Valley of the Kings

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This Valley is on the west bank of the river Nile opposite the ancient city of Thebes (modern Luxor). The Valley of the Kings consists of two valleys, known as the East Valley and the West Valley, both of which were used for the burial of royalty and important nobles in ancient times. Altogether, the Valley of the Kings contains at least 63 tombs.

Tombs in the Valley were cut into the rock to create an internal space with corridors and chambers. These were then decorated with wall paintings and filled with the objects that the king would need in the afterlife. The construction of the tombs was undertaken by construction and craft workers from the nearby village of Deir el-Medina.

The kings still depend on the pyramids as a tombs until the end of the middle kingdom, as the pyramids of King Djoser. After that ,exactly in the new kingdom They took there tombs which was rock-cut tombs. The Valley of the Kings is very interesting, mostly because many pharaohs were secretly buried here to be hidden from tomb robbers.

The Valley of the Kings is famous for its royal tombs. These beautifully painted tombs have been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. For over a thousand years, the kings, queens and nobles of the New Kingdom (1550-1070 B.C.) were buried in the Theban necro p o l i s e s, the world’s most magnificent burial g rounds. The tombs were cut into the limestone rock in a remote wadi (a dry river valley) on the west side of the Nile, opposite the present-day city of Luxor.

Their walls were painted and sculpted with magnificent murals depicting scenes of daily life and the Land of the Gods. The chambers w e re filled with tre a s u res — everything from furn i t u re to f o od, statues, boats and jewels, which a person needed to sustain life into etern i t y. The royals hoped to find re f u g e f rom robbers and their enemies, who caused such havoc in the pyramid tombs of their predecessors.

The Valley of the Kings is located across the Nile fro m Thebes, the capital of Egypt during the New Kingdom. The Theban Peak, shaped like a pyramid, can be seen high above the burial grounds. This is perhaps one of the re a s o n s the pharaohs chose this remote location. The valley contains 62 known tombs, 24 of which are royal burials.

More about Valley of the kings

Your guide to Valley of the kings

Famous Egyptians Pharaohs

Egypt Invasions

Saqqara

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Funerary area in Egypt, 20 km southern of Cairo and Giza. The full area covers about 7 km.

In south-west of Cairo About 27km, is also the setting for the pyramids of Unas, the mastabas of Mereruka, Ti and Ptahotep. Here, too, is the Serapeum where the sacred Apis bulls were entombed, each in a massive sarcophagus, in cavernous underground galleries. Adjoining Saqqara is Memphis, site of the capital established by Mena (or Narmer) who united Upper and Lower Egypt into one Kingdom and founded the First Dynasty about 3400 B.C.A gigantic statue of Ramses II, and the exquisite Alabaster Sphinx are of particular note.

Still, it maintained an important role for minor burials and cult ceremonies for more than 3,000 years, till the Ptolemaic (Greek) and Roman periods of the ancient Egypt.

Recently, a mixed Egyptian-Australian research team has found in the ancient Saqqara necropolis a mud brick tomb dated back more than 4,000 years, as the country’s top antiquities official announced on Monday. “The tomb, which was found by an Egyptian-Australian mission, belonged to Ka-Hay, who kept divine records, and his wife,” said Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s antiquities chief.

The diggers discovered five wooden statues representing the tomb’s owner and his wife in a blockout at the tomb’s forefront. “Among the wooden figures was a unique double statue of a seated Ka-Hay and his wife,” said Hawass. The researchers also discovered two offering tables and a wooden false door.

The tomb was located close to the renowned Step Pyramid of King Djoser (2667-2648 BC) (photo), thought to be Egypt’s oldest pyramid, inside the necropolis of King Teti, a graveyard harboring a lot of burial chambers and false doors, which in the religion of the ancient Egypt were the places through which the souls of the dead would leave this world. “The necropolis where the mud brick tomb was found is built alongside the collapsed pyramid of Teti, who ruled during ancient Egypt’s 6th dynasty, more than 4,300 years ago. The Ka-Hay tomb dates back to the late 5th or early 6th dynasty,” Hawass said.

Note:

The excavations of Saqqara belongs to mainly to this century, and the mortuary complex around the Step Pyramid of Zoser was not blessed from the sand until 1924. Saqqara remains the important centre for Egyptian archaeology right now, and many tombs are set undiscovered.

