Egypt's Middle Kingdom

We're studying the Middle Kingdom of Egypt in history right now, and it's interesting stuff! One of the things we discovered is this temple in Abu Simpel that was built by Rameses II, and then had to be moved in the 1960s when they decided to dam the Nile and create a lake that would have swamped the temple. These clips tell the story of how it was saved.








We also watched a second documentary, which highlighted some of the technical difficulties of the move, as well as a cool feature of the original engineering and how they set up the light in the temple.









We found a copy of the Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, and it's proved to be a lovely treasure-trove of information and they have some great links. That's how we discovered Abu-Simpel, and we also read about Ramases II, and about the Middle Kingdom. And they pointed us in the direction of some cool online exhibits from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we read about a scribe named Wah, his employer Meketre, and the cool funary models they had in their tombs.

Model of a bakery & brewery, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.