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The Historia Nile cruise terminated in Aswan, setting us up for two remarkable things: the High Aswan Dam and Ramses II's Abu Simbel. Both are modern engineering marvels, while of course the original Abu Simbel was a marvel in its own time.
The Nile was famous for boom and bust downstream with annual flooding - it made for fertile farmland, but was very destructive. The Old Aswan Dam was built between 1898-1902, but wasn't big enough to fully control the Nile, nor meet agriculture and power generation needs.
Egypt attempted to get funding from the US and UK in the 1950s, but were turned down. So they got the Soviets to fund it. It was built in 10 years, with completion in 1970. it's huge: 3.8 km long, 1 km wide, 110 m high, creating Nasser Lake which extends 500 km south into Sudan.
Consequences were that farming could be year round, no more floods (and semi-infinite fresh water allowing desert irrigation) and providing up to half of Egypt's power needs.
It did dislocate up to 100k Nubians and drowned many archeological sites. About 20-25 sites were relocated, including Abu Simbel and Philae. Over 50 countries helped out in the relocation of Abu Simbel.
Lake Nasser started filling in 1964; Abu Simbel was built on low ground by the riverbank. The temple was cut up into 1000 blocks, up to 30 tons each and moved 65m higher and 200m back from the river. You can still see the seams.
Work was completed in 1968. As the last blocks were put in, the original site was fully flooded. This UNESCO documentary tells the tale.
It was quite dramatic to see all this when visiting the dam, driving in the desert to Abu Simbel and seeing all the irrigation/oases along the way enabled by Lake Nasser. The dam dramatically changed Egypt - you don't see such things often.
And then there is Abu Simbel itself. Ramses II was fond of building monuments (see Luxor, Memphis) and populating them with statues of himself. Abu Simbel featured 4 massive statues of Ramses, plus a temple dedicated to Nefertari. the interior is elaborately decorated with statuary and wall art (extolling Ramses' exploits, of course). Part of the idea was to demonstrate dominance over Nubia. It was also oriented so that twice per year sunlight would make it to the Holy of Holies sanctuary inside and illuminate the statues of the gods and pharaoh. Evidently we missed that by about a month.
It was 'discovered' by Europeans in 1813, supposedly when a local boy named something like Abu Simbel showed it to them. It was buried in sand up to the statues lining the top of the monument.
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