Aswan in the Blink of an Eye

Journal: 21 April 2002

Today was our group excursion around Aswan, in which we would see all of Aswan’s tourist attractions in five hours (!!?). I shudder to think that this is the usual amount time allotted to most people who visit the town as part of a cruise. But that’s just the way it has to be and at least it gives a flavour of the place, albeit a rushed one. We were on the coach and on our way to the High Dam by 8.00am.

We drove onto the eastern end of the long dam past the Egyptian-Russian friendship monument, a modern concrete architectural sculpture called the ‘Lotus Tower’ that didn’t seem to bear any resemblance to a lotus to me. Our coach stopped in the middle of the dam and we were given the statistical facts and figures by a specialist guide. The Egyptians are very proud of this gigantic feat of engineering, the construction material used on the dam is said to equal that of 17 Great Pyramids. Aswan High Dam is a huge wall of rocks which captures the world’s longest river, the Nile, in the one of the world’s largest reservoirs, Lake Nasser. The first dam, in an endeavour to curb the annual Nile flood that had enabled agricultural fertilization for thousands of years, was built just to the north of here in 1889 and was subsequently raised several times as it could not cope with the volume of water coming down through Sudan from the Ethiopian highlands. In 1970 a new High Dam, called Saad el-Aali in Arabic, was completed after ten years work mostly with Russian funding and engineering expertise. The benefits to Egypt in controlling the annual floods are said to have raised agricultural productivity by providing constant and much-needed water for irrigation as well as preventing damage to the flood plain, but the downside of this is in the ever-increasing use of chemical fertilizers by the farmers, which in turn causes a great deal of pollution. Meanwhile, down in the Nile Delta the land is slowly sinking because of erosion due to the decrease in river sediments. Although the construction of the High Dam has provided Egypt with a regulated 85% of its water, the ownership of the water itself is currently disputed by the countries it passes through before reaching the Egyptian border. Other benefits to Egypt include the provision of about a half of Egypt’s power supply from the dam’s hydro-electric station and it has also improved navigation along the river by keeping the water flow consistent. The 550km length of Lake Nasser holds 169 billion cubic metres of water and it was promise of this vast build-up of water that was responsible for the relocation of more than 90,000 Nubians, both Egyptian and Sudanese who had lived along the Nubian shores. It was not only the people who suffered, but the ancient monuments too had to be surveyed then relocated or removed before the land was flooded. The most famous of these was the Temple of Rameses II at Abu Simbel, which was taken down stone by stone and rebuilt on dryer land in what has to be the world’s most impressive archaeological rescue operation. Under the auspices of UNESCO, twenty-four major Nubian monuments were salvaged and re-erected, with some of the lesser temples given as gifts to countries around the world who contributed to the scheme. One relocated temple, Kalabsha could be seen from the other side of the dam and with a long lens I managed to grab a few pictures. The Temple and other monuments on the site is due to be open to visitors soon we are promised.

Another of the temples to be affected by the construction of the dam was our next port of call, the Philae Temple of Isis, now reconstructed on nearby Agilika Island. As I have already been to Philae several times before and time today was so short, I quickly detached myself from the group to take photographs and after their tour, Hala came and pointed out a couple of reliefs I hadn’t seen before. In a building next to the Nilometer is a relief depicting the source of the Nile and also an interesting scene about harvest and inundation. I rushed around the temple and the outer structures looking at things I wanted to see again but all to soon it was time to leave. The journey by boat to Philae is one of the nicest parts of a visit here and on the way back the boat took us around the island past the towering Trajan’s Kiosk – always a lovely view.

The visit to the obligatory papyrus factory on the way back was at least a change from the perfume palaces I had previously seen in Aswan. We were back on the Commodore and I thought it would soon be time for lunch, but we were ushered straight out again with Hala for an hour’s trip around the islands in a motor boat. About 20 of us crowded into the large boat and we were speeded around the river to a musical accompaniment of drums and Nubian songs from the little crew, including that well-known old favourite, ‘O Aleyli…’. While this was good fun, I took a moment to gaze longingly at the lovely vista of the sand-covered Nobles tombs on the West Bank wishing there was time to visit them today. Then the motor-boat trip was over and we were all back on the cruise ship having lunch while the captain manoeuvred us out into the river to begin our return journey north back towards Luxor.

