Abu Simbel: how two temples were cut into 1,036 blocks and moved uphill to escape the Nile

Architecture · 4 September 2026

Abu Simbel is a pair of temples that Ramesses II had cut into a sandstone cliff on the Nile in Nubia, near Egypt's southern border, around 1264 BC: the Great Temple, fronted by four seated statues of the king 65 feet (20 m) high and running 200 feet (60 m) into the rock, and the smaller temple of his queen Nefertari. Twice a year, in February and October, the rising sun reaches the innermost chamber and lights the statues of the gods and the deified king. Between 1964 and 1968 the temples were sawn into 1,036 blocks of up to 30 tons, lifted 213 feet (65 m) up the cliff and 690 feet (210 m) back from the river, and reassembled inside a concrete dome disguised as a mountain, to keep them above the reservoir of the Aswan High Dam. It was the centrepiece of the first international rescue campaign in archaeology, and it worked: the sun still reaches the sanctuary, one day later than before. Below: the temples and what they were for, the solar alignment, the threat of the dam, the plans that were rejected, and the relocation step by step.

The temples and what they were for

Ramesses II, who reigned for 66 years in the 13th century BC and built more than any other pharaoh, made Abu Simbel as a statement to Nubia, the gold-bearing land to the south that Egypt ruled: anyone coming down the Nile met four images of the king the height of a six-storey building. The Great Temple is dedicated to the state gods Amun, Ra-Horakhty and Ptah and to Ramesses himself as a god; behind the colossi a hall of eight pillars carved as the king, walls of reliefs showing the battle of Kadesh against the Hittites, and then a second hall and the sanctuary with four seated statues. The Small Temple, 330 feet (100 m) away, is for Hathor and Nefertari, with six standing colossi of the king and queen at equal height, a rare honour. Both were carved from the top down into the living rock, like Petra later. Sand buried them after the end of Egyptian rule; the Swiss traveller Burckhardt saw the heads in 1813 and Giovanni Belzoni dug out the entrance in 1817. Abu Simbel overview.

The sun in the sanctuary

The temple's axis was set so that on two days a year the sun rising over the Nile shines straight down the 200-foot corridor of halls and lights three of the four statues in the sanctuary: Amun, Ra-Horakhty and Ramesses; Ptah, god of the underworld, stays in shadow. The dates were originally about 21 February and 21 October, probably the king's birthday and coronation day, although no text confirms which. The alignment was preserved in the move, but because the whole temple was shifted, the sun now enters on 22 February and 22 October, a day later; Egypt holds a festival on those mornings.

The threat: the Aswan High Dam

Egypt began the High Dam in 1960 to control the Nile flood and generate power; its reservoir, Lake Nasser, would rise 200 feet and flood Nubia for 300 miles, drowning two dozen ancient temples and the villages of 100,000 Nubians. In 1959 Egypt and Sudan asked UNESCO for help, and in 1960 it launched the Nubian Salvage Campaign, the first time the world had been asked to pay to save another country's monuments. Fifty countries contributed about 80 million dollars over twenty years; the Temple of Dendur went to New York, Debod to Madrid, Taffeh to Leiden and Ellesyia to Turin as thanks. Abu Simbel was the largest and most famous problem, and by 1963 the water was two years away.

The plans that were rejected

• A dam in front of the temples, proposed by France, to hold back the lake with the temples in a pit below the water level: rejected for cost and for the risk of seepage into the sandstone.
• Lifting the temples whole on hydraulic jacks inside a concrete box, the Italian plan of 1961: each temple weighed some 250,000 tons and the jacks would have had to raise them 200 feet an inch at a time; too expensive and untested.
• Floating them on pontoons as the lake rose, and other proposals; rejected.
• Cutting them into blocks, the Swedish plan by the engineering firm VBB, adopted in 1963: cheaper, proven in principle by the moving of smaller temples, and reversible in the sense that the pieces could be put back exactly.

The relocation, step by step

1. A cofferdam, 1964: a wall of sand and rock 1,200 feet long was built between the temples and the river to hold back the rising lake while the work went on.
2. Removing the mountain: about 300,000 tons of rock above and behind the temples were cut away with explosives and hand tools, leaving the temples as free-standing shells with a thickness of about 2.5 feet (0.8 m) of rock around the carved surfaces.
3. Strengthening the stone: the soft sandstone was injected with synthetic resin so it could be cut without crumbling.
4. Cutting: hand saws and wire saws, never power tools near the carved faces, cut the temples into 807 blocks for the Great Temple and 235 for the Small, plus more than 1,000 blocks of the surrounding rock, each up to 30 tons, with cuts kept to a quarter of an inch (6 mm) and placed where they would be least visible. The faces of the colossi were cut so that the joints ran across the necks and the headdresses, not the eyes.
5. Lifting: cranes lifted each block by steel bars set in resin into drilled holes, onto flatbed trucks, and up to the new site 213 feet above.
6. Reassembly, 1966–1968: on a concrete foundation, the blocks were set in their exact original positions, aligned to the same compass bearing, and the joints filled with sand-coloured mortar; around and over the reassembled temples engineers built two concrete domes, the larger 160 feet in span, to carry the weight of an artificial hill of rock that reproduces the original cliff.
7. Completion: the last block was set on 22 September 1968. About 2,000 people worked on the site; the cost was about 40 million dollars, half paid by Egypt and half by the international campaign; the whole took four and a half years.

Fourteen other Nubian temples were moved by the campaign, including Philae, cut into 40,000 blocks in 1972–1980 and rebuilt on the island of Agilkia, and Kalabsha, Amada, which was moved whole on rails, and Wadi es-Sebua. The Nubian campaign.

What it changed

The Nubian campaign created the idea of world heritage: that a monument in one country is the concern of all, and that saving it can be paid for jointly. The World Heritage Convention of 1972 and the list that followed, with Abu Simbel and the Nubian monuments among the first entries in 1979, came directly out of it, as did the later campaigns for Venice, Borobudur and Angkor. The relocation also set the standard for moving buildings: Abu Simbel is still the largest monument ever cut up and reassembled, and its joints, visible if you look for them, are the honest record of the operation. The Nubians whose villages were flooded were resettled at Kom Ombo and Khashm el-Girba, and their loss is the part of the story the campaign did not repair.

What is in the archive

Abu Simbel and Philae are in the Ancient temples of the world collection beside the other temples of Ramesses II, the Ramesseum, Abydos and his work at Luxor and Karnak. For the other great rock-cut monuments see who built Petra; for the pyramids, how the pyramids were built.

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