Abu Simbel: Ramesses II’s Rock-Cut Temples in Egypt

Site at a Glance

Rating

★4.8

Popularity

Very High

Country

Egypt

Primary era

Bronze Age

External website

Open ↗

Eras represented

Bronze Age, Modern

Civilizations

Egyptian

Site type

Religious

Remains

Temple

History

Abu Simbel is a complex of two rock-cut temples in Egypt, built by the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II during the thirteenth century BC, in the later New Kingdom. Located in Nubia near Egypt’s southern frontier and the Second Nile Cataract, the temples projected permanent Egyptian authority over the region and connected the power of the king with the divine world.

Foundation under Ramesses II

Ramesses II, a ruler of the Nineteenth Dynasty conventionally known as Ramesses the Great, commissioned both sanctuaries. Construction may have continued for about twenty years, although its exact chronology remains uncertain. The site may also have had an earlier sacred role, perhaps including a sanctuary established during the reign of Horemheb.

The larger temple was dedicated to Amun, Ra-Horakhty, Ptah, and the deified Ramesses II. Amun, associated with Thebes, Ra-Horakhty, associated with Heliopolis, and Ptah, associated with Memphis, represented major religious traditions brought together at Abu Simbel. The temple’s ancient name was the Temple of Ramesses, Beloved by Amun, also rendered as the Temple of Ramesses-Meriamun.

The smaller temple belonged to Hathor, a goddess associated with femininity, motherhood, love, music, fertility, and royal protection, as embodied by Ramesses’s chief wife, Nefertari. Her representation gave the sanctuary a direct connection with the queen and with the protection of the royal household.

Royal power and military memory

Abu Simbel expressed Ramesses II’s conception of kingship. The pharaoh appeared as a divinely legitimized ruler on earth and, in important religious scenes, as a figure closely linked with or equal to the gods. The temples therefore joined royal authority, religious belief, and Egypt’s political presence in Nubia.

Reliefs in the Great Temple describe Ramesses II’s campaigns in Nubia, Libya, and Retjenu, as well as the Battle of Kadesh against the Hittite king Muwatalli II around 1274 BC. The Hittites ruled an Anatolian empire that rivalled Egypt during the Late Bronze Age. Egyptian representations present Kadesh as a royal victory, although the conflict ended without a decisive victor. Egypt and the Hittites later concluded a peace treaty in 1259 BC, one of the earliest known international peace treaties.

Evidence within the temple helps establish the progress of its construction. Reliefs, inscriptions, royal titles, and depictions of members of the royal family indicate that much of the interior may have been finished by Ramesses II’s thirty-fourth regnal year. Bintanath appears first as a king’s daughter and later as a great royal wife. The treatment of her titles, together with the interior’s lack of a reference to Ramesses’s Hittite wife Maathorneferure, contributes to this reconstruction. A damaged colossal statue was probably affected by an earthquake during the same reign.

Decline, rediscovery, and early investigation

The temples eventually fell out of use, and drifting sand progressively buried the Great Temple. By the sixth century BC, sand had reached the knees of its principal statues. On 22 March 1813, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt became the first European to see the Small Temple and the partly exposed Great Temple. Sand still blocked the Great Temple’s entrance, preventing access to its interior.

Giovanni Belzoni, working with the support of British Consul-General Henry Salt, cleared part of the entrance and entered the Great Temple on 1 August 1817. Earlier efforts by William John Bankes and Bernardino Drovetti had failed to open it fully. A Franco-Tuscan expedition led by Jean-François Champollion and Ippolito Rosellini investigated Abu Simbel in 1828 and 1829. Later expeditions included those of Robert Hay in 1830 and Karl Richard Lepsius in 1844, along with work by Franz Christian Gau and other nineteenth-century visitors.

Champollion’s study of the inscriptions helped connect royal cartouches with the names of Ramesses II and Thutmose during the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Robert Hay introduced early technical measures to control the recurring sand. The façade of the Great Temple was completely cleared only in 1909, after earlier work had gradually exposed the seated colossi.

Conservation before relocation

In 1893, Royal Engineers under Lieutenant James Henry L’Estrange Johnstone stabilized unstable rock above the Great Temple. They removed nearly 850 long tons of dangerous material and a rock mass of approximately 650 long tons, built retaining walls and a hard slope against drifting sand, repaired several baboon statues with cement, and cleared the entrance to the Chapel of Thoth.