The afternoon was restful and uneventful as we all lounged on the upper deck once more enjoying the slowly passing scenery presented on either bank of the river. Just as the sun was setting I got excited because I saw Gebel Silsela with its carved and quarried rock terraces high on the West Bank and rushed for my camera – but we had passed before I could get a picture. Another place I’d love to visit one day.

The evening’s entertainment came in the form of a treasure hunt. We were divided up into named teams of six – ours was the ‘Eyes of Horus’. As I have taken part in a couple of these treasure hunts before, and therefore knew what to expect, there was a bit of a scramble between the passengers we knew, who wanted to be in my team. The items the teams had to find, enact or improvise in a given amount of time were as follows:

Three tickets for temples
A Pyramid
An Egyptian flag
Ladies sexy underwear (modelled)
A man dressed as a woman
A woman dressed as a man
A camel
5 Arabic words (spoken)
An umbrella (not a sun-shade)
A real live belly dancer
A T-shirt from a previous holiday destination
A chocolate bar
A scene from ‘Titanic’
A song written and performed about this cruise

We divided up the list between team members, each allocated certain tasks. You would not believe how difficult it is to find some of these items on a cruise ship. The ‘judges’ were made up of the captain and the three Egyptian tour leaders and after they’d managed to stop laughing they just had to award the first prize to the team who’d provided the best entertainment. But the ‘Eyes of Horus’ came second and we’d all had a hilarious time. The evening flew by and at Midnight we were passing once more through the lock at Esna.

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A Taste of Nubia

Journal: Saturday 20 April 2002

Our cruise ship the Commodore, was berthed on the east bank of the Nile next to a row of motor boats for hire. Today was scheduled as a free day in Aswan for us because some of the passengers had gone to Abu Simbel on a pre-dawn flight. On a previous cruise I’d been south to the Nubian temple of Rameses II and couldn’t again justify the cost of this extra trip for so little time there – merely and hour or two, though I would have loved to have gone. Over breakfast Mary and I discussed what we would like to do with our day. She wanted to go sailing in a felucca, but there was hardly any wind this bright still morning, unusual for Aswan, although it may pick up this afternoon I told her. A small group of passengers at our table were talking about going to a Nubian Village on the West Bank so Mary and I opted to join them. I suggested that we could perhaps call at the botanical gardens of Kitchener’s Island on the way as it was somewhere I had wanted to see and I went out and negotiated a motor boat with a captain called Ibrahim for the six of us.

We motored through a narrow passage, between the massive rocks of Elephantine and the Old Cataract Hotel where my son Kit had almost crashed while sailing a felucca once. Soon we were pulling in to the quay of the small oval-shaped island that was given to Lord Horatio Kitchener in the 1890s for his part in the Sudanese campaigns, while he was the Egyptian Consul. A keen gardener, Kitchener constructed a botanical garden, importing many exotic plants and trees which flourished in the mild Aswan climate. Today, the island, which is now known as Plantation Island or by its Arabic name Geziret el-Nabatat, is a paradise of shade trees and vibrant exotic plants and I hoped we would get a glimpse of some of the colourful birds that are said to inhabit the island. It was a pleasant stroll along the neat paved paths that wound through well-tended plant beds. One of our group was a keen birdwatcher and he pointed out chiffchaffs and spectacled warblers, wheatears and shrikes – most of the birds he mentioned I’d never heard of. In 1928 the island, under the Ministry of Irrigation, was turned into an experimental station for plants from equatorial regions and alongside the native trees and plants of Aswan such as the sycamore fig and the date palm, many trees were brought from abroad and cultivated for use in the timber industry. Experimental oil and fruit crops were also propagated on the island by the Ministry of Agriculture. The island is now owned by the Egyptian government and there is still a biological research station at its southern end which is not open to visitors. We walked as far as we could go, to where a little cafeteria overlooked the water, but we had no time to stay as our Captain Ibrahim waited with our boat to take us further downriver.

