Day Seven: High Dam, Temple of Philae, Unfinished Obelisk

April 24th, 2008

The tour itinerary lists our visit to the Unfinished Obelisk last on Day Seven, but the photographic evidence points to us visiting it first so that's how I'll describe it.

After lunch we went to visit the granite quarries of Aswan. This wasn't the most eye-catching tourist trap we went to see while in Egypt, especially since the day was BROILING and the last thing I wanted to do at the time was climb around in a granite quarry...(the FIRST thing I wanted to do was travel immediately to the arctic circle, find an iceberg, and lie down naked on it. It was HOT). Still, it WAS interesting - primarily because our guide explained to us how the ancient Egyptians separated the stone from the quarry without the use of high-tech tools.

What they did was, they laboriously chipped many deep grooves in the stone along where they wanted the break to be. Then they inserted wooden wedges, and once all the wedges were in place they poured water into the grooves around the wedges. The wood swelled, and the stone broke where they wanted it to.

You can see below all the little grooves - those would be the very bottom of the deep grooves they cut to remove the stone...

Here is the top of the unfinished obelisk - the pointy bit.

Most say the obelisk was meant for Hatshepsut. It was quarried on three sides before flaws were found in the stone and it was abandoned. If it had been finished it would have weighed 1,197 tons and stood 41 meters (134 feet) high.

You can see the little garden below - where Wyatt (Sandy's brother) and Bahaa our egyptologist decided to wait. Neither wanted to crawl around on the rocks in the heat.

Bahaa told us the ancient Egyptians polished the cut stone with round black balls of granite. That can NOT have been fun.

A view from the bottom of the obelisk

Moving right along - we visited the High Dam but don't have any pictures of it...you weren't really supposed to take pictures because it's considered a military installation.

But Sandy got a picture of the Temple of Kalabsha I believe, which is just west of the High Dam.

Then it was time for us to visit the Temple of Philae. Which really ought not to be called the Temple of Philae any longer, because it's not on Philae Island. It USED to be, but after the construction of the High Dam Philae Island was drowned. Unesco came in and built a small dam around the sunken island, pumped out all the water, and laboriously removed the temple. They reconstructed it on the nearby island of Agilika, which they terraformed to resemble Philae. To reach the island, you take a boat. Ours was captained by a man who resembled Jesus.

To get away from the dock once you're all aboard, your captain plays a merry game of bumper boats.

Agilika

The Temple of Philae has been the central site of the Cult of Isis for thousands of years. From Philae Isis was said to watch over and guard the sacred island of Biga, one of the mythological places her husband Osiris was said to be buried.

Approaching the temple by motorboat with a breeze moist with spray in my face was the coolest I had felt in DAYS. *laughing*

The boat drops you off by the small Temple of Nectanebo - you pass it to enter the outer temple court which leads to the first Pylon.

Outer temple court leading to first Pylon (look, another pharoah heroically chopping off the heads of his enemies!)

The entrance through the first Pylon is guarded by two lions.

A view towards (I'm pretty sure) the kiosk of Trajan

Pharoah makes an offering to Hathor and Horus.

But how do I know it's Hathor? Isn't this the temple to Isis???

If you look above at the hieroglyphs, the symbol for Hathor is a hawk within a square, with a smaller square in the upper left corner.

On the other hand, THIS is Isis.

And I can tell because a) sitting right above her crown with horns is a small throne which is the symbol of her name and also by the hieroglyphs

Her name is formed by the throne, a half circle a full circle and a seated woman. Looking at the two columns of hieroglyphs in front of her, her name is in the column on the left, and it's basically the second row of symbols. It's right underneath the wiggly line of water. See it?

Entering the temple

Oh look. The bloody, bloody Coptic Christians have been at it again...

Making themselves RIGHT at home...

It's not that I have anything against Christianity, as a general rule, it's just that it boils my blood that they moved into these temples, scratched away the faces of the gods, and went around GRAFFITI-ING the living daylights out of the place. Argh.

One of my favorites, Thoth...

and the moon god, Khons, who I am always confusing with Osiris because they both look like they're wearing mummy outfits.

And speaking of graffiti... I was staring at some portrait of Isis when I realized the rest of my party had moved on. Scurrying to catch up with them, I was hailed by the guide. He said, "they say you're the only one who's studied Latin - translate this." and he pointed to a wall.

I stared at it for a second. My knee-jerk translation I immediately questioned because it couldn't be right. I doubted myself since it had been many, many moons since I'd sat in Latin class in high school...and here we are in this beautiful, centuries-old temple, on an island in the middle of what had once been the Nile, and man...NO ONE could be that ballsy.

But...But...No, I was certain I was right.

"Bmure..." I said, "...is stupid?"

Bahaa applauded. "That's right! This guy, Bmure, stayed at the Temple and carved his name, and then someone came along behind him...and added a commentary."

Oh dear lord.

Since it's Isis' temple, you'll find a lot of pictures of her and her family - Osiris and Horus. Especially Horus as a young god.

