Philae Temple and Aswan

We steam down the Nile (moving south, but upstream) amidst continual oases where the luckier beasts live. Villages of rough brick, like unfinished ideas, undulating green waters, gardens of Eden, lush palms sweeping the bright green grass, turn into mounds of desert and back again. Fishermen unfurl languid nets, donkeys and horses and oxen feed at water's edge.

Aswan

In the morning we are docked outside Aswan. Placid waters, where beautifully marked birds fly and float, a hazy mosque nearby. A dark man in an adjacent boat prostrates himself on the deck at the call to prayer. Across the Nile a tiny white donkey brays and feeds on the marshy shore.

Motor boats of the Nile

Philae

We are bussed to little roofed motor boats that convey us to the island of Philae, soft black Nubians selling their wares on board. As we approach, the golden temple appears on its rotated axis, originally built on the oddly shaped island of Biga. There it became threatened by rising waters from the Aswan dam and was transported, stone by stone, to its present island. The US was among the countries that assisted this extraordinary feat, and received the Temple of Dendur in return, which you can now see at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Isis and Horus greet the Pharoah

Napoleon's soldiers visited Philae

Philae is curvilinear, appropriate for the quintessential feminine goddesses Isis and Hathor. Like Edfou it was built by the father of Cleopatra, who was otherwise a fairly unsavory character who slaughtered his kin and tried to play the Romans against the Egyptians till he was despised by both. But the temple is exquisitely tranquil and beautifully preserved, the architecture complete including the side temple for the "birth of the god", showing the goddess Hathor breastfeeding the Pharoah.

Trajan's temple at night

Beyond is another perfect temple built by the Emperor Trajan, with 14 Greco-Roman/Egyptian columns, massive rose colored limestone against the blue sky. Our guide Adel bristles with the drama of each story that he reads from the walls. It is a beautiful, tranquil nurturing atmosphere, disturbed little by the black Nubian vendors and their gentle insistence.

Glass artist

Adel counsels purchases and prices as we drive to the "factory", Abode of Perfume, first to watch a laid back black Egyptian whirl glass into elaborate perfume flacons, then to listen to a jokey (apparently West African) black man with his retinue of round women in black robes who offer massages and daub our arms with perfumes as he barks the wares. Time for a decision, and I buy a collection of essential, not the much-promoted perfumes they claim are sold by international brands.

Old Cataract Hotel

The goddesses guard Philae

In the afternoon we take a caleche to the city of Aswan. It is my choice, but it was all I could bear to watch that poor horse flop sidways and gallop uphill at the sound of the whip. Distraught for the poor horse in the suffocating heat, we finally reach the Old Cataract Hotel, a refurbished relic of the colonial days where Agatha Christie among many other notables used to stay. It is perched on a sun baked corner overlooking a protected bay of fellucas, across from Elephantine Island, a cluster of ruins that had been devoted to the god Khnoum, a ram-headed potter who created mankind of clay.

View of Elephantine Island

We drink a pot of watery lime-blossom tea on the expensive terrace and walk down to the water where a dark black friendly man wearing wool under his brown jellabah in the sweltering heat practices French with us, offering in an exquisite African accent a ride on his boats to the monastery of St. Stephen where the Agha Khan is buried.

Inner sanctum at Philae

We have agreed to meet Mohamed again for the ride back, but we are hounded by other young men with their caleches who finally yell at Jacques, why don't you listen? There is a palpable frustration and anger among all those who rely on the tourists (who no longer show up) for their living. We visit the town--a Coptic church, a public garden where families picnic on the grass, and meet Mohamed for our ride back.

Feryal Garden

We reach the boat and I bid goodbye to Rambo who stoically waits for trials to come. Mohamed haggles a bit more with Jacques (appealing to me as "mere"), then palms the 100 pound (Egyptian) note that Jacques gives him, claiming it was only 50. Standard practice, we have read, among caleches.

In the evening we set out for a Sound and Light Show on the island of Philae. Goats and sheep munch in the marshy brush at the end of the concrete dock. The rascal Mohamed waves at us cheerfully, while Rambo the lopsided horse stands still, ready for the next battle.

Philae at night

Now the boat ploughs among darkened isles, rocks rising from the Nile, their suddenly more palpable presence in the dark, so close. The temple waits in the dark, and blossoms into light as we arrive. The Son et Lumiere begins with the deafening, melodramatic "poetic" voices of the gods, and alternating illumination of the friezes and hieroglyphs at many angles. The stones beneath us radiate heat, almost oppressive under the starry night. Simply the sight of the temple, lit from its many angles, would have been enough.