Philae Temple

Introduction

What makes Philae unusual is that it no longer stands where it was built. The original island of Philae sat at the edge of the Nile's First Cataract, the religious frontier between Egypt and Nubia for millennia: whoever controlled the cult here held the loyalty of peoples on both banks. The earliest structures date to around 690 BCE, and the main temple was founded by Ptolemy II around 280 BCE, then enlarged by later Ptolemies and Roman emperors for two centuries. It was the centre of the Isis cult, and a layered site of several religions. When Theodosius I closed pagan temples across the empire in 391 CE, Philae was exempted at the request of Nubian tribes and kept functioning until about 550 CE; in the sixth century it was converted into a church, Coptic crosses were cut into the columns, and parts of the reliefs were covered with plaster. The site also marks the end of two writing systems. On 24 August 394 CE the priest Esmet-Akhom carved a short dedication on the Gate of Hadrian, the last known hieroglyphic inscription; the last demotic text was written here in 452 CE. No other place is the endpoint of both scripts. When the Aswan High Dam threatened to submerge the island under Lake Nasser, the entire temple was dismantled stone by stone and rebuilt on the higher Agilkia Island to the north between 1972 and 1980. What you see today is a reconstruction in plan and orientation, but almost all of the blocks are original. Together with Abu Simbel, it was one of the great UNESCO rescue operations. Approach from the water: as the boat closes in, the colonnade rises out of the surface, one of the finest arrivals at any Egyptian site. Ashore, a 145-metre curved colonnade leads to the two pylons, hypostyle hall and sanctuary of the Isis temple, while the Kiosk of Trajan on the east bank is an unfinished structure known as the Pharaoh's Bed and one of the most photographed buildings in Aswan. After 16:00 the west-facing colonnades turn gold in the last light.

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