Egypt: Day Ten, Part Two

The island of Philae

Doubling back toward Aswan, the bus drops us off at a dock where we take a boat across the smaller lake between the two dams, old and new.  There are several islands, and one of them is Philae.

       To save it from the rising waters, a cofferdam was built around it, the water pumped out and the temple raised piece by piece.  It’s been rebuilt on higher ground, on an island only a quarter mile from its original site.  Philae is Greek for “the end”, because it marked the southern limit of ancient Egypt (the end of the world).  There’s a story that goes with the island:  The daughter of a ruler fell in love with a poorer man.  Her father exiled her to the island of Philae.  Her lover searched far and wide for her, and the animals helped him because he was kind to them.  Finally, a crocodile gave him a ride to the island where she was hidden... and they lived happily ever after.

       This love story goes along with a temple to Isis, who lived her own love story involving her brothers Seth and Osiris and their sister Isis.  The part Ahmed tells us involves Seth having a magnificent sarcophagus made out of the finest Lebanese cedar and offering it to anyone who fit in it.  Many tried, but when Osiris got in, Seth had it sealed up and taken far away.  Isis searched until she found it and brought it back.  That only made Seth angrier, so he chopped the body of Osiris into fourteen pieces and cast them to the winds.  Isis again searched and searched, eventually finding all but one of them.  The one part missing was his phallus - because the Nile catfish ate it (and are still eating things in the Nile today, along with the perch, but hopefully not phalluses).  Ever the clever one, Isis made Osiris an artificial phallus. After which, Osiris became the god of the afterlife.  And that is why Philae’s temple is for the worship of Isis and of her son with Osiris, Horus.
       (I find it interesting that there’s a parallel between Seth and Osiris on the one hand and Cain and Abel on the other hand:  one son kills the other out of jealousy.  What differs is that the murderer is the younger son in the Egyptian myth but the older one in the Bible.  There’s also a parallel between fitting in the coffin and Cinderella’s slipper or the three bears' beds, but that’s a whole other story.)
       As long as we’re in mythology, Ahmed tells us the Egyptian creation myth.  In the beginning there was nothing (Nun), primal waters everywhere.  Then the creator god Atum created a mound that emerged from the nothing.  This story is related on the walls of the pyramids.  Again, a similarity with the Bible, and other mythologies, including those of the Ojibway tribe of North America (who also have a jealous brothers legend).
       But enough of phalluses; back to the island of Philae.  In addition to the Temple of Isis, there are other buildings from the period of Ptolemy V (181 BCE).  Unlike other temples, the temenos wall is missing here because it wasn't needed; the Nile provided the necessary protection.  There are also traces of the Copts, who hid here from the Romans, as they did elsewhere.  That explains the Coptic crosses everywhere, including on an altar they added, using one of the fallen stones.

Hathor's columns

       Also saved from the waters is a kiosk in honor of Roman emperor Trajan, a small building whose ceiling is long gone but is beautiful for its fourteen columns.  There’s also a small temple for Hathor, who took care of Horus - and she’s well-represented.
       I notice somewhere a piece of French graffiti:   le 13 ventose de l’an 7.  I don’t know why it’s there except that the date indicates a day in March of 1799, according to the calendar set up under the French Revolution.  That places it during Napoleon’s military campaign in Egypt, before he became Emperor of France.
      Starting in 1970, and over a decade, 38,000 pieces of the monuments on the island were disassembled in order to save them from the already rising waters of what is now Lake Nasser, created by the new Aswan High Dam.  Meanwhile, a new island was prepared, which took five years.  And then another five years were necessary to reassemble it all on the new site.  Originally the buildings were painted, but the paint is now gone because monuments were flooded by the Aswan Dam four months a year.
     The whole project is mind-boggling in its scope and cost.  It all fits together as if it had always been there.  I'm so glad this - like Abu Simbel we'll see tomorrow - wasn't lost forever, as some other monuments were.

Trajan's kiosk