We arise early, pack our bags, and take the launch to Kalabsha island.
The Aswan High Sam, built in 1964-1971, in a curved shape to better resist 500 miles of water, the largest engineering feat of the 20th century. Base is 980 meters and slanted up to 40 meters at the top.
It is 3600 meters long, 111 meters tall including a screen wall below the dam. The dam has metal enough to build 13 Eiffel towers, and red granite enough for 17 pyramids the size of Khufu. There are 12 tunnels below with 12 turbines for water. The dam was started by the Americans, some dispute arose, and it was finished by the Russians.
In 1952, there was a military coup, and the first president was Mohammed Namba he wanted to hand power back to civilians, but he was arrested and spent the rest of his life under house arrest, then Nasser became president. Nasser refused to give the Muslim Brotherhood their “share” and there were many assassination attempts against him. The population was then about 23 million, but the valley was not enough to feed the population, so the idea was to create the largest man made lake in the world, so farmers could have 3-4 crops a year instead of one. Nasser asked for help which was offered by the US and the World Bank in 1954. The offer was withdrawn in 1956 as he was forming the Non-aligned movement. Nasser’s response was to nationalize the Suez Canal, which was under a 99 year lease to the British, and used the funds. The 1956 war involved the British (the canal lease), the French (who ran the canal), and the Israelis, but Eisenhower intervened so as to not lose access to the canal. The Russians wanted influence so they sent building experts and financing, 1964-1971, Nasser died before it was done. The symbol of friendship sculpture I the shape of a lotus flower was dedicated, and the Russians were kicked out.
Kalabsha island has some beautiful temples moved from 50 kilometers away. It did not have a name, as it was a high point, so it was named for the temple. It is Roman, built for Caesar Augustus in 25BC. The solar disk with two wings and two cobras protects against demons and devils. The curved side walls indicate the place where Amun-Ra would sit to make creation. The total darkness inside the temple shows the darkness of creation, the rise of the floor shows the union of earth and sky. We see a small shrine to the goddess Hathor, which has beautiful columns with ornate capitals, dedicated to Augustus. The two entrance columns are the face of a woman with the ears of a cow to indicate Hathor, the Greco-Roman columns had capitals which added additional design elements t0the traditional lotus and papyrus capitals, called a composite capital, as we see here.
The Nubians never had a written language, so the painted walls we see are pre-history, before writing from Egyptians. In the first stone stele, a man is herding animals. These are similar to the cave painting in France, with cows, antelope, what look like dogs. We see a large boat with oars and a line indicating the wares, fr about 5,500 BC. Another showed a giraffe, an elephant, and even one that looks like a llama, which was possible given that the climate was colder then. The carved people are herding the animals. A huge triumphal stele is nearby, filled with hieroglyphs and a scene of military conquest.
Most scholars consider Rameses to be the pharaoh whose sister found the infant Moses, but given how long Rameses lived, this is unlikely. Most recent theories put the Rameses II-Moses interaction toward the end of his reign, when one of his wives found Moses, who grows up in the court, kills the Egyptians who pursued them, flees to Israel for 15 years, then goes back to Egypt but Rameses had died, and his son Meremptah was on the throne. One detail in the Koran says “weren’t we brothers when we grew up,” which would have been Moses and Rameses. With the plagues, thought to be coming from the Jews, one would think that the pharaoh would be glad for them to leave, and did not start immediately to pursue them. He pursued them because the Jews were thought to not really slaves but bankers who looked after the valuables of the Egyptians, which they had taken with them. After pursuit, the pharaoh drowned, and the gold they had was not theirs, so they melted it down while Moses was on the mountain and made a bull to worship for forgiveness from their sin of theft.