Saqqara, exclude for the Step Pyramid, was buried in sand until the middle of 19th century, when the great French Egyptologist (Auguste Mariette) revealed the Serapeum. Since then, it has been a gradual work of rediscovery, the Step Pyramid’s great funerary complex was not discovered until 1924 and it is still being reinstated. The famous French architect, Jean Philippe Lauer, who started out work here in 1926, was involved in its renovation for an incredible 75 years until his dying in 2001. In 2006 and 2007, a string of new discoveries got international media care; these included the mummified stays of 3 royal dental practitioners a doctor and a Pharaonic butler.

Medinet Habu

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The Medinet Habu was a sacred site long before Ramses III started building there. It was a revered part of the creation myth and was believed to be where the Ogdoad (eight primeval gods) placed the egg from which the sun came, but Ramses’ works made it the most beautiful of the Theban sites. The temple, which is of a similar design to the Ramesseum, is second in size only to Karnak but has a grace and symmetry that Karnak lacks.

Medinet Habu, sky view

It was not just a mortuary temple as it incorporated Ramses’ palace where he lodged on his visits to Thebes, his pleasure rooms where he entertained his harem, his government offices, a sacred lake and a Nilometer which measured the rise and fall of the river. The outer walls of the temple are also finely decorated and a mud-brick wall surrounds the whole complex.

Temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu:

Ramses III reigned Egypt for 31 years (1184 –1153 BC) and like many pharaohs before him was a prodigious builder. As well as greatly enlarging the Medinet Habu (Habu’s City) to become his mortuary palace, he built the wonderful Osiris courtyard in Karnak temple.

Temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu

Before entering the mortuary temple visitors pass under the windowed gateway where Ramses had his pleasure rooms and enter an open space which was once a magnificent garden.

Facing, is the deeply carved first pylon, which shows Ramses fighting imaginary battles against the enemies of Egypt but on the inner walls are scenes of battles that he really did fight and win. To the right of the gateway is the temple that Hatshepsut built and on the left is the temple of the Divine Adoratrix, which was added at a later date.

From the temple of Ramses III

The temple has a chequered history. Apart from being plastered over with mud and turned into a Coptic monastery, when the Egyptian economy began to crumble it was the scene of a labour demonstration.

Workers from Deir el Medina gathered there when they went on strike over their lack of pay and poor conditions of employment. Was this the first organised labour dispute? When social order broke down even further, gangs of Libyan bandits roamed the area and when they were attacked, the entire population of Deir el Medina abandoned their town and took refuge within the temple walls.

Recommended References about Medinet Habu:

Medinet Habu Graffiti Facsimiles

The Excavation of Medinet Habu

Famous Egyptians Pharaohs

Egypt Invasions

Luxor East Bank, Amun Temple (Karnak temple)

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The Amun temple of Karnak (on the eastern bank of the Nile, near the modern town of Luxor in Middle Egypt) is the largest ancient Egyptian temple that can still be vis­ited today. Around 2.000 BC, this was the site of only a modest temple, but the next twenty centuries saw it enlarged and embellished without end.

The last major exten­sion came in the 4th century BC, when a new, massive entrance building was con­structed: the 1 st pylon. This was incorporated into a mud-brick enclosure wall, 13 me­ters across at its base, over 20 meters high.1 It defined henceforward the perimeter of the Amun precinct, roughly 500 x 600 meters: an area of 30 hectares (75 acres).

For orientating oneself in this huge complex, its ten monumental gateway buildings or pylons offer a convenient means of reference (see the plan on the next page). Their modern numbering however (from 1 st till 10th pylon) is derived from the order in which one would see them during a visit - as we will shortly. It does not reflect the order in which they were constructed.

It was customary to don the access road to a temple with a double row of sphinxes. The various temples of Thebes once were connected by a network of procession roads, fitted with a total of more than 1200 sphinxes: each almost 2 meters long, on a 1.5 meters high pedestal of stone.

A sphinx is a compound creature: it has the body of a lion, with the head of a man,4 or - less often - of a ram or a falcon. The sphinx with a man’s head is a manifestation of the king. It articulates the notion that the king possesses the might and power of a lion. The sphinxes in front of the Amun temple of Karnak have a ram’s head. The ram was a manifestation of the god Amun. In the ram-sphinx, the being of the king is fused with that of the god Amun.

Related articles:

Famous Egyptians Pharaohs

Egypt Invasions

Luxor

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When you travel over the Nile, Luxor is your about likely goal. As well as everybody else's. If there were no tourists, maybe there wouldn't be a Luxor any longer. Everyone here works with guiding, handcrafts, hotels, restaurants or whatever. And if you thinking you had experienced hustling before, waiting until you get to Luxor.

