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
Abu Simbel temples has moved one day closer to the Solstice, so they would be occurring on October 22 and February 20 (60 days before and 60 days after the Solstice, respectively). A well-known graffito inscribed in Greek on the left leg of the colossal seated statue of Ramesses II, on the south side of the entrance to the temple of the temple records that: The temple of Hathor and Nefertari, also known as the Small Temple, was built about one hundred meters northeast of the temple of pharaoh Ramesses II and was dedicated to the goddess Hathor and Ramesses II's chief consort,