Abu Simbel, Philae Temple, High Dam & The First Night On The Felucca,
Our wake up call came through at 3am, I was lying on the side closest to the phone and I was so tired, I couldn't wake up properly and just stared at it. It took Tom to yell at me to answer the phone, before I snapped back to reality.
After climbing out of bed, showering & getting onto the bus, we had a 3 hour & 280 km drive from Aswan to the temple of Abu Simbel, near the Sudan border with a police escort. The minimal sleep & extreme wake up call were worth the sight of Abu Simbel, which was one of my favourite's and awe inspiring. The 2 temples from ancient Egypt were commissioned by the King Ramesses II, cut out of the sandstone cliff's in the years of 1274 & 1244 BC. One is a temple of the king himself, commemorating his triumphs in the battle of Kadesh, the other is a temple for his Queen, Nefertari, who at the time of its construction was gravely ill and sadly never saw it completed. The temple is famously known for the four colossal statues of King Rammesses II who sit at 20 metres high and stare out across the nile.
The ancient Egyptian's dedication to the worship of their gods, particularly the sun god Ra, are clearly demonstrated in a lot of temples. Abu Simbel goes one step above this when the architects & engineers designed the axis of this temple to allow the sun's rays to penetrate to the back of the temple on only 2 specific days, October 22nd and February 22nd. The sun's rays illuminate 3 out of 4 figures on the back wall, Ramesses II, Amun- Ra & Ra-Horakhty but leave the God Ptah in the shadows as he is a god of the underworld. This solar alignment is just one amazing example of how precise and acutely aware the ancient Egyptians were with the earth, sun and even the solar systems.
The immense statues, carvings, hieroglyphs & paint, even to this day remains in magnificence. It's hard to know what to photograph and what to stare at when you first walk in, everything demands attention & I experienced genuine anxiety that I would miss something. Tom & I were always the first in and the last ones to leave the temples, arriving late back to the bus. Abu Simbel was no different.
Sadly, there is crude graffiti in some sections of the temple, greek writing from ancient times and marks of destruction from more recent times.
The temple for Queen Nefertari, was smaller in comparison, but still awe inspiring. The temple is dedicated to the Goddess Hathor who is often shown as the cow & is the goddess of joy, music, feminine love & motherhood. Apart from it's architectural magnificence & preservation, it is a very special temple as it is only the second temple in ancient Egyptian history dedicated to a Queen, the other temple that predated this was the one built by Akhenaten for his wife Nefertiti. At the entrance to her temple, there is 6 x 10 metre high statues depicting Ramesses II & Nefertari. This is very unique in Egyptian art, most of the time the Egyptian Queen would stand next to her King but would only be as tall as his knee's, it was very special to see them depicted as the same size, even if that size was greatly magnified to 10metres tall.
During the time of Egypt, Abu Simbel was buried under the shifting sands & had to be rediscovered, it wasn't until 1817 that a passageway was made tot he entrance of the temple.
Our guide explained to us about the ancient miracle of the solar alignment & then told us about the modern day miracle that started in 1959 to move the temple's and save them from the rising levels of the Aswan high dam. In 1964 a UNESCO multi million, multi national team of engineers, archeologists & construction experts began the challenging & delicate job of cutting 30 tons of the temple into manageable pieces, removing it from the cliff and relocating it to a safe location 200 metres away and 60 metres higher, before rebuilding it. Amazingly this huge project was achieved in only 4 years!
After we hurried back to the bus, late, we had to drive back to Aswan and join up with the rest of the tour group who didn't want to get up early & see the temple, before going on to see the Aswan High Dam. Sam our tour guide, gave us some information on the building of the dam & the current tensions between the countries of Africa that are sustained by the Nile, as the fight for water continues into the 21st century.
We stopped off for our usual buffet lunch, we were absolutely starving by this point and I'm unashamed that I had 2 plates of savoury & 1 plate of sweet food, before slowing down.
After lunch we boarded onto a boat similar to the one from the night before, again with a motor and headed down the nile to the temple of Philae, something I was very very excited to see! Philae is a temple for the goddess Isis, my favourite goddess, that is on the Agilkia Island, a natural island with a man made extension that sit's in the reservoir water of the Aswan low dam.
