Brice Hale, age 15, of Mesa, Ariz., for his question:

WHEN WERE THE TEMPLES OF ABU SIMBEL MOVED?

Among the most important monuments of ancient Egypt are two temples on the Nile River, south of Aswan, called Abu Simbel. The temples were carved into a sandstone cliff about 1250 B.C. during the reign of Ramses II and were unknown to the West until 1812 when discovered by a Swiss explorer named Johann Burekhart.

In 1964, an international project was begun to save the temples from inundation by Lake Nasser, the reservoir of the Aswan High Dam.

In a remarkable engineering feat, the temples were cut apart and in 1968, reassembled on a site 210 feet above the river.

The interior of the larger temple is more than 180 feet long and consists of a series of halls and chambers leading to a central sanctuary. The temple is oriented so that the rays of the rising sun illuminate the statues of three gods and of Ramses II in the innermost sanctuary.

The larger temple has many inscriptions and reliefs, some of them of unusual historical interest.

Two of the large sitting statues of Ramses have inscriptions in Greek dating from the 6th century B.C. They were written by Greek mercenary soldiers and are among the earliest dated Greek inscriptions.