Abu Simbel
Abu Simbel
| Considering Ramses’s greatest work, the Abu Simbel temple is a real
wonder of antiquity. The four colossal statues, twenty meters high and completely sculptured in the rock, that represent the pharao seated in the entrance, have become an icon of the Egyptian civilization. Excavated for over sixty meters inside a sand-stone rise, the sanctuary was dedicated to three great Gods, Amon Ra and Ptah, but really it was to worship another God: Ramses himself. The Abu Simbel temple was unlucky. Years after its building it was seriously damaged by an earthquake, that damaged and destroyed pillars and statues, including the whole top part of one of the colossal in the façade. The best part of the damages was repaired, but the architects could do nothing for the enormous statue, of which the pieces were left on the place, where the earthquake had let them fall. The building was completely abandoned some centuries after Ramses’s death and the sand began to bury it until it left uncovered only the head and shoulders of the big statues at the entrance. That was the way in 1813 the Swiss historian Burckhardt found it. It stayed the same for other four years, until the Italian Belzoni, after months and months of work, finally made his way through the sand and walk, first man after thousands of years, inside the sanctuary. The real danger for the temple to which Ramses had delegated the testimony of his power and his divine origin, will come much more later, when the building risked to disappear forever under the flood of water. In 1960, in fact, the Egyptian president Nasser had started the work for the building of the dam in Assuan. This supposed the creation of a great artificial lake, an important project for the country, but that risked to cancel forever some of the most extraordinary testimonies of the ancient civilization of the pharaohs. Among these also Abu Simbel, which in the meantime had become famous all around the world. It was the Unesco that gave the alarm, that became a real rescue campaign that involved 113 Countries, ready to help Egypt with men, money and technology. The project required that the Abu Simbel temple should be taken to pieces and rebuilt 180 meters more in the hinterland after raising the ground 65 meters more than the previous level. The works required five years, over two thousand men, tons of materials and a technological effort with no precedent in the history of archaeology. The blocks were numbered to put them back in the original position, put together again, and the whole temple was rebuilt keeping also its original orientation towards the stars and the new watercourse of the Nile determined by the barrage of Assuan. The landscape was restored, and when the mountain above was built again, the puzzle was finally complete. Ramses himself would not have found any difference. |
