Tour Description
An interesting thing, which shows the skill of the ancient Egyptian engineers is that twice a year on Feb. and October 21st, the anniversaries of the king’s birthday and coronation respectively, the sun would shine for 20 minutes right through the main temple into the innner sanctuary (Holiest of holies), where it would light up three out of the four statues there. The fourth statue of Ptah, the god of darkness, would remain unlit. While the groups of engineers and experts made every effort to preserve the necessary orientation, at the new site, to facilitate the temple complex’s famous solar event, the ambitious relocation project caused the even dates to shift by one day –from Feb 21 and Oct 21 to Feb 22 and Oct 22. By most accounts, this was a small price to pay to preserve one of the great monuments of Ancient Egypt. As you are aware Abu Simbel temples have been saved and relocated, due to the construction of Aswan High Dam that created the artifical Nasser Lake.
