Ramesses II (The Great) at Abu Simbel

While there are many unexplained amazing sites from antiquity, there is one that was amazing then and even more so in recent times. The twin temples at Abu Simbel are amazing accomplishments by the Egyptians during the rule of Ramesses the Great, but even more amazing was the project to relocate the temples so that they would continue to be after the construction of the Aswan Dam to create Lake Nasser. A visit to Egypt would not be complete without visiting Abu Simbel. IT was the highlight of my trip, along with going inside the Great Pyramid at Giza and seeing Tutankhamun’s tomb.

The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside in the 13th century BC, during the 19th Dynasty reign of the Pharaoh Ramesses II. Their huge external rock relief figures of Ramesses II have become iconic. His wife, Nefertari, and children can be seen in smaller figures by his feet. Sculptures inside the Great Temple commemorate Ramesses II’s heroic leadership at the Battle of Kadesh.

The complex was relocated in its entirety in 1968 to higher ground to avoid it being submerged by Lake Nasser, the Aswan Dam reservoir. As part of the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, an artificial hill was made from a domed structure to house the Abu Simbel Temples, under the supervision of a Polish archaeologist, Kazimierz Michałowski, from the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw.

See more details at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Simbel#:~:text=The%20twin%20temples%20were%20originally,Ramesses%20II%20have%20become%20iconic