Philae Temple Complex
Interesting facts
- An obelisk from Philae, taken to England by William John Bankes, carried royal names in Greek and hieroglyphs that helped scholars decipher Egyptian signs.
- The same obelisk records a complaint by Philae's priests to Ptolemy VIII that visiting officials were living at the temple's expense.
- The ancient Egyptian name of the island meant "boundary": it marked Egypt's southern frontier and housed garrisons of Egyptian, then Greek and Roman soldiers.
- In the rescue, 95 monumental structures were dismantled into blocks weighing 2 to 25 tonnes, after a cofferdam filled with about a million cubic metres of sand drained the site.
- The rebuilt temples on Agilkia stand about 12.4 metres higher than on their original island, and the dismantling and reconstruction were carried out by an Italian consortium.
- After the first Aswan dam was raised, the temples surfaced only from July to October, when the sluices were opened, and silt washed away much of their painted colour.
- The Nubian king Arqamani added to the temples in the 3rd–2nd century BC, but Ptolemy V later had his royal cartouches chiselled away.
- A treaty of AD 452 between a Roman commander and the Blemmyes and Nobades guaranteed these desert peoples continued access to the cult statue of Isis.
- After the pagan cult ended, five of Philae's temples were turned into churches; the Temple of Isis itself was rededicated to Saint Stephen.
- Once called the Pearl of the Nile, Philae gave its name to Pierre Loti's 1909 book La Mort de Philae, which mourned the flooding of the island.
Why it is worth it
Philae is where the religion of the pharaohs made its last stand. The temple of Isis on this small island above the First Cataract of the Nile drew pilgrims from Egypt, Nubia and the Greek world for centuries, and it outlived paganism almost everywhere else: the last known inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphs was carved here in AD 394, and the last known Demotic one in 452. According to Procopius the temple was officially closed on the orders of Emperor Justinian around 537.
What you see today is a rescue. From 1902 the first Aswan dam left the island repeatedly flooded, and the High Dam would have drowned them for good. Between 1977 and 1980 an international campaign under UNESCO cut the buildings into roughly 40,000 blocks and rebuilt them on the neighbouring island of Agilkia, some 500 m away and on higher ground, reshaped to match the original contours. The result is so convincing that most visitors never notice the move.
The approach by boat is the best part: the pylons of the Isis temple rise straight from the water. Inside, the oldest surviving pieces are a kiosk and gateway of Nectanebo I from the 4th century BC, but most of what stands is Ptolemaic and Roman. Walk through the first pylon to the forecourt and the birth house, whose reliefs tell the story of Horus, then on into the inner rooms carved with scenes of Osiris. Look closely at the walls: early Christians and later iconoclasts chiselled out many of the faces, yet often spared the falcon-headed Horus. Greek inscriptions, and the oldest known Latin inscriptions in Egypt from 116 BC, survive on the first pylon.
Getting there
Philae lies about 8 km south of central Aswan, and Aswan International Airport (ASW) is about 9 km away. From Aswan, take a taxi to the landing stage at Shellal; boatmen make the crossing to the island in around ten minutes.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Philae Island was an island near the expansive First Cataract of the Nile in Upper Egypt. Due to the building of the Aswan Low Dam, the island is today submerged. Due to the submerging, the Philae temple complex which had been built on the island, was moved to Agilkia Island.
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