The village of Nag’ Seheil Gharb is as its name suggests, just to the west of Seheil Island towards the First Cataract. As Ibrahim piloted us through the river he carried on the ornithology lesson by pointing out hoopoes, night herons, a black kite, kingfishers diving for fish and the inevitable white egrets. On this part of the river a huge volume of water bubbles boils and churns over rocks that have been carved over time into wonderful shapes, towards the once-treacherous cataracts at the old dam. We were met on the bank by a hoard of children who grabbed at our hands and our clothes and dragged us up the steep dunes towards the village. They all had something to sell of course and most were toting large baskets of wooden dolls and camels they had made, Nubian crochet hats, bright cotton scarves and even tiny mummified crocodiles. In the village itself narrow alleyways with a scattering of goats wound between beautifully decorated houses, dazzling white or multi-coloured in the morning sun. I was surprised at how clean it all looked. Doorways and windows were framed by typical Nubian painting – geometric patterns and colourful shapes that added glamour to the tiny houses. A self-appointed guide soon attached himself to us and after we all declined a camel ride, he insisted we went for a drink in a ‘typical Nubian house’ – obviously one kept for the purpose of visiting tourists. What did we have to lose (except money) and most of us were curious to see inside one of the pretty houses. The house he took us to was quite large with a sandy courtyard lined with stone mastaba benches covered in colourful striped woven rugs. Someone went off to make our tea and while we waited several of us got into the spirit of the visit by agreeing to (rather reluctantly on my part) have henna tattoos. We were assured that they were not permanent, lasting only a week or two and they were very well done. Mine was an intertwining of flowers and vines on my ankle and looked quite attractive, but was something I would never dream of having at home. All of this took rather a long time, but as we went back out into the street the little crowd of children were still waiting patiently with their baskets of goodies and a few of our party gave in and bought some of the toys. The mummified baby crocodiles had no takers!

We were back on the Commodore for in time for lunch, the journey home being much quicker as we were motoring with the current rather than against it, around the more direct western side of Elephantine Island. Mary still wanted her felucca trip, so before going back on board we arranged a sailing boat to Elephantine for the afternoon, which satisfied both of us. I had never had time to get to the island before, so the combination of a restful afternoon sail along with a quick tour of the monuments was perfect.

The early afternoon sun was scorching on Elephantine. A guide showed us around the monument area, which included the largest surviving structure, the Temple of the ram-headed creator-god Khnum, at the southern end of the island, which dates from New Kingdom to Roman times. A granite gateway built by Alexander is the only large structure of the temple remaining intact and the jumbles mass of ruins behind it are difficult to identify due to ongoing excavation. At the front of the temple, which is oriented east to west, a restored pavement surrounds fragmentary remains of columns built by Rameses II. This leads down to a Roman quay that overlooks the river. Further north, behind the museum building there is the site of a small restored Temple of the goddess Satis, the consort of Khnum, built in the time of Hatshepsut and Tuthmose III. The reconstruction here by the German Archaeological Institute has been sensitively done, with the few remaining reliefs supplemented by drawings and I thought the delicate colourful paintings in this temple were beautiful. The temple was built over Middle Kingdom remains beneath different floor levels as well as a Dynasty VI temple. The latest structure to emerge from the excavations at the Satis Temple is an Early Dynastic shrine which we saw in a crypt-like area below the reconstructed temple. It was a little flooded by water and very dark, but it intrigued me as this must be one of the earliest remaining shrines in Egypt. Probably one of the most popular structures on the island, just in front of the museum, is the nilometer. This was one of the earliest known nilometers and was used by the ancient Egyptians to measure the height of the Nile floods in order to forecast the level of inundation and so gauge taxes for the coming harvest. Ninety steps lead steeply down to the river from the entrance. When we had finished the tour our guide invited us to join him in a glass of tea under the shade of a trellis, which we gratefully accepted on this hot day. Finally we visited the museum, a rather dark and dingy set of rooms that I thought could do with a good clean, but there were some very nice objects there. Eventually we were back on the felucca, sailing on the river and trying to catch a glimpse of the many boulder inscriptions naming the kings and governors who have been associated with Elephantine, once the Egyptian frontier to Nubia.

During our return journey our ebony-skinned captain chatted with us about Aswan being Nubian, not Egyptian and it certainly feels that way. There is an easy-going atmosphere to the place that is apparent in the gentle breeze, the light-hearted way these people treat tourists and the ever-present reggae music that was softly playing from a cassette deck on the boat. Back on the Commodore once more, we had a couple of hours before dinner so Mary and I decided to take a caleche to the suq, now that the day was cooling down. After dinner, our Nubian day was continued with great local music and dancing (by members of the crew) and entertainment by a ‘witchdoctor’.

