Philae Temple and Aswan High Dam

We awoke at 6 am for our last day of travel in Egypt with the Road Scholars Beyond the Pharaohs tour. This has been a fantastic trip, and we have learned so much. The group, Ramses family, has been a very close group; Eman has been an informative and patient leader; and, of course, we always appreciate the time that we get to spend with Mark and Cindy.

Hatshepsut's Unfinished Obelisk

Our luggage was out for the porters early since this was our last time on the Steigenberger Legacy. The early wake up call wasn’t a problem since we were up early as usual to greet the day. Like at home, the sunrise is the best part of the day, and we don’t like to miss it. We watched seagulls feeding on the leftover breads that the crew tossed overboard. There was an interesting mix of gulls, ducks and geese around the ship.

We started our day with breakfast in the ship’s dining area. I enjoyed the foul, a common Egyptian breakfast of fava beans, for the last time as well as other local breakfast items. We were pleased that the meals as part of this tour have been Egyptian foods. We can get familiar American foods once we are back home, but until we return to Egypt, we are unlikely to ever have an opportunity to have foods that people here have every day. We have especially enjoyed the breads and their toppings. On Eman’s suggestion, we would have the Egyptian pie (feteer), layers of phyllo and butter, with something sweet (honey or molasses) and something salty (feta cheese or tahini). We had pita at most or all meals and have enjoyed them a great deal especially since they have been freshly made for us.

Unfinished obelisk in Aswan's quarry

Once breakfast was finished, we congregated in the lobby of the Steigenberger Legacy for our last day of adventure in Egypt. We identified our bags outside the bus so they would follow us to Cairo and ultimately home. We then boarded the bus for our tour of attractions in the Aswan area. Our first stop was the unfinished obelisk that Hatshepsut had ordered to be carved from a single block of Aswan granite. At 138 feet tall, this was to be the largest obelisk ever to be erected, but during extraction, a fatal flaw in the granite was discovered that would prevent the obelisk from standing. Hatshepsut ordered that the unfinished monolith remain in the quarry where it lies to this day. Even after over 3500 years, the marks where the diorite tools carved the obelisk from the surrounding stone are still clearly visible. We watched a brief documentary film on the quarry, then boarded the bus to drive for our tour of the ruins of Philae Temple on an island in Lake Nassar. This temple was one of the ones moved when the rising levels of Lake Nassar threatened to cover the area after the construction of the Aswan High Dam. In fact, these ruins were mostly covered in water from Lake Nassar before preservations efforts could remove and reconstruct the temple a few hundred yards from the original site.

Philae Temple

We rode to the island on a small boat piloted by a group of Nubian men. These fellows were very pleasant and helpful. There were a few vendors onboard offering items made in Nubia as well as guides to identification of birds and plants of the surrounding desert. We bought a map of the Nile that included a lot of information about Egypt and the hieroglyphic alphabet for Peter.

When we got off the small boat, the usual slew of vendors were at the dock leading from the boat landing to the entrance to the Philae temple. There is a difference was in the attitudes of the Nubian merchants. They were the most friendly and polite people you would ever hope to meet. They didn’t pressure tourists the way that we have seen in other places in Egypt and other countries.

Philae Temple

They presented their products and deals and let the buyers decide. We appreciated the respect from the people at the bazaar.

Eman lead us on a tour through the ruins, told us about the history of the area, and directed us to some of the more significant hieroglyphs. She then gave us some free time for exploring and photography. Philae is one of the newer temples that we visited, constructed in the Hellenistic period, around the 6^th Century BC, and abandoned shortly thereafter.  The beautiful temple, dedicated to the Goddess Isis, was nearly lost when Lake Nassar began flooding the area in the 1960.  In fact, the temple was frequently flooded following construction of the Aswan Low Dam in the early 1900s.

Cindy at Philae

We spent some time with our friends from Montreal, Bill and Nichole, then walked over to the bazaar inside the grounds where Eman said was the best place to buy spices. Unlike bazaars in most places in Egypt, the prices at here are fixed but are fairly priced. Mary was interested in buying some spices, especially saffron.  The vendor at Philae had several varieties of saffron of varying origin.  We learned that while the Egyptian saffron is good, the best is from Iran.  Mary bought a large bag of the Iranian saffron that, while pricey was still well below what it would cost in the US. In addition, this vendor sold several types of saffron and openly shared the differences in flavor, quality and price of each. She also bought a few bags of other spices without haggling, and the vendor gave her a discount and a complementary bag of honey and sesame coated peanuts. We were pleased to have met the fine people of Aswan and seen the significant historical attractions that the region has to offer.

Philae Temple

One thing that was the same throughout Egypt is the reliance on tips that border on bribes. When Bill was taking a photo of Mary and me, a local man in traditional garb, jumped into the photo with an expectation of a tip. I told him no, and Bill simultaneously put his camera down and shook his head then the man went away. A little later, a police officer carrying an AK-47 offered to take our photo with an interesting panel not otherwise available to the public for a fee. We declined, and he did not persist. The major difference here was that the people going for the tips were not rude or unpleasant, and we appreciate that. As a result, we spent more money here with vendors than we had in other areas of the country. On the walk back to the boat, I bought a nice Egyptian cotton shirt with King Tut’s cartouches embroidered into the pocket. This is a shirt that I will wear and recall fondly our visit to Nubia.

Aswan High Dam

We rode back to the bus on the same small motorized boat with the Nubian crew. They were pleasant and hard working to assure that we had a memorable visit to the area.

Once on the bus we drove over the Aswan Low Dam or British Dam that was built in the late 1800s then on to the Aswan High Dam. This engineering marvel supplies half of all electrical power to the entire nation, as well as, regulates the flow of the Nile to reduce the frequency and destruction of floods on the Nile. We got out and took a few photos of the dams and the Russian-Egyptian Peace Monument honoring the assistance provided to Egypt in the construction of the dam in the 1960s.  Before construction of the Aswan High Dam, annual flooding was a major impediment to development along the Nile River throughout Egypt.  Even after construction of the Low Dam, flooding continued to be a problem.  The Aswan High Dam permitted the level of the Nile River to be controlled but has a negative effect in stopping the deposition of nutrients from the Nile onto the fields on the river’s banks.

Russian-Egyptian Peace Monument

Our bus continued to the Aswan Airport, where we flew to Cairo for our stay at the Intercontinental Citystars Cairo Hotel. Thanks to our Cairo representative, Mohammed, check-in was smooth, and our rooms were beautiful. The porter delivered our bags to the room shortly after we arrived. Although we would only be in the rooms for a few hours, it was very helpful to have a comfortable place to rest before our long day of travel on Saturday. We had a chance to make a few Google Voice calls, send a few emails and shower before dinner.

The evening meal was very pleasant. While we were all looking forward to being back home to see family and friends, we would miss our Ramses family and especially our team leader, Eman. We had a toast to the great memories that we created of Egypt and each other and shared our appreciated with Eman. The meal was very nice with plenty of Egyptian and Mediterranean items. I especially enjoyed the salmon covered in spinach and wrapped in phyllo then baked. My evening was complete with the rice pudding that is so good in Egypt.

After dinner and saying our goodbyes, we went up to our fifth-floor room to finish packing for our return trip back home. Our wakeup call would be at 12:30 am, our bags needed to be outside of our room by 1 am, and we were to meet Mohammed at 1:15 to take the shuttle to the Cairo airport for our 4:15 flight to Rome. We were asleep a little after 9 pm.