Philae Temple at Aswan

After leaving the Aswan dams, we continued on in the bus to visit the Philae Temple. This temple would have been flooded when the dam was finished so it was moved to a nearby island.

Wharf area for tour boats to load passengers.

All tourist attractions have vendors aggressively pushing their wares. They don't tend to bother me much ( wonder why ) but they are especially aggressive with women. There are hundreds of them, all selling the same stuff.

The objects on the left are the symbol of Egypt.

There were dozens of these boats lined up but less than a dozen actually being used. The drop off in tourism has really hurt the people involved in the industry.

Our boat.

One vendor even hopped on board to try to sell stuff. There is no escape.

The skipper started up a very old smoky engine and we were soon underway. Another boat kept pace with us.

Looking back at the High Dam.

The Temple of Philae.

To be honest, there is too much information to take in too quickly so I won't write too many comments. However this temple is mostly about the Ptolemy family as well as the gods Isis and Osiris and depicts their stories.

After a while, you recognize the same themes at several temples. In this case a ruler is smiting his enemies with an upraised club. He is holding their heads in his left hand.

This pre-dates the Maltese cross by a long time..

Michael leaning on an altar from the time when Christians used the temple.

The altar which is made out of the local granite.

The symbol of Egypt.

For quite some time, I felt like I was gazing at a page of sheet music covered with strange symbols. After a while you start to recognize the same symbols appearing in all the temples.

Another smaller temple off to one side.

The sticks out in the water mark the site of the island from where the temple was removed. Essentially, they cut the temple up into blocks, numbered each block and rebuilt it on a prepared piece of nearby land.