In 1257 B.C., Pharaoh Ramses II (1279-13 B.C.) had two temples carved out of solid rock at a site on the west bank of the Nile 280 kms south of Aswan in the land of Nubia and known today as Abu Simbel.
The temple built by Ramses, however, was dedicated to the sun gods Amon-Re and Re-Horakhte. Because of their remote location near the Sudanese border in sourthern Egypt, the temples were unknown until their rediscovery in 1813 by a swiss traveller Burkhart then they were first explored in 1817 by the Italian Egyptologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni.
The rock-cut facade of Ramses' temple represents the front of a pylon in front of which are four colossal seated figures of Ramses. This facade is 40 mts wide, and 30 mts high, while the colossal statues are 20 mts in height. At the top of the pylon, above the cornice, is a row of baboons, who, as Watchers of the Dawn, are shown with their hands raised in adoration of the (rising) sun. The Egyptians believed baboons played a role in helping the sun god Ra defeat the darkness of night and so were believed sacred to the worship of the rising sun.
The actual interior of the temple is inside the cliff in the form of a man-made cave cut out of the living rock.
It consists of a series of halls and rooms extending back a total of 185 feet from the entrance. The long first hall is 54 feet wide and 58 feet deep and has two rows of Osirid statues of Ramses each 30 feet high. Those on the north side are shown wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt, while those on the south wear wearing the Double Crown of Lower Egypt. At the west end of the main hall are three doors, the side ones leading into side chambers, and the central one opening into a room with four square pillars( the pillared hall).From this room a doorway leads to the vestibule, and beyond that is located the innermost shrine(the sanctuary) with seated statues of the gods Ptah, Amun-Ra, the deified Ramses II, and Re-Horakhte.
The most remarkable feature of the site is that the temple is precisely oriented so that twice every year, on 22 February and 22 October, the first rays of the morning sun shine down the entire length of the temple-cave to illuminate the back wall of the innermost shrine(the sanctuary) and the statues of the four gods seated there in exeception of god Ptah(the non solar god).
Precisely this same effect was apparently also fundamental to the design of the artificial cave of Newgrange in Ireland.
With the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, the temples were threatened with submersion under the rising waters of the reservoir (Lake Nassar). Between 1964 and 1966, a project sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Egyptian government disassembled both temples(the great temple of king Ramsses II & the temple of his wife queen Nefertari which had been dedicated the king Ramsses to his beloved wife Nefertari)and reconstructed them on top of the cliff 200 feet above the original site.