The cut-rock temple of Abu Simbel is actually nothing but the transferral into rock of the architectural elements of the Egyptian so-called inner sanctuary temple. The facade, carved into the mountain, is 38 meters long and 31 meters high and is framed by a convex molding of the "torus" type. It is surmounted by a cornice with uraei (representations of the sacred asp) above which is a row of twenty-two seated baboons, each two and a half meters high, in high relief.
Under the torus molding is a cornice engraved with dedicatory hieroglyphs, and below this, in a niche at the center of the facade, the large high relief figure of Ra-Horakhte with a falcon head, flanked by two low-relief figures of Ramses II. Four colossal seated statues of Ramses II replace the supporting columns of the facade. In their monumentality they perfectly reproduce the somatic features of the sovereign. Twenty meters high and more than four meters from ear to ear, with the line of the quietly smiling lips measuring over a meter, the pharaoh is shown with his hands resting on his thighs, the double crown on his head and the heavy nemes on either side of his face. The second statue is broken and part of the head and trunk are lying on the ground.

Other statues are sculptured between the legs of each colossus. They represent members of  tne royal family, including tne daughter (and his wife) Bent Anat, his mother Tuya, his wife Nefertari, his son Amen her Kopechef, his other daughter Merit Amen who was also married. On the base and side of the chairs Negro and Asiatic prisoners are depicted.
A "multitude of workers imprisoned by his sword" worked on this monumental facade, under the orders of the head of the sculptors, whose name was Pyay, as we read inside the temple. The work of the sculptors was followed by that of the painters: in the time of Ramses the temple must have been brightly colored.