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
Christiane Desroches Noblecourt of Nubia, but because through it the first global civilization publicly claims the world’s art as its indivisible heritage. . .There is only one action over which the indifference of stars and the eternal murmuring of rivers have no sway - it is the act by which man snatches something from death.” Fifty countries, in the middle of the Cold War, contributed funds to save the monuments now considered part of the heritage of all humanity. Philae, Kalabsha, Wadi al-Sabua, Dakka, Derr and other sites were moved, with the temples of Abu Simbel receiving the most media attention. The temple