Sun Festival at Abu Simbel

Light in the sanctuary

The Great Temple at Abu Simbel was carved out of the mountainside in the thirteenth century BC, in the reign of Ramesses II, whose colossal figures guard its entrance. On two mornings a year the first rays of the sun travel along the temple’s axis into the Holy of Holies at its rear. There, four seated statues face the entrance: Ramesses II himself, the sun god Ra-Horakhty, Amun and Ptah. The light reaches the statues, but not the face of Ptah, who, according to Egyptian press reports, was seen as a god of darkness.

In 2022 Egypt’s ministries of tourism and culture staged an artistic show in front of the temple on the evening of 21 February, after the regular sound and light show, and set up large screens in the forecourt so that the public could watch the alignment the next morning.

A temple moved uphill

The temples of Abu Simbel stand on the western bank of Lake Nasser, about 230 kilometres south-west of Aswan. When the Aswan High Dam was built, the reservoir threatened to submerge them. As part of the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, the whole complex was moved in its entirety to higher ground in 1968: the Great Temple now stands 65 metres higher and 208 metres further inland, under an artificial hill. The engineers oriented it so that the rising sun would still reach the sanctuary on the same two occasions each year, allowing a deviation of only five millimetres either way. Abu Simbel is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Nubian Monuments.