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We took the train from Cairo to Aswan - a trip of 14 hours, running up along the Nile. Nice train. Long trip. Leaving early in the morning, by the evening we and the other passengers were pretty tired. I kept some cranky kids amused with balloon animals.
Aswan is on the Nile, and a pretty town, although the cruise ships - the "ships of fools" as we called them - were tied up non-stop along the river so that you could barely see it. Our hotel, the Isis-Corniche, was a pretty one, with a chilly swimming pool, several restaurants, and rooms set cabana-style around the pool.
One day we visited the Aswan High Dam and the granite quarry the source of much of the granite in the temples and monuments all along the Nile. Still in place is a flawed obelisk.
And still in place and functioning is Lake Nasser, formed by the High Dam in 1968. But the dam's presence is a mixed blessing. It has brought electrification all along the Nile. Farming can be more predictable, since the yearly floods don't have to be taken into consideration. But the silt that used to bring nutrients to the farmlands is backing up behind the dam, resulting in a need for farmers to use chemical fertilizers. And as the silt backs up, of course, the lake will fill. Meanwhile, the constant higher water level means that monuments along the Nile are being damaged by salts leaching out of the ground and into their structure - this is very noticeable at Karnak.
Our first morning in Aswan we were taken down to the dock to board our first felucca, to sail part-way across the Nile to Elephantine Island. The southern part of the island is still undergoing excavation - New Kingdom temples are great to see. On the way there we passed the First Cataract of the Nile, and once we arrived visited a great Nilometer - where, back before the Nile was dammed, the measurement of the river could predict how high the Nile would flood downstream.
From the excavation area we walked through a "Nubian Village" - Aswan is at the northern end of Nubia, and a lot of villagers who had lived along the edge of the Nile where it was flooded when the Aswan dam was built have been relocated to areas such as Elephantine.
The traditional mud-brick houses with charming decorations, the urns as they have been in all eternity.
The felucca took us from Elephantine Island across to the west side of the Nile and a camel ride to St. Simeon, a 6th Century Coptic monastery. In the disance we could see the Mausoleum of the Aga Khan. As ever, just a few hundred yards above the Nile, where there is no irrigation, the desert closes in.
The monastery was quiet, empty, considerably more interesting than I'd thought it would be. I guess it was BUILT as a monastery and Christian church, whereas in many of the temples you see signs that parts of them had been turned into Christian chapels, with the ancient Egyptian paintings defaced.
Like Abu Simbel, the Temple of Philae was raised above the dam and Is now on Its own little Island. You can see a lot of defacing of the relief and stutes here, done In ancient times by whoever was In power against whoever wasn't.
Most of the work was done In Roman times when Isis was very popular, and construction took place over several hundred years.
The temples at Abu Simbel were built on the bank of the Nile about 150 miles south of Aswan, by Ramses II, who lived roughly 1279-1212 BC. One goes there by air (ONLY, in 2001) and hopes to get on the flight that gets there by dawn, to see the changes the rising sun brings to the temple. They turn from a flaming gold to a dull red-brown, and at the solstice the depths of the temple blaze forth and the inner sanctuary is immersed in light. The statues at the farthest depths of the temple are Illuminated by the rising sun at the time of the solstice, and since we were there not long before, we could see them almost at the light they would get on February 22.
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The temples were moved up from the bank of the Nile in 1968, to accommodate the rising levels of the water as the Aswan Dam was completed.
The hill in which they now repose looks puny but nonetheless the statues at the entrance and within are impressive, and because the interior is still enclosed - not exposed to the sky as that in most of the other temples, it seems quiet and almost holy, in spite of the plane-load of tourists within.
The temples were moved up from the bank of the Nile in 1968, to accommodate the rising levels of the water as the Aswan Dam was completed.
The hill in which they now repose looks puny but nonetheless the statues at the entrance and within are impressive, and because the interior is still enclosed - not exposed to the sky as that in most of the other temples, it seems quiet and almost holy, in spite of the plane-load of tourists within.
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