Abu Simbel summary

Learn about the ruins of two temples built by Ramses II in the 13th century BCE at Abu Simbel

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Abu Simbel.

Sandstone figures of Ramses II in front of the main temple at Abu Simbel near Aswān, Egypt.

Abu Simbel, Site of two temples built by Ramses II in the 13th century bce. The area, at the southern frontier of pharaonic Egypt, lies near the present-day border between Egypt and Sudan. The temples were unknown to the outside world until their rediscovery in 1813. The larger temple displays four 66-ft (20-m) seated figures of Ramses; the smaller was dedicated to Queen Nefertari. When the reservoir created by building the Aswan High Dam threatened to submerge the site in the early 1960s, an international team disassembled both temples and reconstructed them 200 ft (60 m) above their previous site.

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Egypt, country located in the northeastern corner of Africa. Egypt’s heartland, the Nile River valley and delta, was the home of one of the principal civilizations of the ancient Middle East and, like Mesopotamia farther east, was the site of one of the world’s earliest urban and literate

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World Heritage site, any of various areas or objects inscribed on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List. The sites are designated as having “outstanding universal value” under the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural

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Africa, the second largest continent (after Asia), covering about one-fifth of the total land surface of Earth. The continent is bounded on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, on the north by the Mediterranean Sea, on the east by the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and on the south by the mingling waters