Great Temple of Abu Simbel belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 1264 BCE at Nubia, Egypt. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
Ramesses II cut four 20-metre seated selves into a sandstone cliff to stare downriver at Nubia and at anyone who came north.
How it was made
The axis was aimed so that twice a year sunlight still reaches the inner statues — a calendar in rock, later shifted with the temple in the 1960s CE.
Why it still counts as a wonder
It never needed a Greek list to be a wonder: the labour, the alignment, or the survival is enough.
UNESCO’s relocation saved the wonder from Lake Nasser. The politics of the façade have not aged: king as mountain.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 1264 BCE may have been founded earlier, rebuilt later, or famous only in one phase. Where ancient writers disagree — as they do for Babylon’s gardens — we say so.
This is story 16 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.