This morning we woke up early to the sound of our tug boat gunning the motor.
Here is a picture of a man fishing with the sun rising behind him.
Once on deck we discovered we were at the Aswan bridge. We were beyond the bridge when the transmission on the tug boat died so we were drifting down the river backwards. The crew worked on the boat for awhile until finally they gave up and threw out an anchor. While we were eating breakfast another tug boat arrived.
We were pulled us the rest of the way to Aswan where we met Mona for today’s tours, Aswan dam and Philae Temple.
The most recent dams date from 1902 and from 1970. The British built the low dam, as it is called today, from 1899 to 1902. At the time it was largest masonry dam in the world. They added to it twice. It was replaced in 1970 with the “high” dam which created Lake Nasser, a 300 mile long and one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. When it was built it provided enough electricity for all of Egypt, today it provides about 20% of Egypt’s electricity. There is no lock system for boats to go from Lake Nasser to the Nile. They have cruises on the lake, potentially a future adventure!
We took a small boat to Philae temple, built during the Ptolemaic Kingdom. The principal deity of the temple complex is Isis, but other temples and shrines on the complex were dedicated to deities such as Hathor. Egyptologists believe that Philae was the last active site of the native ancient Egyptian religion and that the last Egyptian hieroglyph was written there in the late fourth century. Worshippers believed that the temple had power to cure them so they scratched off dust from the pillars to carry its healing power home with them (see picture below).
The temple was closed down officially in AD 537 by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. It then became a church dedicated to Saint Stephen.
Here are some pictures
Philæ temple Would have been submerged in Lake Nasser when the waters rose so UNESCO paid to move it. This happened with a number of temples south of the dam. To move the temple it was dismantled into about 40,000 units and then transported to a nearby island, situated on higher ground some 500 metres (1,600 ft) away.
After Philae temple we went did a little shopping. March, one of our sailing mates, wanted to buy a cartouche so we went to a gold store. Rick and I briefly looked around and headed to the papyrus store. There we got a demonstration of how they made papyrus.
We bought a very nice papyrus piece of art painted with a judgement scene from the Egyptian religion. Our print is the one behind the woman in the pictures of the demonstration. We also went to a cotton shop, but didn’t buy anything there.
Finally we went back to the boat and had lunch. After relaxing for a few hours we were picked up by our new guide, Mustafa, to go by boat to a Nubian village. We got an interesting tour along the way. From the pictures below you can see there were many cruise boats docked in Aswan. They were up to three deep. Also the little hut on the hill was a lookout to protect people from invasion. The sailboats are called faluccas. Here are some pictures of Aswan.
Nubians are dark skinned people who lived between Aswan and Khartoum, Sudan. Many of them lived in villages that were submerged by Lake Nasser and were relocated during the dam project. The village was really commercial with lots of people trying to sell things. There were lots of camels. We went into a Nubian house and had some tea. We walked around for about an hour and then returned to the boat. Overall it was a waste. Unfortunately, the Nubian people had been transformed from productive lives in their traditional homeland into beggars for the Aswan tourists.
Matt continued his lecture before dinner. After dinner everyone went to bed early because we are leaving at 4:30 in the morning to go to Abu Simbel. We are not coming back to the boat so we said goodbye to our great boat crew. Our trip down the Nile was nothing short of fabulous.