Aswan by Bus

Journal: Friday 22 October 1999

The 7.00am bus to Aswan was a big mistake. Jenny and I had shunned the air-conditioned ‘Superjet’ as being too touristy and instead, bought tickets on the less expensive but slower ‘Kul‘, or local bus. The tickets cost us LE6 (60p) return for a journey lasting about three hours. Taking our places in the queue (actually more like a free-for-all) we spotted the empty wide seat at the back of the bus which promised plenty of leg-room and headed for this, settling our backpacks and cameras around our feet. The bus was quite full when it set off and making ourselves comfortable among the Egyptian families with their ’luggage’ consisting of carrier bags and cardboard cartons tied with string, sacks of corn and live chickens or ducks in palm-leaf crates crammed into the overhead luggage racks, we sat back ready to enjoy the journey. It didn’t take us long to realise why none of the locals had sat in the spacious back seat which we shared with a lady from New Zealand. I was sitting next to the emergency door and every time the bus stopped or swerved (which was frequently) the seat flew off its base and deposited me on the floor at the bottom of the stairwell. I eventually managed to wedge myself in with my feet up on top of a hatch but after a few minutes discovered that my legs were resting on what seemed to be an engine cover that was burning hot, with vents giving off nauseating diesel fumes. There were no opening windows and the stuffy air inside the bus was stiflingly hot. The engine noise and grating gears of the ancient rattling bus, loud Arabic music and raised voices of the passengers did not make for a tranquil journey. By the time we arrived in Aswan after seemingly stopping to pick up and drop passengers and their animals in every little town along the Nile, we both felt quite ill.

After some fresh air and a restorative cup of coffee near the bus station we were feeling better, so Jenny and I negotiated a taxi to Philae Port for LE20. We were heading for the Temple of Isis, which was moved from Philae to Agilika Island after the building of the old Aswan Dam. At the port, we had to negotiate for a boat to take us to the island and bring us back again, eventually settling on a small motor boat piloted by a young Nubian called Ibrahim. For LE35 he said he would wait and bring us back from the island in two hours. At Mid-day the sun at its high-point was scorching with not even a breeze to ruffle the waves on the river water, but the temple itself was almost deserted. Most sensible tourists had gone back to Aswan for lunch. The sleeping guards and tourist police took no notice of us and we had a lovely hassle-free couple of hours wandering all over the island before hurrying back to the dock and our waiting boatman, who we found also fast asleep under a heap of blankets in the bottom of his boat. Bless him!

Back in town, the taxi dropped us off at the New Nubian Museum which I visited when I was in Aswan with my son a year ago. Unfortunately it was closed when we got there, so Jenny and I walked down the hill to the Old Cataract Hotel for tea – I had told my friend how lovely it was to sit out on the terrace overlooking Elephantine Island, another happy memory from last year. To my surprise, the policeman on the gate wouldn’t let us in, telling us that now only residents were allowed to have tea on the terrace. This has always been a favourite place for tourists and I have been several times before, but no amount of smiling, speaking a bit of Arabic or even pleading would change his mind. Eventually, after baksheesh was produced, he agreed to let us have a quick peek inside the hotel because Jenny so wanted to see it, but he sent someone to come and look for us before our allotted five minutes were up. We decided that we must look even more scruffy and dishevelled than we had thought.

To kill some time we walked through the bazaar along the whole length of Aswan, savouring the flavour of Africa in this southernmost Egyptian town. In ancient times it was from here that emissaries of the pharaohs left on the journey into Nubia, where they could obtain rich sources of gold and Nubia itself was the passage from Egypt to the exotic African lands beyond. Many pharaohs built small temples and fortresses along the banks of the Nile in Nubia and exported ebony, ivory, incense and precious metals and minerals back to Egypt, as well as Nubian slaves. Aswan is still different from the rest of Egypt – a vibrancy and warmth of colour can be found here which really makes it feel like a gateway to Africa. Eventually we found ourselves near the railway station and not relishing a return journey on the infernal bus, we booked first class tickets on the night train back to Luxor.

After a quick bite to eat in one of the many restaurants on the Corniche, it was back to the Nubian Museum, which by 5.30pm was open again and we spent a couple of hours wandering around this wonderful cool place looking at the artefacts and reading the very informative history-boards. There is so much to see here, especially outside in the gardens, that we ran out of time and had to jump in a taxi to get back to the railway station to catch our train at 8.00pm. The first class ticket cost us all of LE22 each (a little over £2.00) – but what a luxury and we both agreed was worth every last piastre!

