Latest / Ramses the Great: Egypt's Most Powerful Pharaoh — Fexingo History / Ramses the Great's Dazzling Temple at Abu Simbel
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Ramses's building projects — Per-Ramesses, the Ramesseum, the additions at Karnak and Luxor. But there's one monument that I think physically overshadows all of them, quite literally, and that's Abu Simbel. Luna: The one with the giant statues carved into the cliff? Lucas: Exactly. Two temples, actually, cut directly into the sandstone mountain on the west bank of the Nile in Nubia, about 280 kilometers south of Aswan. The Great Temple is dedicated to Ramses himself and three state gods — Amun-Re, Ra-Harakhty, and Ptah — but honestly, the facade is all Ramses. Four colossal seated statues of the pharaoh, each over 20 meters high. That's about 65 feet. And then above the doorway, a niche with a statue of the god Ra-Harakhty, and on either side, smaller figures of Ramses's family — his queen Nefertari, his mother Tuya, and several of his children. Luna: It's like a billboard saying 'I am the king.' Lucas: Exactly. And it's strategically placed right at the border of Egypt's southern sphere of influence. The Nubian chiefs traveling north would see that and think twice. But the smaller temple, just 120 meters away, is dedicated to Nefertari and the goddess Hathor. The facade has six standing statues, each about 10 meters tall — four of Ramses and two of Nefertari. And it's incredibly rare for a queen to have statues the same size as the pharaoh on a temple facade. Usually, she'd be shown at his knee. Here, she's full height. Luna: That's a bold statement. Was Nefertari that influential? Lucas: She clearly was. We know from letters and inscriptions that she played a diplomatic role, corresponding with the Hittite queen Puduhepa after the peace treaty. And Ramses has her depicted as the goddess Hathor in the temple. But the interior is just as fascinating. The Great Temple's innermost sanctuary has four seated figures — the gods and Ramses himself. And twice a year, on February 22 and October 22, the rising sun shines all the way down the 55-meter-long corridor and illuminates the faces of three of them — Ptah, the god of darkness, stays in shadow. That's not accidental; it's a deliberate alignment. Luna: So the whole temple is engineered as a cosmic calendar. Lucas: Exactly. And the scenes on the walls celebrate Ramses's military campaigns, especially the Battle of Kadesh. But here's the twist: Abu Simbel as we see it today isn't in its original location. In the 1960s, when Egypt built the Aswan High Dam, the rising waters of Lake Nasser would have submerged the temple. So an international team led by UNESCO and the Egyptian government launched a rescue operation. They cut the entire temple into massive blocks — about 300 blocks for the Great Temple — and reassembled it on a cliff 65 meters higher and 200 meters back from the river. Luna: I've seen photos of that. It's incredible — they basically moved a mountain. Lucas: They did. It took four years, from 1964 to 1968, and cost about 40 million dollars at the time — equivalent to several hundred million today. They had to work out exactly where to cut so the blocks would fit back together perfectly, and they reconstructed the artificial hill over the temple to look like the original cliff. The alignment for the sun was preserved, but because of the shift, it now occurs one day later, on February 22 and October 22 instead of February 21 and October 21. That's a testament to the precision of the original builders. Luna: How did they even find the original location? Was it just covered in sand? Lucas: It was actually rediscovered in 1813 by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt — the same guy who found Petra. He saw the top of one of the colossal statues poking out of the sand. Later, in 1817, the Italian explorer Giovanni Belzoni managed to clear enough sand to enter the temple. So for centuries, it was lost. And now it's been moved. It's one of the great engineering feats of the modern era, but also a symbol of how we value cultural heritage. Luna: It's amazing that the world came together to save it. I mean, that doesn't always happen. Lucas: Yeah, and you know, that sense of people finding value in something and wanting to preserve it — that hits close to home for us too. If today was actually useful to you, the way these stay ad-free is listener support — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small thing that keeps these conversations going. Luna: Absolutely. It's because of listeners that we can dive into stuff like this without interruption. Lucas: So coming back to Abu Simbel — the relocation project also saved the smaller temple of Nefertari, and several other Nubian monuments were moved to higher ground, like the Temple of Philae and the Temple of Kalabsha. But Abu Simbel is the crown jewel. The sheer scale of it — the ambition of Ramses and then the ambition of the modern rescuers — it really encapsulates the idea that some things are worth preserving across millennia. Luna: Were there any controversies about moving it? I mean, it's no longer in its original context. Lucas: There were debates, sure. Some archaeologists argued that the temple should be left in place and a cofferdam built around it, but the cost and technical difficulty were enormous. Others felt that cutting it up would damage the integrity of the site. In the end, the decision to move it was pragmatic. And the alternative was complete loss. So it's a compromise, but one that allowed future generations to experience it. You can still walk through the same halls and see the same reliefs that Ramses commissioned. Luna: And the sun alignment still works, just a day off. Lucas: Exactly. The ancient architects aligned the temple so that on Ramses's birthday and coronation day, the sun would illuminate the gods. The shift of the calendar over time and the slight change in the temple's position means it now happens on different days, but the phenomenon still occurs. Thousands of people gather at Abu Simbel on those two days every year to see it. It's become a modern festival. Luna: It's like the monument is still alive, still performing its function after 3,200 years. Lucas: That's exactly right. And that longevity is partly because of the location. Being cut into the rock, it was protected from the elements better than freestanding temples. But it also had a symbolic purpose: to project Egyptian power into Nubia. The temples are surrounded by inscriptions boasting of Ramses's control over the region. One text calls it 'the temple of millions of years of Ramses the Great, the strong in truth, the favorite of Amun' — it's a statement of divine and earthly authority. Luna: So it's both a religious and a political monument. And now it's a symbol of international cooperation. Lucas: Absolutely. The campaign to save the Nubian monuments was one of UNESCO's first major cultural initiatives, and it set a precedent for the World Heritage program. So in a way, Abu Simbel doesn't just tell us about Ramses — it tells us about how we, in the 20th century, chose to value the past. And I think that's a story worth remembering.