Situated just 43 km from the Sudanese border, this small Nubian town of 7,000 people has two colossal temples as its claim to fame – the monumental temple of Ramses II and the smaller one dedicated to his wife Nefetari, constructed in 1250 BC. 

What is incredulous about this temple, yet very much true, is that it was moved.  Entirely. Its current location is not the original site.

When Egypt decided to build the Aswan dam which, for a long time was the biggest dam in the world, the water behind the dam rose to become Lake Nasser. Unfortunately, someone didn’t think that King Ramses II and his beautiful wife would end up buried under water.

So in the late 60s, with the water levels of the lake rising fast due to the completion of the dam, they decided to move the entire temple with the mountain to a location 210 meters further inland and 65 meters higher up. This ensured that the temples would survive the man-made threat.  And so the incredibly delicate engineering process began by literally cutting up by hand and machine the entire mountain, meticulously numbering the blocks and reassembling them on safer higher grounds. Kind of like playing Lego!  The UNESCO financed project was completed in 1968.

The story goes that Ramses II loved himself. Loved himself a lot.  After all he dedicated four big statues to himself, positioned at an entry point to the kingdom, to scare of intruders. And when you enter the chambers inside the temple, you will find more statues of him.  He even went as far as dedicating a smaller temple to his wife Nefetari, which is adjacent to him, yet out of the six statues in her temple, four are of him!

And to top it all, he built her temple first.  Not because he was selfless, but because he used her temple as a test ground for his much larger temple. Who needs such love?

Before you exit the grounds, don’t overlook the visitor centre that has some amazing photos and video on how they disassembled the two temples and then reassembled them further inland.

Part of me feels that that is still the most amazing part of this Ramses II saga!

Follow Bojan’s travel reviews on his blog www.gowithbo.info