Expedition to Philae Temple

Journal entry for Sunday 1 November 1998

On Sunday morning Kit and I were up early and leaving our bags in the hotel reception to collect later, we took a taxi to Philae Port. I had been to Philae several times before, but only with a tour group, so this visit was a journey into the unknown, because from the port we had to negotiate for a motor boat to take us to the Island of Agilika, where Philae Temple rose above the glittering waters of the widest part of the river like a magnificent vision. It was still early and we were lucky that there were few tourists about so that the competition to take us was quite fierce. We negotiated a fare of LE30 for the boat to take us to the island, wait for a couple of hours and bring us back. I didn’t have any idea what the going rate for this trip should be but we were happy to pay what was asked. There were no groups on the island at this time of day and for once the temple was almost deserted. It was bliss to wander the vast columned halls in peace, taking our time to study and photograph the reliefs. To our amazement our boatman was still there to take us back to port when we were ready to go (I had heard stories of people being abandoned on the island).

A taxi back to Aswan took us to the bazaar and we walked along the main street looking at the brightly coloured stalls. I bought some spices, one of the things Aswan is famous for and Kit bought some trousers, a Nubian hat and a darabuka, the kind of Egyptian hand-drum he had seen played on the Corniche. We then spent an hour looking for a suitable bag for the drum, eventually finding a perfect hand-woven bag in a fixed-price shop at the end of the Suq.

By now it was lunchtime though we seemed to have already done so much. After another half hour searching for a small temple of Isis that I was destined not to find for many more years, we found ourselves at the southern end of the Corniche, so I suggested we go to the Old Cataract Hotel for lunch on the terrace overlooking the ruins on the Island of Elephantine. It was lovely to sit there with a band of Egyptian musicians playing in the background like an old fashioned palm court orchestra and I could have happily spent the rest of the afternoon there, but Kit wanted to take another felucca trip. Walking back along the riverfront we met Captain Nasser from the previous day and had an hour sailing on his boat ‘Greenland’ – this time in a more relaxed mode as the wind was not so strong. The songs of Bob Marley, as heard on an old tape player on a felucca, will forever remind me of a chilled-out afternoon on the Nile at Aswan.

The sun was setting over hill of Qubbet el-Hawa as we ate an early dinner in a riverside restaurant named, for some reason, the Mona Lisa and after calling at the hotel to collect our bags we made our way to the railway station. Aswan Corniche is quite long and we must have walked miles along its uneven pavements in the past two days. The train was only half an hour late and we arrived back in Luxor at 11.30pm, a time of night when the streets are still busy. It had been a lovely weekend away, but Luxor was home and we just had to call in at the Amoun restaurant for hot chocolate before making our way back across to the West  Bank and the Gezira Hotel.

Aswan Weekend

Journal entry for Saturday 31 October 1998

Once again Kit and I had made use of our ISIC cards, this time to buy half-price train tickets to Aswan, splashing out all of LE 15 (about £1.50) to travel first class. We were at Luxor railway station bright and early to catch the 6.30am train, which for reasons unexplained, left Luxor at 8.30am, and arrived in Aswan three and a half hours later. We hadn’t booked a hotel so we had to spend the next hour or two trawling the town for a cheap place to stay. These were few and far between, and we looked at several dismal places before eventually settling for a small Egyptian hotel called the Philae, on the Corniche. This was very basic but reasonably clean and relatively inexpensive. The nicest thing about my room was the little balcony with a beautiful Nile view and I didn’t discover the downside of noisy all-night traffic until much later.

We dropped our bags and went straight out to explore. My long-haired ‘hippy’ son immediately felt at home in Aswan. The town is much more laid back than Luxor with reggae music coming from every riverside cafe and Rastafarian guys with their dreadlocks and multicoloured oversized hats, sitting in groups on the pavements playing drums. Kit would have sat down to join them but I managed to lure him away with the promise of a felucca trip, my ulterior motive being to cross to the West Bank tombs. We struck a deal with a captain called Nasser on his felucca called ‘Greenland’ and he took us over to the opposite bank where the sand-covered hills are strew with the rock-cut tombs of high-status officials of the Old and Middle Kingdom  I didn’t count the steep steps leading to the upper level of the cemetery – but there were a lot!

