The Temple of Debod

On Friday I decided that it was time for a stroll through the city so I took the metro to Plaza España. The sun was out and a feeling of guilt was bothering me. It’s January and I am just waring a vest. Maybe I should switch off my computer more often or regulate the amountof times I open the fridge. During my stroll I was interested in visiting the Temple of Debod which is nearby Plaza España. I didn’t know too much of this Egyptian temple before I negotiated my way through busy Friday afternoon Madrid traffic. Set in a quiet park close to the city centre the Temple of Debod looks out over the surrounding plains of Madrid and offers fine views of the Royal Palace. But it is the contrast of Old and New what is most striking as you can see below.

Upon entering the ancient structure I passed the following sign, it read:

The temple of Debod is an original Egyptian structure dating from 2,200 years ago, which was dedicated to the cult of the gods Amun and Isis. It was donated to Spain by the Egyptian government in 1968, as a token of Egyptian gratitude for the assistance Spain provided in rescuing the temples of Abu Simbel, in Nubia.

It was the last sentence of this sign which caught my attention. 1968. Gratitude. Assistance. Rescuing. The Temples of Abu Simbel. This was all sounding rather familiar to me. I knew that the Temples of Abu Simbel had to be moved from their original place to a new site as they were submerged for the better part of six months a year by the unpredictable river Nile. This was all part of the bigger project of the Aswan Dam, the enthusiastic power plan of General Nasser.

Now why was this all sounding recognizable? Well, I have been telling everybody who seemed even half-interested that my engineering grandfather Tom Reeve single-handedly built the Aswan Dam with his right hand whilst fending off the invading Russians with his left. Often I also tell that he was involved with the moving of the Abu Simbel temple halfway up the Nile. Therefore I was curious what the small museum inside the temple in the centre of Madrid would offer.

As I was walking through the catacombs of the 2,200 old structure I was more interested in the exposition in the upper chambers of the sun shrine. The exposition was about the moving of the Abu Simbel temples. Maybe I would learn more about the project and of course I was convinced that my grandfather would get a mention. My head was spinning and I realized that I hardly knew anything about this part of my grandfather’s interesting life. What was he doing in Egypt? Did he – if anything – take part in the moving of the temples or in the design of the Asuan Dam? Was he indeed kicked out by the Russians?

I would like to know how much of this story is true and how much this story has been Reevised[1] (see note at the bottom of this article for more explanation of this term). Therefore I am asking all Reeves with more information to post a comment or send me an email. When I have more information on this subject I can start asking more relevant questions such as ‘why did Spain receive an Egyptian temple as gratitude whilst the Reeve family did not get at least a small Obelisk?’

[1] A story that has been Reevised is a story that takes a small truth and adds a huge amount of historic speculation which it immediately takes as the truth. My father – for example – Reevises many stories. The fact that we are direct descendents of Queen Victoria’s half brother or that our house in High Easter was built on an ancient Viking burial ground, are amongst the more famous Reevised stories.