Abu Simbel

One of the ironic things about me getting sick during the tour in Egypt was it caused me to see the temples at Abu Simbel. When I found out that we'd have to leave the hotel at 4 a.m. to see the temples, I said no way and informed our guide I wasn't going. Then, the morning of the excursion, I woke up at 2 .m. and, I couldn't get back to sleep. Not wanting to lay in bed and be bored to tears, I decided to go on the trip after all. I will admit the temples are extremely impressive. Rameses II intentionally built them that way. He wanted to impress any would be invaders that he was a mighty king. Also, he wanted to convince people he was a god. It seems that Rameses was an impatient fellow. In the Egyptian mythology, every pharaoh is a semi-god until he dies. At that time, that pharaoh becomes a full god. Rameses wanted to be a full god while he was alive but, he knew he couldn't do that where the people understood the Egyptian religion so, he built a temple and told the soldiers stationed close by to worship him as a god. The soldiers were good little soldiers and did what their boss said. Inside the temple, you'll find a place where you can leave offerings for 3 of the Egyptian gods AND when you do that, you'll in the process leave an offering for Rameses. Interestingly, Rameses suffered from a number of dental abcesses and had arteriosclerosis according to a short blurb I saw on his mummy at the Egyptian museum in Cairo but, this didn't stop him from believing he was a god. The man must have had one heck of an ego.

Another fascinating story about the 2 temples at Abu Simbel is the international efforts to save them. The Egyptian government back in the 60's decided to build a new hydroelectric dam in Aswan that would supply Egypt with most of the electricity it needed. The downside of this project is that it would flood a large area of land that had a number of important temples in it including Abu Simbel. Various proposals were considered on how to save the temples at Abu Simbel. The proposal that was accepted was where the 2 temples would be cut up and moved further inland to a place where they would be on land that was 186 feet higher than the original site. The Rameses temple alone was cut into 35,000 massive blocks. Then, they moved it to the new site and put it back together again. To ensure people saw it in its proper setting, they built a fake mountain/hill around it which is what you see in the picture. The project was a great success, the temples at Abu Simbel were saved and they remain one of the must see sites in Egypt.