Category: Aswan Attractions

Temple of Philae

In Aswan is the Temple of Philae. You can see the beauty of the Nile, the colours of the Nubians, and the temples at many different places. Many of the temples in Aswan were on islands, so when the Nile flooded, the water covered them.

Philae Island is one of Aswan’s most important islands. Because Isis was the goddess of the Island, there were many temples on it that were dedicated to her. During the time of the Ptolemies and the Romans, these temples were built. The Temple of Philae is a well-known temple on the Island.

How the Temple of Philae came to be

The Ptolemies were the ones who built the Temple of Philae. The Temple was built to honour the goddess Isis, who was the goddess of motherhood, healing, and giving birth. Her husband Osiris and son Horus were also honoured there.

The temple is very important because it is one of the few places where the old Egyptian religion stayed alive after Christianity came to Egypt, up until the year 550 A.D. The first Christians turned the temple into a church. There, they broke up and destroyed many of the statues of the old gods.

After the Lower Aswan Dam was built, the water level rose enough to cover the Island of Philae. Then area sank when the High Dam was being built, so it was moved to another island that was higher.

The Temple of Philae was moved.

The Temple is not where it used to be. The Temple was on Philae Island, but it was underwater because of the annual flood, and it stayed that way after the Lower Dam was built.

During the building of the High Dam, the Temple would be flooded and would likely be lost forever. In 1960, UNESCO broke up the Temple’s almost 40,000 stones and moved “the Island of Aguilkia” to where they were. The Temple was moved carefully, stone by stone.

How the Temple of Philae was Built

The temple was built in the style of the new Egyptian empire, but it also had some features from the Greco-Roman period, like the nilometer, which was used to measure the clarity of the Nile River and the level of the water during the annual flood.

At the front is a door that is 18 metres high. Then there are many different columns that lead to different rooms. There is also the Birth House, which is all about how Horus was born.

The walls are painted and are in better shape. The stories about Isis and Osiris are written on the walls. There are also reliefs from the Christian, Roman, and Egyptian times.

Mythology of the Temple: When Osiris married the goddess Isis, his brother Set killed him and cut him into pieces, according to the story.

Then Set gave the pieces of Osiris’s body to everyone in Egypt. Isis’s husband was dead, but she found his body and woke him up. Then Isis gave Seth a place to stay on the Isle of Philae.

Find out about the Temple of Philae.

You can go on a wonderful, well-planned trip with Egypt via travel. With our Egypt travel packages, you can also have a vacation you’ll never forget in the beautiful places of Egypt, from Cairo and Alexandria in Lower Egypt to a Nile cruise between Luxor and Aswan to see the sights in Upper Egypt.

High Dam of Aswan

Aswan Egypt’s “Nubia Egypt” is a great city. There are many temples and monuments in Aswan. The Nile River is where most of Egypt’s temples are located. Since ancient times, the Nile has flooded every year, making the land around it good for farming. However, as the flood levels rose, the crops were lost.

Then all of the temples fell down. So, in order to save the temples on the banks of the Nile, a dam had to be built. The High Dam is very important, and not just as a place for tourists to visit. It is also very important to the country as a whole.

How the Aswan High Dam came to be

In 1889, work on the first Aswan Dam, called the Lower Aswan Dam, began. In 1902, the Low Dam was done. The height of the Low Dam was 54 m, but it was later raised in two stages, from 1907 to 1912 and from 1929 to 1933.

In 1946, the Low Dam was about to break, so another dam was built 8 km upstream. During President Gamal Abd El-time Nasser’s in office, work on the new “High Dam of Aswan” began in 1952. At first, the US offered a loan of $270 million, but they took it back in the middle of 1956.

At the height of the Cold War, in 1958, the Soviet Union offered a $1.12 billion loan with 2% interest. In 1970, the building of the High Dam was done.

The Building of the High Dam in Aswan

13 km south of Aswan is where the High Dam is. It is 111 m tall and 3600 m long. It is 980 m wide at the bottom and 40 m wide at the top. Lake Nasser was made when the High Dam was built. It is thought to be the largest man-made lake in the world. Lake Nasser is 500 km long, 16 km wide, and 6 000 m2 in size.

The Aswan High Dam’s Good Points

The High Dam had an effect on the economy. It made a new fishing industry around Lake Nasser. The Dam has 12 generators that are each 174 megawatts. Because of this, it is an important source of hydroelectric power that provides half of Egypt’s electricity needs.

Ecological impact: The building of the Dam will have effects on the balance of the millennium, which will affect the animals, plants, and people’s economy. This is why some animal species went extinct.

Nearly 90,000 Nubians lost their homes when the Nasser Lake flooded after the High Dam was built.

What are the bad things that the Aswan High Dam does?

Because of filtration and evaporation, about 12 to 14 percent of the reservoir’s annual contribution is lost. Also, the reservoir’s storage capacity has gone down because sediments from the Nile River have filled it up.

Another effect on the environment is that when the dam was built, no one thought about how it would affect the wildlife and plants downriver.

There have been a lot of effects, like too much sediment in the water upstream, erosion downriver because the water doesn’t move as fast, the loss of animal species that moved along the river, and the salting of the Nile delta because the salty waters of the Mediterranean Sea seeped into the land from the coast to the mouth.

Also, the economy of the villages and the people who live there has been hurt because farmers have had to use almost a million tonnes of artificial fertilisers to make up for the nutrients that the flood and the sediments it carried, which are polluting the river, no longer give them.

Pesticides are getting into the river and making it dirty. In the same way, the number of fish has gone down, which has also hurt the economy.

Aswan Tours with Egypt via travel

The Unfinished Obelisk and the Temple of Philae are two great places to visit in Aswan that draw a lot of tourists. You can also cruise down the Nile to see the sights of Luxor and Aswan while enjoying the beautiful views of the pure Nile, or you can book one of our Egypt vacation packages to learn more.