Abu Simbel: Visitor and Heritage Guide

History

Two temples cut into a sandstone cliff in the far south of Egypt in the thirteenth century BCE, on the orders of Ramesses II. The Great Temple is fronted by four seated colossi of the king, each about twenty meters high; the smaller temple beside it is dedicated to the goddess Hathor and to Nefertari, Ramesses’ principal queen, and is one of very few Egyptian temples where a queen is shown at the same scale as the king. Their position was political as much as religious: this was the southern frontier of Egyptian power, facing Nubia, and the temples were meant to be seen from the river by anyone coming north.

UNESCO lists them as part of the Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae, inscribed in 1979.

The move

The temples are not where they were built. In the 1960s the Aswan High Dam created Lake Nasser, and the rising water would have submerged them. In an international campaign coordinated by UNESCO, the entire complex was cut into more than a thousand blocks, lifted, and reassembled on an artificial hill some sixty meters higher and two hundred meters back from the original site, inside a concrete dome built to carry the cliff face above it. The orientation was preserved so precisely that the temple’s solar alignment still works.

That campaign is the direct ancestor of the World Heritage Convention, and Abu Simbel is the reason the modern idea of a shared international responsibility for heritage exists at all. It is also worth remembering the other half of the same event: the lake that made the move necessary also flooded Nubian villages and displaced tens of thousands of people, who could not be cut into blocks and moved. The Nubia Museum at Aswan records that side of it.

What you will see

Four colossal seated figures of Ramesses II across the front of the Great Temple — one damaged by an earthquake in antiquity and deliberately left as found during the relocation. Inside, a hall lined with Osiride pillars, wall reliefs of the Battle of Kadesh at enormous scale, and the inner sanctuary with four seated statues. The smaller temple has six standing colossi at its front, four of Ramesses and two of Nefertari, and an interior with Hathor-headed columns.

Behind the facades, if you look for it, the seams of the relocation are visible in the stone. Most visitors miss them entirely, which is the measure of how well the work was done.

The sun alignment

Twice a year, on 22 February and 22 October, the rising sun travels the full depth of the Great Temple and illuminates the statues in the inner sanctuary. It is one of the few fixed-date events in the Egyptian calendar and it draws large crowds, an early start and a festival atmosphere. If you want to be there for it, book a long way ahead.

Getting there

Abu Simbel is about 280 kilometers south of Aswan, close to the Sudanese border. Most visitors fly from Aswan on a schedule built around a morning visit and a return the same day; there are also road convoys and, less commonly, arrivals by Lake Nasser cruise. Whichever way you come, it is an early start, and the visit itself is relatively short.

Staying overnight is possible and is the way to see the temples in the evening or at first light with almost nobody else there. It costs a day and it is, for many people, the best day of the trip.

Visiting

The walk from the coach park to the temples is short and largely level, curving around the artificial hill so that the facades appear all at once — a piece of staging that was designed into the relocation. There is very little shade at the site and it is one of the hottest places on any Egyptian itinerary, so a hat and water are not optional. Photography is prohibited inside the temples; check the current arrangements at the entrance, since they change.

Visiting respectfully

Do not touch the reliefs. Keep to the marked routes. Observe the photography rules inside, which exist to protect surfaces that have already survived being taken apart and put back together. This is Nubian ground as well as Egyptian, and the communities of the region are part of its story rather than a backdrop to it.

Seeing it on a LABUSA Travel journey

Our Egypt journeys include Abu Simbel from Aswan, and we set it against the Nubia Museum rather than in isolation — because the temple and the reason it had to be moved are the same story, and the second half of it is usually the part people did not know.