Nov 2: leave Cairo, visit Abu Simbel Temple, board the ship!

Wow, what a busy day!  We got up at 2am for our flight from Cairo to Aswan, Egypt, connecting to a flight to Abu Simbel to see the Abu Simbel Temples, dating back to the 13th century BC in the southern-most area of Egypt.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

This is the site of 2 temples commissioned during the reign of Ramses II, originally cut out of rock.  The construction was to celebrate the King’s victory over the Hittites and to impress Egypt’s southern neighbors.  The figures at the temple entrance are over 60 feet tall.

Inside this temple are lots of hieroglyphics which praised Ramses and his relationships to their gods.

 


 


Twice a year, the sun shines thru the temple door into a special chamber which illuminates a small room with 4 figures, Ramses (second from left) sits beside gods


  The smaller temple is dedicated to King Ramses' favorite wife, Queen Nefertari 


This temple also had drawing and engravings on the walls inside, with lots more females, though Ramses appeared frequently.



The original location of the two temples was on the banks of the Nile River. This was before the Aswan high dam was constructed. Water at the banks rose significantly after dam construction and posed danger to the temples; so in 1964 the two temples were carefully cut into several pieces and moved 200 meters further away from the rising water of Lake Nasser.

After about an hour visiting the two temples, we flew from the Abu Simbel airport back to Aswan, where we boarded our boat on the Nile River after a half hour bus ride.  It turned out that the air conditioning broke on our original ship (it's been in the mid-90's), so tonight we sailed down the Nile and transferred to another ship.

 



 

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