More to Egypt than Pyramids – Introducing Abu Simbel

The pyramids are usually the first thing that comes to mind when picturing Egypt. Stunning as they are, right in the midst of heaving Cairo and teeming with touts the magic can be a little lost by the time you even make it through the gates.
Abu Simbel on the other hand, rising from the banks of the vast Lake Nasser (formed by the creation of the Aswan Dam), retains that sense of seeing something unseen. Of course it still receives its fair share of tourists but the small groups here are a world away from the crowds of Cairo. Most tourists reach here by traversing 280 kilometres of open desert from the city of Aswan.
Just forty kilometres from the Sudanese border, Abu Simbel was built in the 13^th century BC by Ramses II. Though dedicated to the gods Amun-Ra, Ra-Horakhte and Ptah, Ramses II adorned the entrance to the temple with four twenty-metre statues of himself – testimony to the somewhat large ego he reputedly possessed!