Luxor, the ancient Thebes, is one ot the famous scenes of exceptional standing all over the world. Our location on the so-called "West Bank", the western shores of the river Nile, enables you to reach the most important sightseeing sites without time wasting detours or crossings of the Nile: the valley of the kings, the valley od the queens, the noble tombs, the Ramesseum, the temple of queen Hatshepsut, and many interesting places more.

City of Luxor

The distance to the Nile, the worldwide longest river, is only some metres, and you live - surrounded by green agricultural areas - on the outskirt of a typical Egyptian village.

Luxor the world’s greatest open air museum as has often been called, as indeed it is and much more. The number and preservation of the monuments in the Luxor area are unparalleled anywhere else in the world. Actually, what most people think of as Luxor is really three different areas, consisting of the City of Luxor on the East side of the Nile, the town of Karnak just north of Luxor and Thebes, which the ancient Egyptians called Waset, which is on the west side of the Nile across from Luxor.

To say that the Luxor area is a major attraction for tourists in Egypt would be an understatement. It has been a tourist destination since the beginning of tourism.

Even in ancient times, during the late Dynasties of the Greek and Roman periods, the area drew tourists, and has been doing so ever since. Today Luxor is well equipped to accommodate tourists with many hotels such as Luxor hotel and in general a tourist industry ready and willing to serve the people from many countries that descend on this area of the Nile Valley every year. Also The tourist can enjoy in Luxor with the Nile cruises and cheap travel.

Luxor monuments (valley of the kings)

The Valley of the Kings (KV) on the West Bank of the Nile in Luxor, Egypt, is one of the best known and most visited archaeological sites in the world, forever associated in collective memory with the discovery of the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922.

The necropolis served for 5 centuries (during the New Kingdom, Dynasties 18, 19, and 20, from 1550 to 1070 BC) as the burial place of ancient Egypt’s pharaohs and other notables. To date, 621 tombs have been found there, together with about 20 “commencements.” Cut deep into the hills and cliffs that define the valley, these tombs range from small, single-chambered holes in the ground to huge complexes of rooms and corridors covering thousands of square meters.

Ancient artisans plastered, carved, and painted their walls and ceilings with scenes and texts describing the royal journey into the after life, the night time journey of the sun, astronomical events, and ceremonies at the royal burial.

Temple of Luxor

In Luxor proper on the East Bankon the Nile, one of the first stops must be the Temple of Luxor built by Amenophis III. Head south on Sharia al-Karnak to reach the temple, which was connected to the Karnak Temple via a long stone processional street called a dromos.

The temple complex at Luxor

Remember:

The most challenging yet relaxing way to enjoy your vacation travel to Luxor from Cairo is to hire a Nile sailboat better knew as a falucca.

Bargain hard with a captain and you can enjoy a comparatively cheap and solitary cruise down the Nile River for a few days of holiday blissfulness.

It can be an uncomfortably cheap falucca rental or a rich, expensive falucca rental... your quality.

It's valuable checking with locals before swim in the Nile as the water sometimes bears nasties such as billharsia, a worm-like sponge that gets into the skin of the host.

Instead, there are lot of buses and trains between the city of Cairo and Luxor, which is where you'll want to stay if you plan vacation travel to the amazing tombs of Tutankhamun and Nefertari in the Valley of the Kings.

Luxor is smaller enough to simply pass to many of the historic places.

There are mountain of local taxis, although cab drivers will charge a small chance if they spot a gullible tourist, in particular if the day is so hot you believe you're going to fade.

Karnak

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Karnak is probably the most famous of the ancient Egyptian reli­gious complexes, also it is the one of the most famous places in the world. Visited every year by thousands of tourists, it has been for decades the focus of careful and painstaking archaeological work that continues to reveal new details on the long evolution of this important sacred site.

Because of the vastness of the remains, of the necessarily dispersed and detailed nature of the archaeological records, and of many ancient pharaohs who unscrupulously demol­ished to the foundations earlier buildings that were in the way of their new plans, following the historical evolution of this temple is not an easy task. At least, not until Elisabeth Blyth wrote this extremely useful book.

The temple of Karnak

The temple of Karnak fully reflects all these events. In the ear­liest years of his reign, before becoming Akhenaten, Amenhotep IV duly completed two monuments that his father had started within the sacred area and added some of his own.

