Tagged “nubia”
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
Pyramids of Meroë
A powerful, literate African kingdom raised nearly 200 steep-sided pyramids in the Nubian desert over six centuries — so why does this vast royal necropolis remain so little known next to Egypt's, and what does it really take to understand how the Kushites built, and why they built, on this scale?
c. 300 BCE - 350 CE · Meroë (Bagrawiyah), River Nile State, SudanAdded July 2026