As was the case with the temple's of Abu Simbel, the Dam's of Aswan threatened the ancient Philae temple on it's original island & it remained flooded or submerged in water while damaging process's worsened from the ever increasing depths of the Nile. In 1960 a UNESCO group stepped in, had a smaller dam built around the temple allowing the water to be pumped out. Then the temple was cleaned & measured by a scientific process called photogrammetry, finally the temple's were dismantled to a manageable 40,000 pieces & moved to it's current island of Agilkia.
We are so glad that organisations such as UNESCO exist and are able to help preserve & save the modern day evidence of the ancient civilisations. The Philae temple was one of the biggest temples we had seen so far with a grand entry way featuring pillars & a huge entryway with carvings. Sam our guide, used this moment to tell us one of the Egyptians & one of my favourite stories about the god's.
It is a story about family betrayal and the murder of Osiris, by his brother Seth, the distress of his sister and wife Isis who goes to remarkable lengths to secretly find his body & become pregnant with his child, with the help from their other sister Nephthys, who is also pregnant with Osiris's child. Nephthys is married to her brother Seth, who killed Osiris & has to hide her pregnancy & the birth of the child. Isis will then go on to raise her own child and the child that Nephthys gives birth to & abandons, who is called Anubis. The child that Osiris and Isis have together is known as Horus & he grows up and eventually kills his uncle Seth to avenge his father. Sam uses members from our tour group to play out this story, in a very comical way, Tom is chosen to be the falcon god Horus.
The story is a lot more complicated and intricate than the extremely brief version, I just told.
The temple has many carvings depicting this story and other myths surrounding Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Horus & another Goddess I am quite fond of known as Bast or Bastet.
I was very grumpy to also see that some of the ancient carvings have been chiseled off, removing a lot of the features & identifying details, especially from the faces. Sam explains this was done by the early christian monks, known as coptic Monks who at times would hide in the temples of the ancient god's & passed the time by chiseling off the god's & even carving some ancient cross symbols into the walls. This would not be the last time we would see the destructive signs left over from the coptic christian monks.
After we had spent time walking through this vast temple, we hopped back onto the boat & were then taken to the hotel to pack a day bag & refresh in the pool, before boarding the traditional Felucca sailing boats that would be our home for the next 2 nights. The group of 33 is split into 2 groups and put on to 2 separate sailing boats. We have a 3rd boat which is a 2 storey motor boat with electricity capabilities and a toilet. This boat is fondly nicknamed the poo boat. It would also be the dancing boat and the backflipping into the Nile boat.
A truly unforgettable experience would be sailing along the Nile with the Nubian men we met the night before and admiring the beauty along the banks of Aswan. The night would pass very quickly, we were treated by a gorgeous African sun set which would be replaced by the brilliant stars in the sky. There was lots of beer, vodka, good company, a few refreshing dips in the Nile & a fantastic dinner of fresh ricotta, hummus, salad, felafel & pita bread.
-Alli
Our wake up call came through at 3am, I was lying on the side closest to the phone and I was so tired, I couldn't wake up properly and just stared at it. It took Tom to yell at me to answer the phone, before I snapped back to reality.
After climbing out of bed, showering & getting onto the bus, we had a 3 hour & 280 km drive from Aswan to the temple of Abu Simbel, near the Sudan border with a police escort. The minimal sleep & extreme wake up call were worth the sight of Abu Simbel, which was one of my favourite's and awe inspiring. The 2 temples from ancient Egypt were commissioned by the King Ramesses II, cut out of the sandstone cliff's in the years of 1274 & 1244 BC. One is a temple of the king himself, commemorating his triumphs in the battle of Kadesh, the other is a temple for his Queen, Nefertari, who at the time of its construction was gravely ill and sadly never saw it completed. The temple is famously known for the four colossal statues of King Rammesses II who sit at 20 metres high and stare out across the nile.
The immense statues, carvings, hieroglyphs & paint, even to this day remains in magnificence. It's hard to know what to photograph and what to stare at when you first walk in, everything demands attention & I experienced genuine anxiety that I would miss something. Tom & I were always the first in and the last ones to leave the temples, arriving late back to the bus. Abu Simbel was no different.
Sadly, there is crude graffiti in some sections of the temple, greek writing from ancient times and marks of destruction from more recent times.
