Abu Simbel

Ramses II carved two temples into the sandstone cliffs at the southern edge of his empire. The Great Temple, fronted by four colossal statues of the king, honours Amun-Ra, Ra-Horakhty, Ptah and the deified Ramses himself. The smaller temple is dedicated to the goddess Hathor and to his principal queen, Nefertari — one of the few Egyptian temples where a queen's statues are the same size as the king's.

The Great Temple was aligned so that twice a year — around 22 February and 22 October — the rising sun shines deep into the mountain and lights the statues in the innermost sanctuary. Only Ptah, a god linked to the underworld, stays in shadow.

The Aswan High Dam would have drowned the temples under Lake Nasser. In an international campaign led by UNESCO, engineers cut the temples into more than 1,000 blocks, some weighing up to 30 tonnes, and reassembled them on higher ground inside an artificial hill. The rescue inspired the creation of the World Heritage Convention.

Beyond the four colossi, a hall of eight pillars carved as Osiris-figures of Ramses leads into the mountain. Its walls show the Battle of Kadesh in great detail — the Hittite chariots, the Egyptian camp under attack and Ramses charging alone. Side rooms held temple stores, and at the far end sit the four gods of the sanctuary.

The temples now look out over Lake Nasser, formed behind the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s and one of the largest reservoirs in the world, stretching some 500 km into Sudan. Several other Nubian temples rescued from the rising water now stand on its shores and can be visited on lake cruises.