During Alessandro Barsanti’s sand-clearance campaign of 1909 and 1910, workers found a row of statues showing Ramesses II and sacred solar hawks in front of the colossi. They also exposed the previously unknown Chapel of Re-Harakhty. Cracks and cavities in the colossi were stabilized with cement and iron pins, and further repairs were carried out inside the Great Temple.

Sand clearance also revealed a grave associated with Major Benjamin Tidswell, who died at Abu Simbel in 1885 during the Nile Expedition. His remains were moved in 1909 and reinterred in 1910 in a corridor south of the Great Temple façade, where a granite tombstone was placed.

The international rescue of the temples

The construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1950s placed both temples in danger of submergence beneath the future waters of Lake Nasser. UNESCO appealed for international assistance on 8 March 1960 as part of a wider campaign to save Nubia’s monuments.

A Swedish proposal selected in 1963 called for the temples to be cut into blocks, raised to safer ground, and reassembled. Egyptian, German, French, Italian, and Swedish companies took part in the work, which lasted from November 1963 to September 1968. The relocation protected the temples from inundation and from the loss of strength and durability that prolonged immersion would have caused. The reconstructed complex was officially inaugurated on 22 September 1968.

The project preserved the temples’ orientation and formed part of the international effort that also saved monuments at Philae, Amada, and Wadi es-Sebua. Its success helped encourage the development of the UNESCO World Heritage system and the adoption of the World Heritage Convention in 1972. Abu Simbel was inscribed in 1979 within the World Heritage Site “Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae,” under cultural criteria i, iii, and vi. The wider campaign also led Egypt to present several smaller Nubian temples to supporting countries. Debod, Dendur, Ellesyia, and Taffeh were subsequently re-established in museums in Spain, the United States, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Remains

Abu Simbel now consists of two monumental sanctuaries cut into sandstone and reconstructed approximately 180 metres northwest of their original position, about 64 to 65 metres higher. The Great Temple lies to the southwest and the Small Temple approximately 100 to 150 metres to its northeast. Their original setting on the western bank of the Nile is covered by Lake Nasser. The reassembled temples retain their original orientation, including the alignment intended to carry sunlight into the Great Temple’s sanctuary.

The Great Temple

Façade and royal statues

The Great Temple’s rock-cut axis extends about 63 metres from the façade to the sanctuary. Its rooms become smaller toward the rear, while the floor rises inward. A nine-step stairway leads to a terrace supporting four colossal seated figures of Ramesses II, each approximately 20 to 21 metres high and wearing a royal crown. Smaller figures of Nefertari, Queen Mother Mut-Tuya, and the king’s sons and daughters stand beside and between the legs of the colossal statues. Reliefs on the façade and terrace show Nubian and Asian captives.

An earthquake damaged the southern statue on the left side of the entrance. Its head and torso fell away and were not reattached during the relocation; the pieces were set at the statue’s feet in their recorded positions. Above the entrance, a niche holds Ra-Horakhty with a solar disk, the user sign, and a figure of Maat. Together these elements allude visually and verbally to Ramesses II’s throne name, User-Maat-Re.

The upper façade carries a frieze of sacred baboons, sometimes called sun monkeys, beneath a cornice decorated with uraei, the rearing cobras used as protective royal and divine emblems. Hieroglyphic inscriptions extend across the façade. Greek and Carian graffiti appear on the legs of the colossi, including a Greek inscription about the forces of Psamtik II, their movement beyond Elephantine, and the southern region toward Kerkis.

Interior halls and sanctuary

The interior opens into a hypostyle hall, a large roofed room supported by rows of pillars, also described as a pronaos or entrance hall. It measures approximately 18 metres in length and 16.7 metres in width. Eight Osirid pillars, each about ten metres high, divide the space into a broad central nave and side aisles. Their figures show the deified Ramesses II in the form and posture of Osiris, the god associated with death, resurrection, and the afterlife.

Reliefs in the hall describe the king’s campaigns against Libya, Kush, and Retjenu, as well as the Battle of Kadesh. The principal Kadesh scene on the northern wall measures approximately 17 metres long and 9 metres high. The central nave is about twice the width of the side aisles, and its ceiling carries Nekhbet as a vulture with outspread wings protecting the royal cartouche, the elongated enclosure around a royal name.

A smaller four-pillared hall follows the first chamber. Its pillars and walls show the pharaoh welcomed and embraced by gods, making offerings, worshipping, and accompanying a procession bearing a sacred solar bark. Eight side chambers open from the rear of the larger hall. Two probably stored vessels or objects used in temple rituals, while the functions of the others remain less clearly defined.

