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Sun to Illuminate Inner
Sanctuary of Pharaoh's
Temple
Lisa Krause
National Geographic News
(February 21, 2001)
For most of the year, the inner sanctum of the main
temple at Abu Simbel is shrouded in darkness.
On two days, traditionally the anniversary of the
birthday and coronation of pharaoh Ramses II, a shaft
of sunlight pierces the gloom, illuminating statues of
gods and the king in the temple's inner sanctum.
On February 22, a day celebrating the king's birthday
Seated between Amen-Re to his
left and Re-Harkhti to his right, the
statue of Ramses II has greeted
the rising sun twice a year for the
past 3,200 years at Abu Simbel.
Photograph by Georg Gerster
and again on October 22, a day celebrating his
coronation, sunlight illuminates seated statues of the
sun gods Re-Horakhte and Amon-Re, as well as a
statue of king Ramses II. The statues sit in the
company of the Theban god of darkness, Ptah (who
remains in the shadows all year).
The spectacle—which has endured more than 3,200 years of Egyptian
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history—draws thousands of tourists to Abu Simbel to watch this
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ancient tribute to a pharaoh whose name is still known up and down
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the Nile Valley for his military exploits and monumental building
Ramses, who ruled Egypt for 66 years from 1270 to 1213 BC (about 50
years after the death of Tutankhamen, better known as King Tut)
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made a name for himself by battling the Hittites and the Syrians,
Egypt's enemies to the north.
To celebrate his victories, Ramses erected monuments up and down
the Nile with records of his achievements. He completed the hypostyle
hall at Karnak (Thebes), and completed the funerary temple of his
father, Seti I, at Luxor on the West Bank of the Nile.
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The main temple at Abu Simbel, which Ramses ordered built near the
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border of Nubia and Upper Egypt, was dedicated to two sun gods,
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Amen-Re and Re-Horakhte. Standing 100 feet (33 meters) tall, the
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temple was carved into an already-standing sandstone mountain on
Four colossal statues of Ramses, each 66 feet (22 meters) high, guard
the entrance to the temple. Rising to the pharaoh's knees are smaller
statues of family members: his mother; favorite wife, Nefertari; and
son, Prince Amonherkhepshef.
Inside the temple, three connected halls extend 185 feet (56 meters)
into the mountain. Images of the king's life and many achievements
adorn the walls. A second temple at Abu Simbel is dedicated to
Nefartari, who appears to have been Ramses' favorite wife.
"Abu Simbel was one of, if not the largest, rock-cut temples in Egypt,"
says Bruce Williams of the Oriental Institute of Chicago, "The rock was
sacred because the Egyptians believed the deity was living inside the
mountain."
Rock-cut temples may have been especially significant in ancient
Egypt because the bulge in the otherwise flat land may have signified
the location where the gods emerged from the Earth, says Williams.
Monumental Move
The Abu Simbel temples do not sit in their original location. Egypt's
growing need for electricity prompted the controversial construction
of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s.The dam created Lake Nasser,
and rising waters flooded a number of important archaeological sites
along the banks of the Nile and displaced thousands of people who
lived in the area.
The rising waters threatened the temples at Abu Simbel. Members of
the United Nations Education, Science, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) orchestrated a massive construction project that moved
the temple back 690 feet to its present site.
Piece by piece, craftsmen cut the temple, and the nearby temple of
Nefertari into massive blocks of sandstone up to thirty tons. Both
temples were carefully reassembled on a new steel and cement
"mountain," safe from the water's edge.
The only result of the move is that the days of illumination have
shifted by one—the illumination used to occur on February and
October 21.
Festival of the Sun
That the days of illumination correspond to actual days in the life of
Ramses is highly unlikely, says Leo Depuydt, an egyptologist at Brown
University.
"The Egyptian calendar was based on 365 days and while it was
precise, the solar calendar is minutely different from year to year,"
says Depuydt, who adds that it is also difficult to know the precise date
of the birth or coronation of Ramses II.
"Regardless of the alignment, if the temple faces East, the sun is going
to shine in it twice a year," says Depuydt, who adds that "excitement is
the key here—people are going to come to see the sun in the temple.
But science is a different matter."