Word: cliff
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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More than 3.000 years ago, Ramses II. Pharaoh of Egypt, had his slaves cut a magnificent temple out of a sandstone cliff beside the Nile. Four colossal figures, designed as monuments to the Pharaoh, sit impassively beside the temple entrance. But for all its magnificence, the Temple of Abu Simbel is apparently doomed. For lack of $22 million, the cost of a few bombers or missiles, it will soon be submerged under 200 ft. of muddy water backed up by the High Dam being built at Aswan 180 miles downstream...
...Cliff. Many schemes have been proposed to save Abu Simbel. The simplest one, advanced by French engineers, involves the construction of a semicircular concrete dam 250 ft. high, to wall off the Nile water. The dam would probably cost $80 million, and constant pumping would still be needed to handle seepage. If the pumps were ever stopped, water would soon cover the temple, wrecking its ancient stonework...
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), the U.N. agency in charge of saving Abu Simbel, rejected the French dam in favor of a more imaginative Italian proposal to cut the whole temple free of the rock and lift it to the top of the cliff by hydraulic jacks. Once raised above the rising water, the temple would be safe indefinitely, and it would have an attractive site on the rim of the great new artificial lake. The lifting would cost $42 million plus $24 million for finishing...
...Taffeh, built during the Roman period, have already been dismantled and moved to safe, high ground. The other two: Ellesya, built by Thutmosis III 3,500 years ago, and Derr, built by Ramses II, are, like Abu Simbel. cut from rock. They must be pried loose from the cliff before they can be moved. A group of Italian institutions is reportedly interested in Ellesya, and the U.S. has cast envious eyes at Derr. The city of Indio, Calif., would like to transport the temple to the Egypt-like desert of the Coachella Valley...
...word "servant" dangles these days on the cliff of obsolescence; housewives have "help" when they have it at all, and are diplomatic about giving orders (not "Clean up the living room," according to one domestic counselor, but "Let's clean up the living room"). One of the most fictional characters in modern fiction is Jeeves, and his creator, P. G. Wodehouse. mourns the extinction of that noble breed of "butlers who weighed 250 pounds on the hoof, butlers with three chins and bulging abdomens, butlers with large gooseberry eyes and that austere butlerine manner which has passed so completely...