Day 11 - Philae Temple, Aswan Dams, and Granite

Today we are seeing some sites in Aswan. We had breakfast about 7am and left the boat at 8am to first head towards the granite quarry. We are in a white van again but this time it is a bit bigger. The roads of Aswan our less congested and more civilized than Cairo so we are driving at normal speeds and within our own lanes. Aswan provided all of the granite that the ancient Egyptians used for building obelisks, stelae, and statues. We were able to see an unfinished obelisk that was started by Hathesput but was abandoned when a flaw in the granite was found.

From the quarry, our driver took us toward Lake Nasser and the Aswan and High dams. I took a few pictures of the information boards at the top of the High dam that show some of the statistics. Basically, the Aswan dam was erected to stop the overflowing of the Nile River. The original Aswan dam was built in 1900 by the British but the Nile River eventually overflowed that dam and extensions were built to raise the height of the dam in 1912, 1926 and 1936. This also proved to be inadequate. The British promised Egypt a loan but when Egypt became a Republic and elected Gamal Abdel Nasser as its president in 1952, the British pulled out of the deal. In 1956, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and used the monies from that to fund the new, High dam along with help from Russia. In 1960 they started building the High dam and finished it in 1970. Building the High dam created Lake Nasser, the largest man made lake in the world.

Our last scheduled stop this morning was to the Philae Temple. It is necessary to board small motor boats to get to the site. I videoed a bit of the ride so you could see the boat.

The original site of the Temple is underwater due to the building of the High dam. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) contributed $25 million to move the 20,000 tons of stone to higher ground. The new site was landscape to look exactly like the original. The Philae Temple was built to honor Isis. In the famous story of Set, Osiris and Isis, Isis was able to resurrect Osiris after Set killed him. Set obviously didn’t like this and cut Osiris up into 14 pieces and put the piece all over Egypt. Isis asked for wings from one of the gods and flew around Egypt looking for the pieces. We learned that the heart and the backbone were at Abydos. The final piece she was looking for, the male organ, was said to have been eaten by a catfish on the site of the Philae Temple. Without this piece of Osiris, she could not put him back together. Her tears of sadness are said to have started the Nile River at this spot. There is a video of the original site and what it looks like now. I also included a short video on what it looks like from the water.



After all of this, we came back to the boat for a dip in the pool and lunch. It’s a funny thing about the pools in Egypt. They are all freezing! You would think that the ship’s pool, on the top deck, in the sun all morning, would be at least warm. It wasn’t. We stayed in about 60 seconds.

We took short naps after lunch and headed out to the souk. A souk is the Arabic word for market. There is one main street that runs probably about a mile or so with offshoots. The small stores, like the bazaar at Khan el Khalili, contain touristy things as well as food and spices and jewelry.

That’s it for today. Tomorrow we get up very early and fly to Abu Simbel.