ABU SIMBEL

This article appears in Volume V01, Page 81 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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ABU SIMBEL , orIPSAMBUL, the name of a group of temples of Rameses II. (c. 1250 B.c.) in

Nubia

NUBIA

, on the left bank of the Nile, 56 m. by river S. of Korosko. They are hewn in the cliffs at the riverside, at a point where the sandstone hills on the west reach the Nile and form the southern boundary of a wider portion of the generally barren valley. The temples are three in number. The principal temple, probably the greatest and most imposing of all rock-hewn monuments, was discovered by Burckhardt in 1812 and opened by Belzoni in 1817. (The front has been cleared several times, most recently in 1892, but the sand is always pressing forward from the north end.) The hillside was recessed to form the facade, backed against which four immense seated colossi of the king, in pairs on either side of the entrance, rise from a platform or forecourt reached from the river by a flight of steps. The colossi are no less than 65 ft. in height, of nobly placid design, and are accompanied by smaller figures of Rameses' queen and their sons and daughters; behind and over them is the cornice, with the dedication below in a line of huge hieroglyphs; and a long row of apes,

standing

STANDING

in adoration of the rising sun above. The temple is dedicated primarily to the solar gods Amenre of Thebes and Raharakht of

Heliopolis

HELIOPOLIS

, the true sun god; it is oriented to the

east

EAST
EAST, ALFRED (1849- )

so that the rays of the sun in the early morning penetrate the whole length of two

great

GREAT

halls to the innermost sanctuary and fall upon the central figures of Amenre and Rameses, which are there enthroned with Ptah of Memphis and Raharakht on either side. The interior of the temple is decorated with coloured sculpture of fine workmanship and in good preservation; the scenes are more than usually interesting; some are of religious import (a'mongst them Rameses as king making offerings to himself as god), others illustrate war in Syria, Libya and Ethiopia: another

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

depicts the events of the famous battle with the Hittites and their allies at Kadesh, in which Rameses saved the Egyptian camp and army by his personal valour. Historical stelae of the same reign are engraved inside and outside the temple; the most interesting is that recording the

marriage

MARRIAGE

with a Hittite princess in the 34th year. Not the least important feature of the temple be-longs to a later age, when some Greek, Carian and Phoenician
soldiers of one of the kings named Psammetichus (apparently Psammetichus II., 594589 B.C.) inscribed their names upon the two southern colossi, doubtless the only ones then clear of sand. These graffiti are of the highest value for the early history of the alphabet, and as proving the presence of Greek mercenaries in the Egyptian armies of the period. The upper part of the second colossus (from the south) has fallen; the third was re-paired by Sethos II. not many years after the completion of the temple. This

great

GREAT

temple was wholly rock-cut, and is now threatened by

gradual

GRADUAL (Med. Lat. gradualis, of or belonging to steps or degrees; gradus, step)

ruin by sliding on the planes of stratification. A small temple, immediately to the south of the first, is believed to have had a built antechamber: it is the earliest known example of a "

birth

BIRTH (a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages from the root of the verb " to bear ")

chapel," such as was usually attached to Ptolemaic temples for the accommodation of the divine mother-consort and her son. The third and northernmost temple, separated from the others by a ravine, is on a large scale; the colossi of the facade are six in number and 33 ft. high, representing Rameses and his queen Nefrere, who dedicated the temple to the goddess Hathor. The whole group forms a singular monument of Rameses' unbounded

pride

PRIDE, THOMAS (d. 1658)

and self-glorification.
See EGYPT; J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records, -Egypt, vol. iii. pp. 124 et seq., esp. 212; "The Temples of Lower

Nubia

NUBIA

," in the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, October 1906. (F. LL. G.)

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