Tuesday 17-Mar-2009
After breakfast, I take a quick walk to look at Aswan railway station and take a few pictures. A railway station is always a good place to see life 'in the raw' as the locals experience it but I have an additional interest in how the Egyptians run their railway. Click here to see my (rather technical) pictures.
At ten o'clock, I disembark from 'Zahra' and leave my new friends as we each make our separate way. Mr. Ahmed transfers me to Aswan airport for the flight over Lake Nasser to Abu Simbel, where I am to stay at the Seti Abu Simbel for one night.
Everything goes well and, on the approach to Abu Simbel airport, I even manage to catch a couple of pictures of the huge figures outside the relocated temples. Another Mr. Ahmed meets me and whisks me to the Seti Abu Simbel Hotel. They're very laid back here but also friendly so the place soon grows on me. My room is a comfortable stone-built terraced cottage with a private balcony giving a view of Lake Nasser. It's very peaceful with just the singing of the birds audible. The peace is only rarely broken by the sound of an aircraft landing or taking off and I can cope with that. After all, my flight avoided a three-hour bus journey from Aswan.
I'd complained that Philae had lost the "Spirit of Place" through relocation so you'll not be surprised that I'm uneasy about moving the Temples of Abu Simbel. I think the political imperatives behind the building of the High Aswan Dam and the creation of a huge lake meant that the impact of the loss of so many antiquities was not initially a priority. But the international cultural world was aghast when the extent of the anticipated destruction was understood. For once, the United Nations, acting through UNESCO, acted and managed to raise the money to preserve the more important sites. Would that the United Nations were as effective in dealing with humanitarian threats.
Three schemes for the preservation were looked at: a transparent caisson around the area, jacking up the area until it was above the new water level and moving the temples sideways onto higher ground. The last idea was implemented but sawing a cliff into cubes, hauling it away and sticking the pieces together again with resins might be expected to lose something of the original. I accept that it's probably the best solution in the circumstances. I was originally inclined to title this bit 'The Abu Simbel Theme Park' as the result strikes me as something Walt Disney's 'Imagineers' might have come up with but perhaps that's a bit unkind so I'll settle for 'The Abu Simbel Experience', for it's certainly that. It's impressive enough but I found myself thinking about the logistic problems which had to be solved by twentieth century engineers rather than marvelling at how the original builders managed it at all.
A dual carriageway leads right up to the entrance, then visitors have to walk. As you enter the site, you're looking at the rear of two huge artificial hills looking like overgrown noise bunds. A ten minute walk takes you round to the front, to the tomb entrances guarded by the huge statues. It's impressive but, in the afternoon sunlight, not dramatic. Click here for pictures.
All Egyptian temples had a dual role - they were there for spiritual reasons but also as totems of power. Pharaohs asserted their legitimacy to wield power by suggesting their lineage extended back to the Gods. But at Abu Simbel Ramses had a specific message for the Nubian people of the south that his Egyptian armies were invincible. The huge statues faced Nubia and served as a permanent reminder of the power of the Pharaoh. Of course, today Nubia is part of modern Egypt and the statues now only survey the stone theatre-style seats provided for the 'Sound and Light' show.
Staying overnight at the Seti Abu Simbel Hotel gave me the opportunity to return in the evening for the 'Sound and Light' show, so Mr. Ahmed arranged to pick me up at 5.30 p.m. for the 6.00 p.m. show. I walked from the entrance to the seats to find around 100 mainly French visitors already seated. They were all in one half of the seats and I realised only half of the seats had jack points for headphones giving sound tracks in different languages. The seats in my half of the theatre had blanking plates where the jack points should be. So that meant the main show would be in English. A lot more people arrived after me until there were around two hundred people present when the show started.
The story briefly told the tale of the Nile over the ages and the way the Nile was finally tamed by the High Dam. There were lighting effects on the statues, obviously, but a lot was done by lasers projecting images, sometimes simply animated, onto the face of the cliffs.
One unintended effect amused me. As we waited for the show to start, two dogs wandered around. They stayed for the start of the show then purposefully moved away. The one re-appeared a little later in silhouette in the distance against the almost-dark sky and, for a while, punctuated the soundtrack with his howling. Two intentional effects I did like were:
At one point, the sun is supposed to shine directly into the entrance of the main tomb. Whilst waiting for the show to begin, I'd noticed they'd placed shiny metal doors in front of the tomb doors. At the time, I thought it was for overnight security but, in fact, it was to serve as a reflector so that, at the appropriate moment, the door glowed brilliant white, like a special effect from 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'.
The other effect I found impressive was when a number of white lasers mounted at the top of the main temple cliff sent a fan of light upwards into the dark sky to represent the sunrise.
When the presentation had finished, they left the lighting of the statues on, creating harsh light and shade effects which were quite dramatic. As we were all leaving, visitors for the second performance of the night were arriving and they all seemed to be Japanese. As Mr. Ahmed took me back to the hotel, he explained that they often have around 500 visitors a night. Pictures from the evening visit to Abu Simbel.
