Everything started in 1244 B.C when Ramses the great ordered to commemorate his legacy and honor the many gods of the sun and his wife Nefertiti by constructing what is known today as Abu Simbel Temple in the deep south of Egypt where it stayed for the next thousands of years until the temple need to be relocated before being destroyed by the sudden rise of the Nile water levels due to an idiotic human error is known as the Aswan High Dam.
In the mid-1950s, the Egyptian government decided to build a dam in the city of Aswan in the hopes of controlling the Nile floods and generating Electricity which led to the rise of the water level in lake Nasser and submerging priceless monuments around it such as the Abu Simbel Temple. In 1959, the Egyptian Government sends a request the Unesco for help in rescuing Abu Simbel, and in 1960, the world showed its true colors as an international fund-raising for the rescue operation began and a Swedish company by the name”Vattenbyggnadsbyrån” came up with a complex matter of how the temples could be saved.
The temple was carved into a cliff so they were peeled away and then cut into blocks using power saws, each block weigh between 20 to 30 tons, then moved to a different location and assembled together like a game of logos using drilled holes, reinforcement bars into an artificial cliff resembling the original on a platform of cement & steel and surrounded by an artificial stone mountain.
This operation took four years from 1964-1968 and cost 300 million dollars in today’s value. The new site was 65 m high and 200m further inland and was precisely reconstructed to illuminate the sun gods’ sanctums like Amon-Re and Re-Horakhty in February and October during certain hours in the spring and autumn using the sun rays. The entire complex was declared as a Unesco world heritage site in 1979.
The two temples of Abu Simbel one of the most famous landmarks in the world, so you can explore it through our breathtaking Egypt holiday tours from the UK, or Nile river cruises to witness the ancient Egyptian attractions through the heart of Egypt.
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Egypt Tours Portal prides itself on being the best travel agency in Egypt as proven by our numerous positive reviews.
This review is a late, but I had to provide some feedback. My brother and I went on vacation in October 2022 and booked with Egypt Tours Portal. With on-line sc...Read More
My fiancé and I booked a private 5 day tour of Egypt with ETP starting in Cairo followed by Aswan, Abu Simbel and Luxor. We just got home and continue to talk ...Read More
This was the trip of a lifetime that I was able to have with my eldest son - an absolutely amazing experience. To be able to actually see the places and artifac...Read More
Highly recommend this tour company!!! Our guides, Moses, Mahmoud, Magred and Mohamed were exceptional, their knowledge of the history is more that accurate, the...Read More
Egypt Tours Portal is an excellent company to use to arrange your visit to Egypt. They work with phenomenal guides (we had Mahmoud Nour in Upper Egypt and Mohse...Read More
It was an absolutely amazing trip where we saw some of the most historical and beautiful sights in Egypt. Our tour guide Mohamed Elshemei was extremely knowledg...Read More