Beginning at the southern end of the upper terrace we visited the six tombs which were open to visitors, these mostly dating to Dynasty VI, a period that is poorly represented for accessible decorated tombs. They were badly preserved but quite different from the New Kingdom Luxor tombs, so were well worth seeing for their fine examples of hieroglyphic texts detailing the careers of their owners as well as scenes of daily life in the earlier periods. My favourite tomb and probably the best preserved, belonged to Sarenput II, Overseer of the Priests of Khnum and Commander of the Garrison at Elephantine, dated to the reign of Amenemhet II of Dynasty XII. In his colourful biographical text I found an unusual hieroglyph of an elephant, which I had not seen before. Perched on the top of the hill above the ancient cemetery is the domed tomb of a Muslim prophet which gives the hill its local name, Qubbet el-Hawa or ‘Dome of the Winds’ and which can be seen from just about all over Aswan.

Having accomplished my mission and worn myself out climbing up and down those sand-covered steps and into the deep tombs, we were back on felucca ‘Greenland’ for a trip around Elephantine Island. Kit was now in his own element (i.e. on a boat) and he had found a kindred spirit in Nasser. While I lay back on the bench cushions for a nice relaxing sail, Nasser and Kit competed with each other to see who could steer the boat closest to the rocks around the island, veering away at the last minute without actually crashing into them. There were one or two very close calls and my goodness, I hadn’t realised that feluccas could move so fast!

Nasser dropped us off at the northern end of the Corniche near the Old Cataract Hotel because we wanted to get to the New Nubian Museum before it closed. We had hired Nasser’s boat for over three hours and it had cost LE 60 for two of us for a really lovely afternoon. I yet hadn’t been to the new museum, which was opened only last year, in 1997 and it was well worth seeing if only for its beautiful Nubian-style architecture, nestled into the hillside. The site covers 50,000 square metres of landscaped gardens which are divided up into different sections with many outdoor exhibits. Inside the museum a flight of stairs leads down from street level to the entrance of the temperature and light controlled exhibition space, with an 8m high sandstone statue of Rameses II as the focal point. We were led by informative history boards around the exhibits in a chronological order, beginning with the Prehistoric, through the Pharaonic era to Graeco-Roman, Coptic and Islamic periods of art. The exhibition space itself was airy, well-lit and almost empty of visitors, but we had only two hours before the museum closed, not nearly enough time to see everything.

Kit and I were tired but we both felt that we had had a very productive and enjoyable day. We walked back along the Corniche to our hotel, stopping to eat in a riverside restaurant while looking out over the inky river towards the now-floodlit sand dunes of Qubbet el-Hawa on the West Bank.

The Old Cataract Hotel

Journal: Wednesday 13 November 1996

Named after the first Nile cataract, the rocky un-navigable part of the river, the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan is probably most famous to the English as the place which is said to have inspired Agatha Christie to write her novel ‘Death on the Nile’ in the 1930s. Later the early scenes from the movie starring Peter Ustinov were filmed here. We had been told that having tea on the terrace overlooking the Nile is a must-do when in Aswan, so I decided to visit it with a couple from the cruise boat. We took a caleche along the Corniche and arrived at the palm-lined drive of the hotel, to be greeted by a doorman wearing an elaborate embroidered red uniform and a fez. The extensive gardens were very beautiful and the long curved building itself is a colourful pinkish-orange decorated with white contrasting paintwork. Stepping into the hotel was like walking back in time to an Edwardian era where I felt like a colonial traveller entering a sultan’s palace.

