Abu Simbel, A Very Long Drive With a Prize at the End

Our wake-up call was at 3:30 am, breakfast at 4:00 am, bus departs at 4:30 am, and the price of the tour is $80 each. We had heard that Abu Simbel is a must see though and we bucked up for it.

The Facade of the Temple

The kids have been troopers on this trip. They’re getting up early without complaint. They’re enjoying hanging out with the other tour members and have gotten to know everyone really well. They’re both becoming intrepid travelers and we’re totally impressed and proud of them.

Women were smaller than the calf.

Anyway, we piled off the bus at 7:00, queued for the washrooms (and the opportunity to pay for the washroom 1LE (LE=Egyptian Pound) .. but if you don’t have a 1LE coin they’ll gladly take more without offering any change.

It's BIG!

Abu Simbel is a massive group of monuments built by Ramses II – one of the more famous Pharaohs and one who lies in state at the Egyptian Museum’s Royal Mummy Exhibit (100LE additional charge).


Grafitti from the 1800's

 He built this beautiful temple for himself and one of his wives – a couple thousand years ago. In 1964 the Aswan dam for Lake Nasser was finished and the original site would soon be under water. A team of engineers and archeologists took upon the task of moving the huge monument. Apparently it was a bit of a race against time in terms of getting the project done before the lake overtook them.


Jessie is the size of an ear.

 The temple was carved directly into the rock so the big job was destroying and getting rid of the mountain it was carved into without ruining the sculptures. Once they did this they moved the temple piece by piece, then reassembled it and built another mountain behind it. Unbelievably impressive – kind of like Mount Rushmore on a smaller scale – oh yes, 5,000 years ago before the invention of the pneumatic jackhammer.




Part of the facade to Ramses II's wife's temple

 Inside the temples are beautiful paintings and bas relief of various gods (no cameras allowed) – I kind of lost track of who was whom in the God department – except that the ruling Pharaoh would become the leader of Upper and Lower Egypt and also become a god too ….One thing that gives an indication of the forethought and talent of the architects and engineers is that at the very back of the temple are the statues of four gods – one of the god of darkness, two other gods and Ramses. On the date of Ramses II’s birth, Feb 22, the sun shines through the temple opening and onto the faces of the three gods (except the god of darkness ( how cool is that) at the time of his birth. It does this twice a year. When they moved the temple apparently they were off by 5mm’s on its placement so now that event occurs on the 21st … so they were able to do the calculations of where the sun would be … and execute the engineering … 5000+ years ago. Pretty Cool.


The Lake Nasser created by Siwa dam.

 No matter how “neat” a temple is, we have about a 1 to 1.5 hour tolerance for it … so we piled back into the bus and headed back to Aswan, six or seven hours of travel to go see the sights at Abu Simbel.