The temple of Karnak

His taste for unconventional forms can be already detected from the extremely scant remains of these buildings, which shared the same damnatio memoriae that be­ fell their founder. They were so thoroughly destroyed-their stones were re-used as filling of later monuments-that we only have a faint and incomplete idea of their original position, outline, and size.

Karnak temple

After the Amarna (The Capital in the reign of Akhenaten) interlude, the young Tutankhamun set up a large stele at Karnak proclaiming the restoration of the ancient cult, and spent energy and wealth to restore the sacred complex. Most of his achievements, however, were later usurped by Horemheb, who also flattened Akhenaten's buildings and erected three monu­mental pylons in full traditional style. It is clear that, at Karnak, history and architecture proceeded in parallel.

Remember:

One of the country's most recognizable landmarks, Luxor's Karnak Temple, was built so that New Year concurred with the midwinter sun reaching its central sanctuary. An article in New Scientist reports that Some of the temples, some dating back as far as 3000 years, would have been exactly adjusted so that their people could set agricultural, political and religious calendars by them.

Experts have long been positive hieroglyphs on temple walls describing the 'stretching of the cord' ceremonial - in which a pharaoh marked out the temple's properties with string - have inferred astronomical aim.

But this research goes a measure further, and presents that each temple was adjusted to its own celestial phenomenon. Links to both solstices and equinoctial points have been found, as good as alignments with the rising of Sirius, the sky's brightest star.

Someone would have had to go to the prospective place during a solar, stellar or lunar event - as we did - to mark out the place that the temple axis should take, tells Juan Belmonte of the Canaries Astrophysical Institute in Tenerife, Spain. For the most significant temples, this may best have been the pharaoh, as the temple drawings display.

Hawara

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Hawara is a cemetery site in the southeastern Fayum region, about 80km south of present day Cairo. It is the burial place of Amenemhat III, the last great king of the 12th dynasty (about 1855-1808 BC). To the south of the pyramid the king constructed a large cult complex (approximately 120 metres by 300 metres), in which the king was worshipped as a god.

Pyramid of Hawara

The complex was most probably built in the second half of his reign, and seems to have been called Ankh-Amenemhat. After some 1500 years, king Amenemhat III was still attested as a god in the Fayum region, especially in Hawara and, during the period of Classical Antiquity, the cult complex of the king came to be known as the “Labyrinth” (Arnold 1980).

The Greek historian Herodotus, who visited the temple in the 5th century BC, described a building complex with three thousand rooms connected by winding passages. Later Strabo visited the temple about 25 BC and also described an amazing building.

The pyramid Amenemhet III at Hawara

Pliny the Elder gives the longest report on the “Labyrinth”, even though he never saw it himself and was probably mixing direct observations from other authors with his own imagination of what he thought a Labyrinth might be. Since Ptolemaic times, especially under the Romans, the complex was used as a quarry and hence has mostly disappeared (Lloyd 1970). In Late Antiquity, the complex was considered as one of the wonders of the world.

The Renaissance stimulated rising interest in Antiquity, and brought back into circulation classical authors such as Herodotus. As a result, once again people became interested in the Egyptian Labyrinth. The scholar Athanasius Kircher produced one of the first pictorial reconstructions, mainly based on the account in Herodotus. At the centre of his architecture drawing, Kircher placed a maze, most likely to have been inspired by Roman labyrinth mosaics, and surrounded it with the twelve courts described by Herodotus

Image of Hawara

Temple of Amenemhat III at Hawara

Around 1840 the original Labyrinth site at Hawara was rediscovered by the Prussian expedition of Richard Lepsius (Lepsius 1849). Lepsius thought that the structures excavated by his team were parts of the temple of King Amenemhat III, but later research showed that they belonged to Roman tombs. Since the expedition of Lepsius, the place came to be known as a findspot for some high quality royal statues. In 1888, Flinders Petrie started to excavate at Hawara. The results of his work on the Labyrinth itself were disappointing for him.

Since Roman times the whole building had been totally destroyed, and he was unable to recover any part of the complex. Sensationally though, he found a series of portrait panel paintings, depicting the local elite in the period of Roman rule (Petrie 1889, 1890). With these findings, he restored to classical art history a field that had been virtually unknown until then.