We move on to the last temple of Rameses here, called Beit el Wally. Rameses was 1,300 BC, 19th dynasty. The walls show Rameses in a military campaign, with Rameses towering over a castle fortification, showing how powerful he was. After the battle, they allowed those who surrendered to join the Egyptian army, if they did not surrender, they were tied together by the neck and their arms tied behind their backs for Rameses to smite. In the wall carvings, the organized armies were Egyptian, the ones in a mess were always the enemies. Here the Nubians are clearly indicated by their broader, African features. After surrender, the Nubians are shown bringing all variety of animals, ebony and ivory, including a playful monkey, and lots and lots of gold. After the entry, we enter the vestibule, with ionic style cut columns beginning around 1,300 BC. Rameses is making offerings of various goods to Horus and Isis with a scorpion crown, and in another scene he is offering the symbol of justice with the feather. If the heart was lighter than the feather in judgement, the person was good. Finally we enter the sanctuary with a niche for the statue of the gods, plus wall carvings of many offerings. Rameses and the ram-headed god (god of the flood) who is holding the king’s hand and giving him the ankh of life. By the side is a scene of Rameses being breast-fed by a woman who is Isis.
Around 800 BC is the 26th dynasty, the Nubians who conquered Aswan went up to Luxor, and ruled Egypt for 100 years. They were conquered by Basmatik, whose stele is nearby. We enter the final temple, Kalabsha, with an enormous courtyard area surrounded by columns with varied designs which mix Egyptian and Greek elements. This temple was disassembled by an international team into 13,000 pieces and moved by boat in 1964 as the waters were rising.
The plan with the Aswan High Dam was to increase from 3% to 7% the arable land. Population then was 23 million, now 100 million, thus the plan to reclaim 400 million acres to extend the valley’s arable land. When the dam was built, it was enough to provide all the electricity the country needed, but now with a greater population and much more in terms of technology, Egypt needs more power, with TVs, air conditioners, washing machines, cell phones, computers, all using power. Hassan says that Egypt has changed more in the past 40 years than in the prior 4,000 years. Tourism in this area was really boosted after the High Dam, at one time there were 7-8 boats cruising the lake, now there are only 2-3 boats, since 2011. This lake changed the climate, Aswan used to be the driest place on earth, now it is more humid. Also, the weight of the water causes small earthquakes especially over the past 20 years. The fertility of the valley was lost with the loss of the silt, which has to be replaced by chemicals, and drainage to take excess water away and recycle it. Now they are turning to organic fertilization. There is also a worm in the water that can transmit hepatitis C and liver cancer, and those now live all year round because they thrive in still water of the lake, not the moving current of the Nile. About 5 years ago an American company created a drug that is 95% effective, but it was very expensive, and millions of people have the disease here. The government bought a license to make it here and they give it to people for free. Security here is very tight, because if some sort of enemy action took place on the dam, all of lower Egypt would be washed away in a few hours, as well as Cyprus, Crete, and Malta. Thus much of the military is focused on protecting the dam.
We leave the ship Prince Abbass and board a bus for the Aswan Dam and Philae temple. There have been three dams here, the first from the 1890s. We stop at the top of the dam, where water is brought from the curved ends into the tunnels and then the turbines at the bottom. The spillway is actually the old dam area. The dam actually “leans” on the rocks. The dam has a very gentle slope, all made of red granite, no concrete. The silt is drained at the mouth of the river in Sudan and in front of the mouth of the bypass canals by the dam. Here the water is 174 meters deep. We get out at the power station, and then drive up to the top of the dam, where we can really get a sense of the immensity of the dam. Even the old dam slightly downstream looks large, but small by comparison. The cross section panels show the complexity of construction and the many layers of the dam. This was the largest dam in the world for decades, until the Three Gorges Dam was built in China. The smaller same was enlarged twice in 1922 and 1936. The dam is 40 meters tall, and we can see the locks down below, which are no longer used. We can see here the rocky bottom of the Nile, as south of here the cataracts. From here it is 1,000 meters to the Mediterranean Sea. On the other side we see Philae Temple in the distance.
We drive on to a boat to Philae, passing Aswan City, and hear about Alexander the Great. After defeating the Persians, he decided to come to Egypt which was very weak at the time. Alexander wanted one religion wherever he conquered. The priests would then lose their huge income from worshippers. The priests played a trick on Alexander, instead of sending an army, they sent a welcome party and brought him to Memphis as the capital of Egypt and crowned him with the ancient Georgian ceremonies and the Egyptian crown. He spent years here until he died of malaria in India, and then his half brother Phillip to the throne but only if Alexander’s Persian wife gave birth to a girl. She was killed first, and Ptolemy, a Greek general, came to power.
