The paper deals with the history of the excavation of the sun temple of Nyuserra at the end of the 1800s. This enterprise was not only crucial for our knowledge of Old Kingdom Egypt and the site of Abusir, but also for it involved two of the most prominent Egyptologists of that century, i.e. Friedrich W. von Bissing and Ludwig Borchardt. Their complicated relationship regards directly the history of Egyptology but also intertwins with the history of Germany at the turn between the 1800s and the 1900s.