Adjacent to the larger
Sun Temple of Ramses II stands the temple to Hathor, goddess of love and beauty, of his wife
Queen Nefertari. Nefertari was but one of the pharoah's wives, though clearly his favourite. Reputedly of Nubian descent she has been remembered as being very beautiful ('Nefer' in ancient Egyptian meant 'beautiful'). It is no susprise that here she is identified with the cow goddess Hathor, as shown by the cow-horn crown on the depictions outside the temple. Here six figures grace the facade, three each side of the entrance, depicting Nefertari, Hathor... and of course Ramses himself. The number of surviving collossi of Ramses II in Egypt is breathtaking. Clearly this was a man with a monstrous ego. If it weren't for the fact that he reputedly sired 250 offspring I might think he was overcompensating for something... Two of their children stand knee-high between the couple.
Compared to Ramses' temple, the interior layout is simpler - a main chamber leading to a sanctuary, and only two chambers leading off to either side, whereas her husband has eight in total. Ramses makes a reappearance in here, as reliefs show him smiting his enemies once more (again with the smiting!). But here Nefertari stands cheering him on, or making offerings to the gods. In the sanctuary at the end Ramses is depicted worshipping his deified self.
The temple is not in its original location - originally it stood 61m lower down the hillside, in a location now fully submerged by the waters of Lake Nasser, as shown in an imporessive diorama at the
Nubian Museum in Aswan. When the waters of the Nile begn to rise following the completion of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s UNESCO, the United Nations' Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation spearheaded a massive relief project to save the temples, and other relics of ancient Nubia (such as Philae and Kalabsha). A waterproof wall was constructed around the site, and the hillside was dismantled into over 1000 sawn blocks of sandstone. Within two years, and at a cost of over $40m, the temples had been reconstructed on an identical axis higher up the mountain, with the surrounding terrain sculpted to resemble their prior setting.
Entry is covered by the E£70 entrance fee to the complex.
From journal Frontier of the Pharoahs