20 JULY/AUGUST 2019
T
ry to imagine Notre Dame Cathedral
carved into stone, a French engineer told
journalists during the planning stages for
the salvage operation of Abu Simbel: “Above,
there are cliffs weighing 300,000 tons. The
temples carved inside are supported not by
their pillars... but by the internal stresses of the
tremendous mass of stone above them. How
do you save such a place?”Some suggested
building a transparent pyramid that would al-
low the temples to be viewed underwater from
the outside; others suggested a permanent dam
around the temple that would require round-
the-clock pumping to keep it dry. Eventually,
engineers agreed on a solution: Remove the en-
tire cliff above the two temples, cut the complex
into 1,050 blocks, move everything to the new
site, and then reassemble them.MOVING
MOUNTAINS
The clock was ticking and the waters were rising, but
engineering ingenuity saved the Abu Simbel temples.
Overcoming astonishing technical obstacles,
between 1963 and 1968 nearly 330,000 tons of
stone were moved; temples were carefully taken
apart, moved to higher ground, and put back together.A HUGE UNDERTAKING