Ramesses II & 4416 Ramses Asteroid - Abu Simbel, Egypt
Posted by: 
denben
N 22° 20.208 E 031° 37.531
36Q E 358452 N 2470752
Ramesses II statues on the facade of the Great Temple and the temple of Hathor and Nefertari in the village of Abu Simbel, Aswan Governorate, Upper Egypt, near the border with Sudan.
Waymark Code: WM17GEY
Location: Egypt
Date Posted: 02/17/2023
Views: 2
In 1255 BC, Ramesses and his queen Nefertari had traveled into Nubia to inaugurate a new temple, the great Abu Simbel. It is ego cast into stone; the man who built it intended not only to become Egypt's greatest pharaoh, but also one of its deities.
The great temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel was discovered in 1813 by the Swiss Orientalist and traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. An enormous pile of sand almost completely covered the facade and its colossal statues, blocking the entrance for four more years. The Paduan explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni reached the interior on 4 August 1817.
Today, a few hundred tourists visit the temples daily. Most visitors arrive by road from Aswan, the nearest city. Others arrive by plane at an airfield that was specially constructed for the temple complex. (
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Our default photo shows 4 colossal statues representing Ramesses II himself on the facade of the Great Temple. The head of the second statue from the left is broken off and laying on the ground in front of the statue. This happened during an earthquake just after the temple was completed. On the facade of the Small Temple one can see 4 statues of Ramesses II and 2 statues of Nefertari (4th and 5th pictures).
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(4416) Ramses is a main belt asteroid discovered on September 24, 1960 by the research team Cornelis Johannes van Houten and Tom Gehrels as part of the Palomar-Leiden survey.
The asteroid's name is derived from a line of Egyptian pharaohs named Ramses. (
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