 |
||||
|
September 27th-29th 2000:
They are wonderful to visit: like Roman copies of Greek statues, these temples are in much better condition than the originals from which they were copied.
It's hot in Aswan, and here in the Temple of Philae we suck on our Camelbacks to stay hydrated.
Ba, the God of Music. His Sacred Attribute was a rockin' set of earphones.
Philae's temple walls were hit especially hard by zealous early Christians. Here one can see the Coptic Cross on Isis' abdomen. Not to be outdone, the Muslims came along later and put their own symbols on her thigh. Ecumenical tattoos.
Aswan today feels like the last outpost of a great Empire. The Old Cataract Hotel is fit to welcome any Pasha or King.
While at the souq they could find whatever their harem desired.
The Aswan souq (market) was the most fun and characterful of all the souqs on the Nile. Kathleen tries on a galabiyya.
Built by Ramses II to inform those entering Egypt from the south of the might and power of Pharaoh, this monument once stood next to the flowing Nile. But the Nile shifted, Egypt shrank and desert sands flowed in. Over millennia this temple was lost to human knowledge. Rediscovered in 1813, only the leftmost head and the tip of a crown were visible.
Inside is a rare depiction of Pharaoh giving mercy to captives -- at the request of Ramses wife.
Ra is rightmost, followed by Ramses II as a god, then Amun. The leftmost god is Ptah, God of Darkness. His statue is never touched by the sun's rays.
That was when they discovered a crack in the granite. They had to walk away and leave it: The Unfinished Obelisk. |
 |
Home
Page || Meet
Kathleen & H. Woods || Purchase
Photographs Kathleen's Fine Art Photography || H. Woods' Reading Room Our Favorite Links || |
Five hundred years after the golden
era of pharonic building, Alexander the Great conquered
Egypt. Alexander soon died. The general Ptolemy quickly
established his own family line as the new pharaohs of
Egypt. They adopted Egyptian customs and began a program
of building temples in faithful pharonic style.
It is from Aswan that one
travels to Abu Simbel.
British archaeologists excavated at
the dawn of the twentieth century and revealed an
archeological treasure. With the coming of the High Dam
at Aswan, this entire monument was cut into blocks and
moved away from Lake Nasser's rising waters.
Ramses dedicated the smaller sister
Temple of Hathor to his wife Nefertari.
Ramses temple is aligned so that on
the 22nd of February and 22nd of October (Ramses
coronation and birth days) the sun's rays shine down the
Hypostyle Hall and illuminate these seated gods.
Back in Aswan we visited
the quarry of the pharaohs. Aswan is practically made of
granite, and Pharaoh's appetite for this hard stone
created a hard life for those who had to supply it. For a
thousand years during and after the Great Pyramids, the
Egyptians didn't possess metal tools hard enough to cut
granite. Instead they used stone ponders made of diorite
about the size of a man's skull. What surrounds this
giant obelisk behind Henry is a channel just wide enough
to support a gang of men wielding their stone beaters. An
hour's pounding can cut down a postage stamp sized area
of granite about an eight of an inch (2 mm). We can only
imagine the man-years of work that went into getting
this, the largest block of stone ever worked, to the
point where they were ready to hammer in wedges and break
it free of the earth.