Illustration
In the sanctuary inside the Temple of Ramesses II (Great Temple) at Abu Simbel are rock-cut sculptures of four seated figures: Ra-Horakhty, the deified king Ramesses, and the gods Amun Ra and Ptah. The architects of ancient Egypt in the 13th century BCE aligned the temple so that on October 22 and February 22, the sun’s rays enter into the sanctuary to illuminate the sculptures on the wall, except for the statue of Ptah, the god associated with the underworld, which remains in shadow.
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Original image by Carole Raddato. Uploaded by Carole Raddato, published on 15 March 2022. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
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Cite This Work
APA Style
Raddato, C. (2022, March 15). Abu Simbel, Sanctuary of the Temple of Ramesses II. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/image/15453/abu-simbel-sanctuary-of-the-temple-of-ramesses-ii/
Chicago Style
Raddato, Carole. "Abu Simbel, Sanctuary of the Temple of Ramesses II." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified March 15, 2022. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/15453/abu-simbel-sanctuary-of-the-temple-of-ramesses-ii/.
MLA Style
Raddato, Carole. "Abu Simbel, Sanctuary of the Temple of Ramesses II." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 15 Mar 2022. Web. 22 Feb 2025.
