Egypt Rediscovered

ABU SIMBEL, Egypt — You really haven’t seen Egypt if you haven’t seen this part of Egypt,” our guide said.

I usually wince at such comments, for many times I have been to places that were overhyped.

I had been to Egypt twice before — to Cairo, where each time I had stood in awe before the Pyramids and delighted in the splendors of the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. For years, I told friends that was pretty much what there was to see in Egypt — see the Pyramids and that magnificent museum and then move on to another destination.

How wrong I was, and how right was that Abercrombie & Kent Egyptologist guide.

“How could I have been so foolish to miss this until now?” I asked myself one day, 785 miles south of Cairo, while visiting Abu Simbel, near the Sudanese border in an area where the Egypt of the Pharaohs once stood looking out toward the ancient Kingdom of Nubia.

As I looked up at four colossal sandstone statues of the great Pharaoh Ramses II seated on his throne and wearing his double crown, signifying reign over both Upper and Lower Egypt, I felt the same as when I first gazed upon such wonders as the Great Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal and the effigies of Easter Island.

The four 66-foot-tall figures of Egypt’s longest-reigning — 67 years — Pharaoh are set against a 108-foot-high facade recessed into the side of a cliff, a marvel of ancient Egyptian art that rivals the Pyramids.

Two of these nearly seven-story-tall statues stand on each side of the entrance to the larger of the two great temples alongside each other. They are amazingly well preserved, especially the heads, although the head and part of the upper torso of the statue on the left side as you enter the main temple are at its feet, the result of a 27 B.C. earthquake.

The Great Temple of Abu Simbel, also known as the Temple of Ramses II, and the smaller one (there’s really nothing small about it) the Temple of Hathor, also known as the Temple of Queen Nefertari, were erected in the 13th century B.C. to impress and intimidate visitors from southern Africa with this display of the grandeur of Egypt and the greatness of Ramses II.

IMPRESSIVE GUIDES

The guides certainly impress me. Until this trip, I knew next to nothing about the temples, but our highly qualified, professional A&K; guide seemed to know all there is to know, and she had a gift for making history come alive. She made it a joy to learn new things, which greatly enhances the experience of visiting this mysterious and fascinating land.

A good guide makes for a good trip, but a great guide makes for an unforgettable one. My previous Abercrombie & Kent guides have been outstanding, but it is because of this great guide that when I saw Ramses II, I instantly recognized his double crown and knew what it signified.

Good information from the guide also meant that I understood what I was seeing in the figures that stood beneath, in front of and above the four statues of Ramses II and as I walked about the temple interior.

A few steps away, the entrance to the smaller temple is flanked by six (three on each side) alternating statues of Ramses II and his favorite wife (out of a collection of perhaps 200) Queen Nefertari, who is portrayed as the goddess Hathor. The statues stand 35 feet high.

During the reign of Ramses II, these temples were places of worship, but they were abandoned not long afterward and eventually were obscured by sand. They were forgotten and remained buried for centuries, until they were discovered in 1813 by a Swiss explorer who noticed their heads sticking above the sand. It took four years for the sand to be cleared away sufficiently to enable entry into the temples.

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