Abu Simbel · A Sun That Comes In Twice a Year

Abu Simbel was cut into the sandstone cliff by order of Ramesses II, its facade carrying four seated statues twenty metres high. Deep inside, in the sanctuary, four gods sit; on only two days a year — the king’s birthday and the day of his coronation — the sun travels sixty metres down the passage and falls on three of them, all but the god of the underworld.

In the 1960s the rising water of the Aswan High Dam would have drowned it, so the United Nations had the whole cliff cut into blocks, lifted and rebuilt; the dates on which the sun reaches inside have therefore shifted by one day.

The heritage field counts this as a success, but no longer a perfect one.

Historical Mysteries / Aswan · Egypt / 1264 BC