Tagged “ramesses-ii”
Abu Simbel Temples
How did the builders of the 13th century BCE carve a temple 60 metres into a solid sandstone cliff and align it so that the rising sun would reach the innermost sanctuary on two days each year — and then, three thousand years later, how did modern engineers cut the whole mountain-temple into pieces, lift it 65 metres up a cliff, and reassemble it so faithfully that the sunbeam still arrives?
c. 1264 BCE (19th Dynasty, reign of Ramesses II) · Abu Simbel, Aswan Governorate, EgyptAdded July 2026
Great Hypostyle Hall of Karnak
How did New Kingdom builders raise stone roof-beams weighing on the order of 70 tonnes onto columns 21 metres tall, and roof over a covered hall of some 5,000 square metres — and which of the proposed methods, giant earthen ramps or levering, actually did the heavy lifting?
c. 1290–1220 BCE (19th Dynasty; built by Seti I and Ramesses II, on foundations begun earlier) · Karnak, Luxor, EgyptAdded July 2026
Temple of Seti I at Abydos
How did a temple that produced some of the most exquisitely precise painted relief carving in all of Egypt also become the birthplace of the world's most famous 'out-of-place artifact' — and what is really written on the eroded ceiling beam that so many mistake for a helicopter?
c. 1294–1279 BCE (reign of Seti I), completed under Ramesses II, 19th Dynasty, New Kingdom · Abydos, Sohag Governorate, EgyptAdded July 2026