Ambitious Project Originally built into the face of a cliff, the Temple was moved to safety 200 meters inland from its original site. The project completed by an international team of 3000 specialists, cut the Temple into 2000 pieces, carved the entire Temple out of the cliff and reconstructed both cliff and Temple nearby. One of the five years of reconstruction work was spent just figuring out how to place the temple, so that the rising sun would continue to illuminate the inner sanctuary on those two days. For the Nubians, displaced from their land four times since 1900 because of dam construction on the Nile, Abu Simbel is the heart of what remains of their civilization. It is the town closest to the land which for thousands of years was the kingdom of Nubia.
Nubian culture is a combination of Egyptian and African cultures.
What is known of ancient Nubian script is a corruption of hieroglyphic. In the years before the High Dam, Nubian houses were made of sun-baked brick, a blend of clay and straw. The facade of each house was different from the next. Houses were painted both inside and out with finger paintings of trees, chicken, flags and sacred symbols. Each move since the construction of the first Nile dam at the turn of the century displaced some of the Nubian population, but the entire remaining population of some 100,000 Nubians were displaced in the last move.