Since 1250 B.C., the seated colossi of Abu Simbel have stared fixedly across the Nile and the Nubian desert toward the rising sun. By 1970, they will continue their vigil from the top of the sandstone cliff that now rises behind them, leaving their ancient site under 200 f The Nile will start rising next September as construction progresses on the new Aswan High Dam, and by 1968, a lake will cover the Nile valley and the surrounding desert from Aswan to the Sudan. Originally, Abu Simbel seemed doomed to vanish and dissolve beneath the rising water. It has required great engineering imagination and four years of desperate fund raising by UNESCO to assure survival for the temples to Ramses II and his queen, Nefestari. Ramses built the larger temple in his own honor. The four 65 foot-high colossi hewn from the cliff depict him; the has reliefs that line the chambers burrowing deep into the cliff behind them illustrate his triumphs. The pharaoh built many temples to himself, but only at Abu Simbel did dignity triumph over the vulgarity of profuse ornamentation. Abu Simbel's sheet size and its perfect integration with the The same gigantic dimensions that make Abu Simbel so impressive as a monument make it almost impossible to move. Most of the other monuments threatened by the High Dass have been moved to safety with relatively little trouble and expense. Some will be taken all the way out of Egypt, as rewards by the U.A.R. for archeological aid from other Any effort to save it must be difficult and prohibitively expensive. The French proposed building a dam to protect it from the Aswan lake, but their plan would have required constant pumping to remove seepage from the pourous sandstone under Abu Simbel. And it would have cost at least $80 million. A cheaper, more practical, but seemingly fantastic Italian proposition was accepted by UNESCO in 1961. According to this plan, all the rock above the temple would be cut away and the whole mass enclosed in concrete. Then, 300 synchronized hydraulic jacks would begin to raise the temple, one-sixteenth of an inch at a time. After every foot of progress, the space underneath would be filled in with concrete. The temple would eventually reach the top of the cliff supported by 186 feet of concrete. The excavated rock would provide it with a natural setting, and everything would be much as before. But the Italian plan ran into financial problems. It cost $70,000,000 and although the nations of the world wanted to see Abu Simbel saved, they were unwilling to give much money. UNESCO collected little over $7.5 million in three years and by March 1 of this year, pledges still fell $23 million short. UNESCO needed another plan quickly. The solution came from Sweden. The Swedes proposed cutting the temple and statues into sections, raising them to the top of the cliff and reassembling them about 1,000 feet from the present site. The whole process should cost about $36 million. The U.A.R. has promised $11.5 million and the United States $12 million in Egyptian pounds, to be taken from payments for surplus American food. With the $7.5 million already collected, UNESCO lacks only $5 million and work can safely begin. The U.A.R. signed agreement with a German contracting firm last Sunday. In January, the Germans will begin moving in massive equipment and hundreds of fellahin laborers. The whole operation will take from four to six years. Some people doubt that Abu Simbel is worth even $36 million. They argue that the temple has little artistic value and that money could be better spent preserving monuments less extensively catalogued. But the skeptics form a small minority. Drew Middleton, one of many recent last-chance visitors, observed in The New Yorker that "if either the pyramids or Abu Simbel had to be flooded ... one would flood the Pyramids."
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