He's practically sucking his thumb. This is how you know he's young. *laughing* Can you spot the throne marking Isis' name in the hieroglyphs in front of her?

Here Isis nurses a young Horus - someone has completely removed her face.

and here she is nursing a significantly younger Horus.

Shielding the body of her lover, Osiris

And receiving gifts

Incidentally one of my favorite things about Isis is that she's always got a vulture on her head.

There's Horus sucking his thumb again, and Isis standing at the back of Osiris

And I love this one - Isis and Nephthys, her sister. Nephthys was married to Seth, the evil god who killed Osiris, but she always chose her sister and her sister's family over her own.

The symbols for Isis and Nephthys are visible on top of their crowns - the stylized throne for Isis, and a flared column for Nephthys.

I'm not actually sure what this is

If you look out and slightly to the right, that tiny bit of green land there is what is visible of Philae Island now.

Outside the main temple complex

Think this is the Kiosk of Trajan again

A quick stop in the small temple of Hathor

A view of the Pylons

From the water

BIRDS! Anyone able to identify these for me? I think they must be some kind of heron.

I love the reflection of this one in the water.

Now you might think that this had been a very long day, and you'd be right. But it wasn't over yet. Next we took a ride in a felucca. At last Sandy was up close and personal with the boats he'd been photographing for so long (and at such length).

Hilariously, it was an absolutely still day, but luckily the current was flowing in the right direction. So, essentially becalmed, our two extremely young Nubian sailors had nothing to do. Except sell us things.

They brought out a ton of necklaces and wooden carvings of various Egyptian creatures. I bought a necklace for my little brother Cameron, and a wooden elephant for my mom's collection. Everyone else bought some things also, and so, giddy with their financial success, our sailors regaled us with some musical selections.

While we sailed, (okay, drifted), we witnessed something TOTALLY insane - these little kids in sinking canoes used hand paddles to waddle out to the ships - then they'd latch on to the side of the motor boats and ask the tourists where they were from. Once the tourists identified themselves, the kids would immediately launch into a medley of popular songs from that area of the world. The motor boats would pick up speed and the tiny canoes would skip across the top of the water as the kids hung grimly on, still singing for their supper.

They latched onto some of the feluccas too. Less dangerous, I'd imagine, although without the speed of the motor boats to lift their little skiffs out of the water they were in danger of sinking...

That evening was our farewell dinner on the boat. There was baked alaska in the shape of the pyramids of Giza - it was very exciting when they lit them on fire. Can you spot our waiter Desouki?

That's right! He's the one flamboyantly clapping! Or, alternatively, holding a giant invisible ball over his head. You choose.

FIRE! (Come on, this is cool)

After dinner we went with Bahaa into the Aswan souq which was incredibly cool. It's a loooooong street of shops and stalls. The further you get from the the main square, the more 'local' the shops and stalls become - less touristy. We wandered for a really long time through all the shops. Aswan is especially well known for its spices.

In the souq the proprietors are less pushy than they are at the temples and other tourist areas - they're still scam artists but at least they don't hunt you down like you were the white rhino.

After negotiating the release of several tablecloths we met up with Desouki by the train station. He led us through the back alleys to an out-of-the-way coffee shop/shisha bar that we would never have found on our own. There we surprised another waiter from the boat and the egyptologist who was with the French people and joined them at their table for two hours of tea and conversation.

It was then that the worst thing ever happened. Finishing the last of my tea (and not looking at it while I did so, more fool I), I swallowed a huge amount of tea grounds. It was...it was...I can't even talk about how horrible it was. *shudder* Ugh and they were all stuck in my teeth! I then had to very casually swig a bunch of water and try and gargle without anyone noticing. This is not a skill I've practiced in the past and I'm not sure how successful I was. Also, those tea grounds sat in my stomach like a hot brick.

But the coffee shop was cool. This is us sneaking in.

We left the souq at what we thought was 12:30 a.m. but it turns out that the Egyptians were rocking their daylight savings time roll forward on that very morning, so in fact we got to bed at 1:30. This was unfortunate, because we had to be up very early to catch our flight to Abu Simbel.

And, equally unfortunate, the tea grounds making their way down my throat only exacerbated an issue I'd been having most of the trip. Before we left NY for Egypt my allergies had been kicking my butt. I'd JUST about gotten myself back to normal the day before we left, but I think all that misery really did a number on my immune system because two or three days into our trip I started to feel just dreadful. Fever, general body ache, post-nasal drip - my skin felt really sensitive. Like, sunburn sensitive only I wasn't sunburned. (Believe me, if I'd managed to get sunburned through the amount of blocker I was wearing I'd have had to be pegged down naked directly beneath the hole in the ozone layer). I got over all of that pretty quickly, but by then the post-nasal drip had done its evil work - The Cough had moved in. And oh it earned the capitalization. By the evening before we left for Abu Simbel I was well on my way to Plague Monkeyhood. So poor Sandy and I passed a pretty sleepless night that evening...and the next morning was to be even worse.

More on this later.