Books about Hawara

Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara

Demotische Urkunden Aus Hawara

Oriental Institute Hawara Papyri

Famous Egyptians Pharaohs

Egypt Invasions

Aswan

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Aswan is Egypt's sunniest southern city and ancient frontier town located about 81 miles south of Luxor. It has a distinctively African atmosphere. Its ancient Egyptian name was Syene. Small enough to walk around and graced with the most beautiful setting on the Nile, the pace of life is slow and relaxing. Days can be spent strolling up and down the broad Corniche watching the sailboats etch the sky with their tall masts or sitting in floating restaurants listening to Nubian music and eating freshly caught fish.

Aswan ancient quarry landscape

In Aswan the Nile is at its most beautiful, flowing through amber desert and granite rocks, round emerald islands covered in palm groves and tropical plants. Explore the souk, full of the scent and color of spices, perfumes, scarves and baskets. View the spectacular sunsets while having tea on the terrace of the Old Cataract Hotel (named due to the location of the Nile's first cataract located here). Aswan has been a favorite winter resort since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and it's still a perfect place to get away from it all.

Every night Nubian dancers and musicians perform in the Cultural Center, just off the Corniche. Folklore troupes recreate scenes from village life and perform the famous Nubian mock stick-fight dances.

Aswan is a strategic location which currently houses a garrison of the Egyptian army, but which has also seen ancient Egyptian garrisons, as well as that of General Kitchener, Turkish troops of the Ottoman empire and the Romans.

The Nile in Aswan

The city proper lies on the east bank of the Nile. Relax, visit a few mosques, but then prepare for an adventure. The bazaar runs along the Corniche, which continues past the Ferial Gardens and the Nubian Museum, and continues on to the Cemetery, with its forest of cupolas surmounted tombs from the Fatimid period. Just east of the cemetery in the famous area quarries is the gigantic Unfinished Obelisk. Just to the south of this, two Graeco-Roman sarcophagi and an unfinished colossus remain half buried in the sand.

The most obvious is Elephantine Island, which is timeless with artifacts dating from pre-Dynastic times onward. It is the largest island in the area. Just beyond Elephantine is Kitchener's Island (Geziret el-Nabatat). It was named for the British general Haratio Kitchener (185--1916) who was sent to Egypt in 1883 to reorganize the Egyptian army, which he then led against the Sudanese Mahdi. But the island is known for its garden and the exotic plants the Kitchener planted there, and which continue to flourish today.

On the opposite shore (west bank), the cliffs are surmounted by the tomb of a marabut, Qubbet el-Hawwa, who was a local saint. Below are tombs of the local (pharaonic) nobles and dignitaries.

Upriver a bit is the tomb of Mohammed Shah Aga Khan who died in 1957. Known as the Tomb of the Aga Khan, it is beautiful in its simplicity. A road from there leads back to the Coptic Monastery of St Simeon, which was built in the sixth century in honor of Amba Hadra, a local saint.

Just up river a bit, there is also the old Aswan dam, built by the British, which was enlarged, expanded, but unable to control the Nile for irrigation.

Elephantine Temple

The archaeological sites in Aswan (Elephantine) and Abydos (Kom es-Sultan) exhibited the archaeological remains of two of the oldest temples which were connected with later towns. The specific role of these temples concerning the development of the town, the article is dealing with.

Elephantine temple

During the early dynastic times and the old kingdom the sanctuary of Satet in Elephantine was a minor part of the town (Festungsstadt). The huge walls surrounded the island with its factories, living quarters and at least one administrative centre (palace) underlined the strategic importance as a fortified place to protect the southern boarder and serve as a trade station on the way to the south.

Therefore, the development and rebuilding of the site to a real town were mainly directed by military purpose. According to the archaeological report (G. Dreyer, Elephaninte VIII) the temple was a important mystic but not a architectural one up to the 11th dyn.

Books about Aswan

Aswan!

Famous Egyptians Pharaohs

Egypt Invasions

Amarna

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A city can not be easily defined. A broad range of criteria or factors have to be considered when determining whether a place can be deemed a city or not. On a more superficial level a city could be determined based upon such factors as a significant population, commerce and a diverse culture.

Under more intense investigation, these basic factors which determine a city can be evaluated from many different angles, depending on your location and cultural background which would influence a person’s perspective on these definable characteristics. In other words there is no standard international definition of a city. The difficulty of determining a city from a town or village is that typically a city would consist of residential, industrial and business areas, all of which could be located in a town or village depending on necessity.

Vision of Amarna

Also a city typically has hard to define boarders which include suburbs and satellite areas surrounding an urban core. A prime example of this idea is the GTA, Greater Toronto Area, in Ontario. The GTA includes many surrounding large scale cities such as Mississauga and Scarborough and smaller places such as Unionville.

