Flooded Temples (Abu Simbel ~ Egypt)

December 2019

Abu Simbel is about 300kms south of Aswan and is home to the amazing Ramses Ii temple.

We looked into the option of catching a local bus and overnighting there and returning the next day but information on the net is vague and contradictory so opted for a driver to take us from Aswan there and back - a bit pricey but worth it as the only other alternative was to take a tourist minibus that left at 3:00am. We got to the Temple mid morning and an hour later the hordes of early morning vistors were leaving.

In the 1960s Egypt started building a dam over the Nile in Aswan. The effect of this was that the Rameses Temple (300 Kms) to the south) would be flooded once the dam was completed. International outcry put paid to this and Egypts solution was to take the 4,500 year temples apart and rebuild them 65 metres higher and 400m back but still pointing in the same direction so as to be aligned with the rising sun.

The sensible thing to do of course would be to halt work on the dam until the temples had been moved. Unfortunately Egypt and sensible are not compatible. What this meant was the Temples were dismantled while the water was rising, meaning coffer dams needed to be built, massive amounts of dewatering had to take place.

A large part of the dismantling was done by hand sawing sandstone blocks and hoisting them away. When blocks were reinstated the saw cuts were filled in with resin and sand of matching colour to the original sandstone.

All in all the relocation effort took four years and necessitated the building of a small town for the workers.

Results are very impressive.

At the top of the facade are a row of baboons that greet the sun as they are illuminated first.

The relocation was done with minimal restoration work. So much so that the head, damaged in a earthquake, is lying on the ground in front of the temple as it had for hundreds of years.