Joseph Bonomi the Younger into debt and was eventually happy to accept a modestly paid commission to accompany Robert Hay on an expedition, via Malta, to Egypt in 1824. This began a lifelong interest in Egyptology. From 1824 to 1826, he was a member of Hay's expedition where he sketched many antiquities. At Abu Simbel in 1825, Bonomi – responding to Hay's demands for great accuracy – devised a drawing frame (a viewfinder-type device equipped with a sight and a string or wire grid) to help them draw the temples' interior decorations. The expedition then moved on to Kalabsha, where Bonomi laboured to produce
Great and Small Temples of Abu Simbel Abu Simbel Great Temple, Ra-Horakhty is depicted striding forward out of the sandstone mound. This statue represents the king’s name “User-Ma’at-Re” because the Ra-Horakhty is shown carrying a user staff and a feather of Ma’at and with sun disk of Re on his head. As you go through the entrance, you enter a corridor decorated with Ramesses II presenting offerings to the god Re-Horakhty and the goddess Weret-Hekau. At the end of the corridor is the Great Pillared Hall. This hall contains eight pillars holding up the ceiling. Statues depicting the Ramesses II as Osiris are carved into the columns