That brings up the idea that because of lack of definitive boarders are all these places whether they are worthy of being a city simply because they are grouped to be within the GTA? This modern day example gives segway into the problems of defining a city of ancient times such as El- Amarna.

Due to the fact that ancient cities would lack many of the modern day populations, commerce and culture it makes it more difficult to determine whether a place should be recognized as a city or a ceremonial centre. Therefore, El-Amarna will have to be investigated more intensely based upon more specific criteria. Based on the following evidence which aims to define and determine what a city is, I believe that the ancient place of El-Amarna is in fact a city.

El Amarna

Many theorists have attempted to determine the criteria of a city but with the many different angles from which to approach this topic there is always room for criticism. V. Gordon Childe determined a top ten list of criteria to be used when defining a city. El- Amarna is a place which can be proven as a city through the use of the suggested criteria from Childe’s defining list. El- Amana is a city located on a flat stretch of land beside the Nile River.

A basic criterion for early settlers was to develop a settlement near a water resource such as the Nile River because it is useful for food, transportation and trade. The ruler of this time in the New Kingdom was Akhenaten. He was a pharaoh who despite his short 25-30 year reign drastically changed the city.

Books about Amarna

The Amarna Scholarly Tablets

New Kingdom Amarna Period

The Tell El Amarna Period

More about King Akhenaten

Abydos

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Abydos is located on the Nile River, and archeologists have studied it since the end of the nineteenth century. Abydos lost importance with the rise of Christianity, and the temples and tombs decayed and sank in the sands.

Map from Abydos to Edfu

Some excavations have revealed the disease and deformity people suffered. These deformities may indicate an environmental hazard.

Childhood malnutrition was frequent. Men averaged 5 feet, 5 inches, and women 5 feet, 1 inch.

Temple of Seti-I at Abydos

Both a young woman’s and a newborn’s remains found in the early cemetery also revealed congenital bone disease. She had no permanent second teeth, fused bones in her feet, and only 23 instead of 24 vertebrae. A woman nearby had an extra set of ribs.

The earliest cemeteries date between 3850 and 2150 B.C. Archeologists believe that Abydos (c.2920-2649 B.C) had a ritual processional route along which priests placed offerings at the royal tombs.

Inside the temple of Seti I

Royal tombs in the area were about 3200 square feet and were enclosed by walls, generally 36 feet high and 16feet thick, covered with whitewash. One royal tomb contained ivory and bone tags that labeled the food, jars, and cloth left in the tomb.

Thousands of people were buried in the more ordinary cemeteries.

In 1991, the remains of 14 ancient boats (c 2950-2775 B.C) were found buried in the sand. They are the earliest wooden boats to survive anywhere.

The boards were held together with woven straps, and grass and reeds were stuffed between the planks to seal the seams.

The 14 wooden boats discovered within one of the royal tomb enclosures averaged 75 feet long and were encased in 2-foot-thick whitewashed mud brick structures. The boats were filled with brick. Pots were buried with the boats.

Books about Abydos:

Abydos

El Amrah and Abydos, 1899-1901

Related pages:

Famous Egyptians Pharaohs

Egypt Invasions

Abu Simbel

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Abu Simbel, the great temple in the world, was built by Ramses II, who ruled for 67 years, was the last of the great warrior-pharaohs, living not long before the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt led by Moses.

By this time, imperial power of Egypt has reached its peak and is beginning its decline. To hang on to the respect of his people Ramses II resorts to gigantism and self-glorification, building many structures dedicated to advertising his own glory.

Typical of such over-the-hill empires are the four 82’ colossi of Ramses carved into the facade of his temple above the Nile. “The massive statues lack the refinement of earlier periods, because much is sacrificed to overwhelming size.”.

This temple (note that it is not a tomb) is carved deep into the cliff, with a hypostyle hall lined with atlantids of Ramses. This appears to be the earliest use of columns in human form, though they’ll reappear as caryatids 1000 years later in Greece.

These are reserved columns carved from the living rock. Behind this hypostyle hall is a second hall and the holy of holies, as well as side chapels and depositories for sacred objects. The path from front to back is via a corridor axis, as in the Temple of Hatshepsut. We believe that other discover buildings for Ramses II will appear in the future.

Books about Abu Simbel:

- Abu Simbel

- The Mysteries of Abu Simbel: Ramesses II and the temples of the rising sun