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Abu Simbel

Created: Dec 24, 2009,
modified: Jan 13, 2012,
overall rating: 0.000

Ybsambul was already legendary to a degree. On March 22, 1813 Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, a Swiss historian known as Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah to the Arabs, landed on the shores of the Mile accompanied by the local guide Saad with the intention of visiting the temple dedicated to Nefertari, the beautiful and beloved wife of the Pharaoh, convinced that Ybsambul had no other ancient attractions to offer.

Only a few years later on August 1, 1817 another adventurer - the most adventurous of all, Giovanni Battista Belzoni -managed to free the upper part of the door from the sand and discover the entrance. After eleven centuries of oblivion, the architectural masterpiece and personal achievement of Ramses the Great was being violated by a European. After Belzoni's discovery many travelers faced the discomforts of the Nubian Desert, determined to reach Abu Simbel.


Penetrating to the heart of the mountain, an enormous hall appears in which eight ten-meter high pillars placed in two rows incorporate the figure of Osiris with the semblance of Ramses. Sixty-five meters within the temple in the sacrarium, Ramses II, himself ranked with the gods, sat at the gathering of the divine triad with Amon-Ra, Ptah, and Harmakhis. The inner walls depict Ramses' military achievements in a richly decorative relief series based on the long epic poem recounting the Pharaoh's victorious expedition in Syria, composed by Pentaur, the court-poet.
Ramses, however, not only built an edifice for his own eternal glorification; next to the Great Temple he built a much smaller one, barely 10 meters high, dedicated to his wife Nefertari, the favored and most beloved of his consorts. Never before in the history of Egypt had an image of the Pharaoh's wife appeared next to his, and of equal height, on the front of a temple. The new honor was bestowed on the Great Royal Bride, Nefertari-mery en Mut, the "Beloved of Mut". For her the Pharaoh had a temple "of fine, solid and white stone" cut into the rock; for her he had two ten-meter-high statues sculpted portraying her as Hathor with the horns of the sacred cow, the solar disc and two plumes.
Documents
The Visit

The cut-rock temple of Abu Simbel is actually nothing but the transferral into rock of the architectural elements of the ...
Visit into the interior

From the blinding light of day we now pass into the interior where the half light creates a mysterious evocative ...
The temple of Hathor

Despite appearances, Abu Simbel is more than simply a matter of Ramses II glorifying himself. It suffices to leave the ...
The Sacrarium

Sixty-five meters from the entrance portal, in the heart of the mountain, is the sacrarium, the most intimate and secret ...
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Sunrise in the Abu Simbel sanctuary
Feb 23, 2011, rating: 0.000, 0 votesOutside the Great Temple of Abu Simbel, a long line of people are waiting for a first chance to glimpse ...