Amada, Derr and the Tomb of Pennut
The oldest temple of Nubia, moved on rails in one piece, with Ramesses II's rock temple of Derr and a painted Nubian governor's tomb.
The temple of Amada
The Temple of Amada is the oldest surviving temple in Egyptian Nubia. It was built in the fifteenth century BC by Thutmose III and Amenhotep II and completed by Thutmose IV, and dedicated to Amun-Ra and Ra-Horakhty. Small in size, it is famous for the quality and freshness of its painted reliefs, which retain much of their original colour, and for historical inscriptions recording military campaigns of Amenhotep II. In the Christian period it was used as a church, and the plaster covering its walls helped preserve the colours beneath.
Moved in one piece
During the UNESCO campaign to save the monuments of Nubia in the 1960s, French engineers chose not to dismantle the delicately painted temple. Instead, they placed it on rails and moved it in a single piece, weighing about 800 tonnes, some 2.6 kilometres to its present position, above the level of the lake — one of the most remarkable engineering feats of the campaign.
Derr and Pennut
Nearby stand two other rescued monuments. The rock-cut temple of Derr, built by Ramesses II and dedicated to Ra-Horakhty, has a pillared hall with well-preserved, brightly coloured reliefs, including scenes of the king's military campaigns. The tomb of Pennut, a governor of Wawat (Lower Nubia) under Ramesses VI, originally at Aniba, is decorated with painted scenes of the deceased and his family before the gods, and was cut out and re-erected here.
Exhibo editorial
Amada is small, but step inside and the colours glow: blues, yellows and reds as fresh as if painted last century, on walls carved for Thutmose III three and a half thousand years ago. That this delicate little temple was moved, whole, on rails across the desert makes it all the more extraordinary.
Visit Derr's colourful rock temple and the tomb of Pennut next door, with its painted family scenes. On a Lake Nasser cruise this is often one of the highlights — quiet, intimate, and astonishingly well preserved.
Gallery
How to find it
The temples of Amada and Derr and the tomb of Pennut are grouped at New Amada on the shore of Lake Nasser, visited on cruises between Aswan and Abu Simbel. From the landing, paths lead to each monument, a few minutes' walk apart.