The temple for Queen Nefertari, was smaller in comparison, but still awe inspiring. The temple is dedicated to the Goddess Hathor who is often shown as the cow & is the goddess of joy, music, feminine love & motherhood. Apart from it's architectural magnificence & preservation, it is a very special temple as it is only the second temple in ancient Egyptian history dedicated to a Queen, the other temple that predated this was the one built by Akhenaten for his wife Nefertiti. At the entrance to her temple, there is 6 x 10 metre high statues depicting Ramesses II & Nefertari. This is very unique in Egyptian art, most of the time the Egyptian Queen would stand next to her King but would only be as tall as his knee's, it was very special to see them depicted as the same size, even if that size was greatly magnified to 10metres tall.
During the time of Egypt, Abu Simbel was buried under the shifting sands & had to be rediscovered, it wasn't until 1817 that a passageway was made tot he entrance of the temple.
Our guide explained to us about the ancient miracle of the solar alignment & then told us about the modern day miracle that started in 1959 to move the temple's and save them from the rising levels of the Aswan high dam. In 1964 a UNESCO multi million, multi national team of engineers, archeologists & construction experts began the challenging & delicate job of cutting 30 tons of the temple into manageable pieces, removing it from the cliff and relocating it to a safe location 200 metres away and 60 metres higher, before rebuilding it. Amazingly this huge project was achieved in only 4 years!
We stopped off for our usual buffet lunch, we were absolutely starving by this point and I'm unashamed that I had 2 plates of savoury & 1 plate of sweet food, before slowing down.
After lunch we boarded onto a boat similar to the one from the night before, again with a motor and headed down the nile to the temple of Philae, something I was very very excited to see! Philae is a temple for the goddess Isis, my favourite goddess, that is on the Agilkia Island, a natural island with a man made extension that sit's in the reservoir water of the Aswan low dam.
As was the case with the temple's of Abu Simbel, the Dam's of Aswan threatened the ancient Philae temple on it's original island & it remained flooded or submerged in water while damaging process's worsened from the ever increasing depths of the Nile. In 1960 a UNESCO group stepped in, had a smaller dam built around the temple allowing the water to be pumped out. Then the temple was cleaned & measured by a scientific process called photogrammetry, finally the temple's were dismantled to a manageable 40,000 pieces & moved to it's current island of Agilkia.
We are so glad that organisations such as UNESCO exist and are able to help preserve & save the modern day evidence of the ancient civilisations. The Philae temple was one of the biggest temples we had seen so far with a grand entry way featuring pillars & a huge entryway with carvings. Sam our guide, used this moment to tell us one of the Egyptians & one of my favourite stories about the god's.
It is a story about family betrayal and the murder of Osiris, by his brother Seth, the distress of his sister and wife Isis who goes to remarkable lengths to secretly find his body & become pregnant with his child, with the help from their other sister Nephthys, who is also pregnant with Osiris's child. Nephthys is married to her brother Seth, who killed Osiris & has to hide her pregnancy & the birth of the child. Isis will then go on to raise her own child and the child that Nephthys gives birth to & abandons, who is called Anubis. The child that Osiris and Isis have together is known as Horus & he grows up and eventually kills his uncle Seth to avenge his father. Sam uses members from our tour group to play out this story, in a very comical way, Tom is chosen to be the falcon god Horus.
The story is a lot more complicated and intricate than the extremely brief version, I just told.
The temple has many carvings depicting this story and other myths surrounding Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Horus & another Goddess I am quite fond of known as Bast or Bastet.
I was very grumpy to also see that some of the ancient carvings have been chiseled off, removing a lot of the features & identifying details, especially from the faces. Sam explains this was done by the early christian monks, known as coptic Monks who at times would hide in the temples of the ancient god's & passed the time by chiseling off the god's & even carving some ancient cross symbols into the walls. This would not be the last time we would see the destructive signs left over from the coptic christian monks.
After we had spent time walking through this vast temple, we hopped back onto the boat & were then taken to the hotel to pack a day bag & refresh in the pool, before boarding the traditional Felucca sailing boats that would be our home for the next 2 nights. The group of 33 is split into 2 groups and put on to 2 separate sailing boats. We have a 3rd boat which is a 2 storey motor boat with electricity capabilities and a toilet. This boat is fondly nicknamed the poo boat. It would also be the dancing boat and the backflipping into the Nile boat.
-Alli
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