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One of the main sites visited by almost every tour to
Egypt is what is billed as Philae, but Philae is actually a nonexistent island now buried
beneath Lake Nasser. The island was sometimes visible
and sometimes not after the Old Aswan Dam was built, but was
permanently submerged by the High Dam.
Philae is an approximate Greek rendering of the local name
"Pilak" known from hieroglyphic texts and which may
be Nubian in origin. The ancient Egyptians saw in their name
for Philae an etymology with the meaning "island of the
time [of Ra]", i.e. creation, but the island’s history is
later than that.
What we refer to today as Philae is the main temple
complex relocated from that island, after the
High Dam
was built, to the island of Agilika. It was the center of the
cult of the goddess
Isis and her connection with
Osiris,
Horus, and the Kingship, during the
Ptolemaic period of
 Egyptian
History.
Today, there are two dams at
Aswan but of course, in
ancient times, there were none. Prior to the dams, Philae Island occupied a position at the beginning or
southern end of the First Nile Cataract, where the river
gathered speed, dropping sixteen feet in swirling eddies
and turbulent falls of white water for a distance of
three miles. Various pharaohs attempted to calm or at
least provide better passage around these rapids.
Pepi I
built at least one canal, as did
Merenre, as early as
the
Old Kingdom, but later kings would also,
such as
Senusret
III.
There were numerous islands in the region,
Amelia
Edwards says hundreds, including Biggeh, the temple's
current location of Agilika, a group of small islands at
Awad and El Hasa, and
 below the Cataract (north), Siheil
and Elephantine.
During early times, the priests of Philae claimed
that the source of the Nile was bottomless and lay
beneath the rocks of Biggeh, where half the river rose
to flow north and half to flow south. Their rivals were
the priests of Elephantine, who made the same claim.
Indeed, the river around these islands was even then
over one hundred feet deep in places, with confusing
waters that could twist and turn in all directions.
This trek of water was hazardous in ancient times, a
fact that escapes the modern visitor to Agilika Island.
Amelia
Edwards, the fearless Victorian Egyptologist saw
it differently than we do today. She recounts:
"At Assuan, one bids good-bye to Egypt and
enters Nubia through the gates of the Cataract -
which is, in truth, no cataract, but a succession of
rapids extending over two thirds of the distance
between Elephantine and Philae. The Nile - diverted
from its original course by some unrecorded
catastrophe, the nature of which has given rise to
much scientific conjecture - here spreads itself
over a rocky basin bounded by sand-slopes on the one
side, and by granite cliffs on the other. Studded
with numberless islets, divided into numberless
channels, foaming over sunken rocks, eddying among
water-worn boulders, now shallow, now deep, now
loitering, now hurrying, here sleeping in the ribbed
hollow of a tiny sand-drift, there circling above
the vortex of a hidden whirlpool, the river, whether
looked upon from the deck of a dahabeeyah or the
heights along the shore, is seen everywhere to be
fighting its way through a labyrinth, the paths of
which have never yet been mapped or sounded."
Of course, one can still get a glimpse of these
cataracts north of the Old Aswan Dam. In ancient times,
travelers made their devotions at Philae before
continuing through the dangerous
 territory
of the south
to the "Land of Ghosts".
On the island of Sehel are more than 250 inscriptions from
pilgrims and travelers coming to and going through the area, dating from the fourth dynasty
down to the Ptolemaic period.
Pepi I cut canals through the
cataract to assist boat crews on their way to the calm water
above Philae.
Harkhuf passed through here on his way to Nubia
during the reign of
Pepi II. Also here on Sehel is the
so-called Famine Stela, inscribed during Ptolemaic times but
related to the reign of
King Djoser in the
3rd Dynasty. It
states that the king decreed that large tracts of land on both
sides of the river stretching from
Elephantine south should be
given to
Khnum’s temple, along with one-tenth of all produce
and livestock raised as well as taxes on caravans and gold
mining. There is an identical decree in the temple of Philae,
carved at the base of the eastern tower of the second Great
Pylon.
Such was the power of
the gods, or at least the belief
therein, that according to an inscription on the base of the
eastern obelisk standing in front of the Great Pylon, during
the reign of Ptolemy VIII, Euergetes II, and
Cleopatra III his
second wife, the priests complained that they were being
forced to refund the expenses of civil
 and military
authorities incurred during their stay at Philae. The priests
were not being left enough resources with which to continue
sacrifices and libations for the welfare of the royal family.
Euergetes II released the priests from further payments.
The Island of Philae lied about four miles south of
modern
Elephantine, just to the other side of the Old
Aswan Dam. It only measured about 500 yards from north
to south and 160 yards from east to west, which meant
that it was almost entirely covered with temples and
other monuments. These were protected from the
Nile
Flood during ancient times by high walls, quays and terraces.
In fact, before the building of the first dam, the
Island always stayed clear of the
 river,
safe on its granite foundation against the turbulent
rush of the flood with its abrasive silt.
Prior to the building of the Aswan Dam, the engineer in
charge, Captain Henry Lyon, was asked to underpin the
monuments of Philae so that they could withstand the
submersion, which he did. He also excavated part of the site
where he discovered the remains of some
Christian churches.
After the Old Dam was built, it created a lake extending
south some 140 miles back to the Sudanese border. In fact,
the height of the dam was at first restricted because of the
protests made by people interested in preserving Philae and
the other temples and monuments from submersion. Winston
Churchill cared little for this. He remarked that:
"This offering of 1,500 millions of cubic feet of
water to Hathor by the Wise Men of the West is the most
cruel, the most wicked and the most senseless sacrifice
ever offered on the altar of a false religion. The State
must struggle and the people starve, in order that the
professors may exult and the tourists find some place to
scratch their names."
So the water level was raised, and the temples and structures on Philae were flooded each year from December to about
March,
and had to be visited during this time by boat, passing
through the Kiosk of Trajan and into the court
of the Temple of Isis.
All did not turn out as badly as thought, however. The
water ended up saving the temples from erosion by sand
storms and helped to remove salt deposits which were
damaging to the stonework. Regular inspections of the site
showed that it suffered less damage than might have
 been
expected, save for the paintwork that was washed away by the
new lake created by the Old English Dam.
Then, construction on the
High Dam began and, as with
a number of other monuments south of
Aswan, the temple
and other monuments had to either be moved or lost
beneath the waters
In reality, Philae would not have been lost under the
water of Lake Nasser itself, but rather the lake that was
formed between the
High Dam
and the Old Dam. It was the only major monument located in
this region. it would have been almost permanently
submerged, but
 worse,
this small lake is subject to a daily rise and fall of
several yards, which would have inevitably eroded the
temples completely.
This was accomplished
during the 1970s, when the Philae monuments were moved
to Agilkia northwest of Philae Island. Since waters
already engulfed the monuments at Philae, a coffer dam
had to be built around the island and then the water
pumped out. This work began in 1972 and was finished in
1980 as a cooperative effort of UNESCO and the Egyptian
Antiquity Organization. The new location was carefully
landscaped to make it resemble Philae
as much as possible. Some 40,000 blocks, weighing about
20,000 tons were moved to the new location.
Next
See Also
Resources:
- The Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt
ed. By Katherine Bard
- Island of Isis, Philae, Temple of the Nile by
William MacQuitty
- A Guide to the Antiquities of Ancient Egypt by
Arthur Weigall
- The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
- Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt by Richard
Wilkinson
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