The hotel was constructed for Thomas Cook, who had recently introduced his grand Nile cruises. Opening in 1899 at the heyday of British imperialism, with a ceremony attended by the Khedive of Egypt, Winston Churchill and Lord and Lady Cromer, it quickly became a favourite of British and  European upper classes, royal families and other world dignitaries. Over the next two centuries many important people have spent their leisure time at the Old Cataract, including the Egyptian King Farouk and some even have suites named after them. Howard Carter also stayed here after the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. We were given a brief tour of the hotel, stopping at the suite where Agatha Christie had stayed, and peeping into the legendary ‘1902 Restaurant’, a former domed ballroom decorated in Moorish style. I preferred the foyer however, with its marble floors, key-shaped arched doorways, velvet drapes and antique furniture. It was almost like visiting a museum, the old-world atmosphere seeped from every corner, though I have to say it didn‘t feel quite Egyptian, rather an Englishman‘s idea of oriental décor. Though dressed reasonably smartly, I felt I should have worn a tea-gown as we stepped out onto the terrace at last. To one side a small band of musicians played soft Egyptian music to the accompaniment of the water lapping against the rounded boulders below the terrace. It was such a perfect and romantic setting. We sat and watched the large white-sailed feluccas tacking in the strong breeze backwards and forwards between the hotel and Elephantine Island, which is directly opposite the hotel. I felt I could almost reach out and touch the ruins on opposite bank. We drank our tea, served in white china cups and lingered to watch the sun slide down towards the golden dunes on the West Bank. The granite boulders of Elephantine had begun to turn red and the feluccas were heading homewards as we left the hotel to walk back to our boat. I felt as though I had stepped out of time for those couple of hours of pampered luxury. An experience I will not forget.

Philae Sound and Light

Journal: Tuesday 12 November 1996

The storm of the previous night had cleared by morning and we had had a fine day. I went to Philae Temple with my group, my second visit there, and saw much more than I had last year, with a slightly greater knowledge of what I was looking at. The sheer magnificence of the setting still took my breath away.

Having enjoyed the Sound and Light show at Karnak so much last year, I decided to go to Philae again in the evening to see the Sound and Light with a small group from the boat. The motor boat crossing to Agilika Island was quite magical in the darkness with twinkling lanterns bobbing and swinging as the boat rocked towards the jetty. It was difficult to remember that Philae temples were rescued from the rising waters between the Old and New Dams as recently as 1980 and reconstructed on this island. An Egyptian poet, Ahmed Shawki, had called for the rescuing of the temples in the early years of the 20th century and was saddened enough to write a poem about its plight:

O palaces passing away
Tears are shed
As demise is your fate.
You are a line
While Egypt is a book
How could such a book be blurred?
I the spokesman of history,
Safeguards Egypt’s glory.
That is Egypt’s honour.

We climbed up the steps from the jetty and assembled between the columns in the courtyard before the first pylon in the Temple of Isis. The lights dimmed and the voices in the night began, hailing the gods of the Nile, calling on Hapi to ‘Come forth from your cavern…’.  Another voice implored ‘O Nile, raise your voice, let it thunder forth!’ Suddenly there was a huge flash of lightning behind the pylon followed quickly by a terrific roll of thunder. We all looked at each other, wondering at the amazing special effects. But this was not part of the show – the storm was for real! It carried on for the next half hour as the dialogue between Isis and the Nile unfolded. A chorus of female voices were almost drowned out by the rumbling of thunder as they hailed Isis, ‘Mistress of Nubia…. reigning over fire, wind and lightning‘. This was becoming spooky and I found it difficult to follow the story as I was so busy watching this incredible impromptu light show. I cannot describe how magical the temple looked lit up by forks of lightning bouncing off its columns and gateways. As we walked through the pylon into the temple the voice of the Nile spoke, ‘And you who hear my voice, you who have come from the four corners of the earth to admire Egypt’s treasure, come, you too may enter the Temple of Isis, the immortal goddess’.

Act two told us the legend of Isis, Osiris and Seth (I had a feeling this was another of Seth’s storms!). As we moved on through the hypostyle hall and past the Temple of Hathor, the storm too gradually moved on and away across the lake. The coloured lights of the show took over and we took our places on seats in front of the Kiosk of Trajan. Luckily we had no rain and the night was still mild as we sat and listened to the final act of the show, describing the original building begun by Nectanebo, the last Egyptian pharaoh and the later re-use by Christians. From early Islamic times we were told the tale of Anas el-Wagud who fell in love with Zahrat, daughter of the Vizier. Her father imprisoned her on Philae Island to keep the lovers apart, but all was well in the end as she escaped and the couple were married. A sheikh’s tomb was constructed in the middle of old Philae Island. We heard of Napoleon, who visited here, of Champollion who played his part in deciphering the history on the temple walls and of the feat of saving the temple from the waters of the Nile. To finish we heard the voice of the poet Shawki:
‘At the edge of the desert, Philae is born again, comes to life in its eternal beauty, like a fabulous mirage…’