nile were threatened by flooding. This would lead to the destruction of the building made of sandstone. In 1959, a campaign to save the historical heritage began. Thanks to international support, the ruins of the temples were saved by moving to a new location.
In order to avoid flooding the cultural heritage, it was decided to disassemble Abu Simbel in parts and reassemble in a new place. For this, the temples were sawn into 1036 blocks, the weight of which reached from 5 to 20 tons. All of them were numbered and moved to a new location.
Then the blocks were re-drilled, and a resinous composition was pumped into the holes, which was designed to strengthen the rocky structure of the blocks. Part by part, like a mosaic, the temples were reassembled and covered with a hollow reinforced concrete cap, on which a hill was poured. It turned out so harmoniously that it seemed that Abu Simbel was in this place and was all this time. The entire operation to relocate the temples took three years from 1965 to 68.
Researchers, studying the monument during these works, were amazed at the huge amount of knowledge that the ancient Egyptian masters used to create such a grandiose structure. UNESCO experts concluded that the lines of the facades of the Big and Small Temples ran parallel to cracks in the rocky ground, and thus hard rocks served as a natural support for the giant statues. When constructing the cave temple, the architects took into account the natural properties of the soil - the layers of sandstone in it were fastened with iron oxide, as a result of which the layers were almost not subject to destruction. In addition, iron oxide enriched the stone's palette, giving the sandstone a wide variety of hues.
The new location of the temples is 65 meters above and 200 meters further from the river. The relocation of the Abu Simbel and Philae monuments is considered one of the largest engineering and archaeological operations.
And now I invite you to a virtual excursion to the monuments of ancient civilization. Click on the pictures below.