A transverse vestibule leads to the sanctuary. Four seated, life-size figures stand at its rear in the conventional order of Ptah, Amun-Ra, the deified Ramesses II, and Ra-Horakhty. The statue of Ptah remains in darkness or receives only minimal illumination during the temple’s solar phenomenon. Reliefs throughout the temple include Amun-Ra, Ra-Horakhty, Ptah, Horus, Hathor, and Ramesses II in forms associated with the gods, as well as relationships among the pharaoh, the local Horus of Meha, and the cult centres of Memphis, Thebes, and Heliopolis.

Solar alignment and associated features

Approximately twice a year, traditionally around 21 October and 21 February, sunlight travels through the Great Temple and illuminates the figures of Amun-Ra, the deified Ramesses II, and Ra-Horakhty, while leaving Ptah largely in shadow. The exact calendar position can shift by about a day. Amelia Edwards described the phenomenon in 1874, and the relocation team observed sunlight reaching the inner sanctuary on 22 February 1966 while Ptah remained unlit. The claim that the alignment originally occurred at the equinoxes is not supported.

The original surroundings included two water tanks for priests’ ritual washing and a small Chapel of Thoth north of the Great Temple. The Chapel of Thoth near the southern end of the cutting was cleared during nineteenth-century and later sand-removal work. The Chapel of Re-Harakhty was found in front of the Great Temple during the 1909 to 1910 clearance campaign.

The Small Temple

Façade of Ramesses II and Nefertari

The Small Temple is about half the size of the Great Temple and extends approximately 21 metres into the rock. Six standing colossal figures form its façade, four representing Ramesses II and two representing Nefertari. Each is slightly more than 10 metres high. Rock-cut partitions bearing deeply carved hieroglyphs separate the statues, and each figure places the left foot slightly forward.

Ramesses II and Nefertari appear at approximately equal scale, an unusual treatment in Egyptian royal art that expresses the queen’s royal importance. Nefertari wears Hathoric attributes, including a solar disk, cow horns, and plumes, and holds a sistrum, a sacred rattle used in religious rituals associated with Hathor. Smaller figures of royal sons and daughters stand beside the principal statues.

The figures of Ramesses carry different royal crowns and headdresses. Some wear the white crown of Upper Egypt, while others wear the double crown. Other horned and plumed elements include the Henu crown, associated with royal renewal or rebirth. A uraeus frieze crowns the entrance, whose cartouches bear Ramesses II’s name. Reliefs beside the doorway show Ramesses offering to Hathor and Nefertari worshipping Isis.

Hathoric halls and sanctuary

The first interior chamber is a three-aisled hall supported by six pillars arranged in two rows. Their surfaces display stylized faces of Hathor, while hieroglyphs and reliefs describe events associated with Ramesses II and Nefertari. Other scenes show religious offerings, the ritual defeat of Libyan and Nubian enemies, and Nefertari standing behind Ramesses with Hathoric attributes.

The hall opens into a transverse vestibule with two side chambers. The sanctuary contains a niche in which Hathor appears as a sacred cow emerging from the mountain. Its reliefs show Hathor, Nefertari, and Mut, together with coronation scenes and goddesses protecting the queen in associations with love and fertility.

Reconstructed rock setting

The relocation preserved the temples’ original forms and decoration while recreating their rock-cut appearance through a major engineering intervention. Workers drilled approximately 17,000 holes and injected about 33 tons of epoxy resin to consolidate the sandstone, adding iron reinforcement where necessary. They cut the temples into 1,036 blocks weighing approximately 7 to 30 tons each. The first block was moved in May 1965, and cutting lines remain visible in some places.

A further 1,112 blocks of surrounding rock were cut and relocated to reproduce the appearance of the original cliff and rear setting. About 300,000 tons of rock were removed from above and around the temples during the operation. Material from the original cliff and temporary cofferdam was reused in the artificial hill and reconstructed rear setting.

Reinforced-concrete domes now support the interiors instead of the original mountain alone. The Great Temple’s dome spans approximately 55 metres and is about 19 metres high, while the Small Temple’s dome spans about 21 metres and is 6.6 metres high. Sand, rubble, and blocks of original rock cover the domes and supports, recreating the visual form of rock-cut sanctuaries. Permanent electric lighting and concealed mechanical ventilation were installed to illuminate the interiors and regulate temperature and humidity around the decoration.