Minneapolis Institute of Art

The Great Temple of Aboo Simble, Nubia

David Roberts; Lithographer: Louis Haghe; Publisher: Sir Francis Graham Moon

Date

1846

Medium

Tinted and hand-colored lithograph

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

In 1838, Scottish painter David Roberts toured the Near East, making him one of the first British artists to gain first-hand knowledge of the region. He went from Egypt to the Sinai and Petra, arriving in Jerusalem at Easter 1839. Remaining there for a few weeks, he then continued north to Lebanon and departed from Beirut in May. From the outset of his journey, Roberts planned to publish a great set of Near-Eastern views, which eventually appeared as The Holy Land, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia. He worked with lithographer Louis Haghe (1806-1885) to develop a six-volume magnum opus, containing 247 hand-colored lithographs based on his on-the-spot drawings. To fund the project, he exhibited his original drawings in London and used the exhibition catalogue as a prospectus to recruit subscribers. Four hundred signed up, and the series was published in parts from 1842 to 1849.This was one of the 19th century's most elaborate topographical publications illustrated with hand-colored lithographs. It was also one of the last, for photography soon became the preferred medium for views of far off lands. Nonetheless, Roberts's and Haghe's prints remained central to understanding of Egypt and the Holy Land in Victorian Britain. The Temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel was cut directly into the stone face of a hill at the border between Upper and Lower Nubia during the 13th century BCE. Four colossal seated statues of Ramesses II are in a large niche on the outside of the temple. The upper half of the second statue was already largely destroyed by the time the complex was rediscovered and cleared of sand in the 19th century. Smaller statues of Ramesses's family flanked his ankles, and a statue of the goddess Hathor surmounted the door (out of view here) between the second and third Ramesses statues. Ramesses is believed to have built the temple as part of a project to project Egyptian power in resource-rich Numbia. When Roberts saw the statues, he was deeply impressed by the scale and quality of the statues, but he was also dismayed that souvenir hunters had knocked off toes and fingers and left graphitti on the faces. Since the Temple was only some twenty feet above the level of the Nile, it was cut apart and moved to higher ground in anticipation of the site's inundation with the construction of the Aswan Dam. Great Britain, Europe

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