After a brief bio break, Hassan tells us he will bring some selected merchants on board that he has spoken through and determined prices. We walk out on the dock lined with vendors, mostly selling small animal sculptures and a beautiful blue rock that seems to be on every blanket. We board a white skiff outfitted with colorful decorations. We land on Angelica Island. Water used to partly cover the old location for this temple, and the dark tide marks are visible on the columns. For the move, they had to flatten the top of the island to make it flat for rebuilding the temple. It was started in 1970, finished 1980, Germany, Italy, and England did this project, although England did not participate in saving the Nubian temples (because of the dispute over the Suez Canal). This temple was built in 100BC, under Ptolemy III, dedicated to Isis. The Greeks revered Isis as being similar to their goddess Athena. One side of the temple was defaced by the early Christians, in part because they were scared of the magic of the place. Half the temple was buried so that side was not defaced. As each king came to power they added to the temple. Inside the main gate is some graffiti from Napoleonic times. We see the king making an offering to Isis, the table depicts the items vertically (no third dimension), including pigs, birds, bread, figs, meat, jars, and more. The ancient Egyptians ate pigs, but did not offer pigs to the god because sometimes pigs took the form of an evil spirit, but in the Greek period pigs were offered by them, 300BC on. The offerings brought to the gods were put on the offering table, then the priests would take the offering behind the temple to eat. They would post every week what the gods “wanted” in terms of food. Jewelry went into the pockets of the priests, thus they were very wealthy, and they were second to the king was the high priest. One special piece of red granite says “once upon a time, the Nile did not flood for seven years.” People and animals died, and they realized that this happened in ancient times when they did not offer enough to the Ram-headed god Khnoum, so they go to the temple at Elephantine Island, make offerings, and the flood returned. In this inner courtyard is a special birthing temple dedicated to Isis on the side of the main temple.
We pass through the open court, where the huge capitals correspond to each other diagonally, not across from each other. In a side wall is a niche for when Christians took over the temple after it was abandoned, about 500 AD. A Greek inscription describes the church in a Greek script. Inside the hypostyle, we see the king with a tray of fruit offering to Osiris, who gives the symbols of life and the crook and the flail which symbolize how Egypt is ruled. Since this is the temple of Isis, she is in the main one of the three sanctuaries, with Osiris and Horus to the left and right. We see Isis covering the mummified body of Osiris with her pigeon wings. We see the scene of Isis breastfeeding Horus on her lap, essentially the source of the Madonna and child Jesus.
Exiting the temple, we go behind and see an 11th century church, when Christians had helped to expel the Romans and could practice their religion freely. We have some free time to walk around, and see almost a dozen small cats with very large ears, some of which are eating fish they caught below. On the boat, Barney buys a hematite necklace and a camel bone necklace for Madeleine, and a blue stone for himself.
We motor back, and board the bus to our new ship, the M/S Sun Ray. The ship is built to fit the locks, which were built before the tourism ships, so they are narrow. We drive through Aswan City, population about 1 million. They do not have public busses here so there are the minibuses (which drive with their doors open) and what look like trucks with camper shells that are loaded with people. Everyone crosses the street randomly, and there is a raised area dividing the two sides of the road; interestingly there are no lines for the lanes. We go by a soccer stadium, a 1,000-year-old cemetery, a hospital, a beautiful mosque next to the large Coptic cathedral, a TV station, and lots of apartment blocks. We see Elephantine Island in the distance in the middle of the Nile.
In the late afternoon, we enjoy a relaxing felucca ride, on a large boat big enough to accommodate all of us. We sail south first with the current, circled Elephantine Island and see the lush green of Kitchener’s Island which was a botanical garden. There is a beautiful breeze and being close to the water is lovely. Two young brothers on what looks like a surfboard paddle up, singing a medley of songs in an unusual modality, hitching a ride on the felucca, hoping for some money. One person’s hat blows off and they paddle after it to retrieve it, thus earning a nice tip. This is a nice end to a busy day, and tonight we sail for Luxor.
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