WATANI International
6 June 2010
Philae Temple stands on a small island of pink granite rocks in the River Nile some four kilometres south of the Aswan High Dam. This is not the original location of the temple; the real island of Philae is submerged under the water of Lake Nasser, and the temple complex was moved in the 1970s to the neighbouring island of Agilkia.
The Greek name Philae derives from the original name, Philak, which meant ‘boundary’ in ancient Egyptian and Coptic, while in Arabic literature, according to one of the heroes in The Thousand and One Nights, it was called Anas al-Wagud. Since it lay on their southern frontier, the pharaohs of Egypt maintained a strong garrison on the island, and later Roman troops were billeted there.
Holiest site
The first temple structure was built in the reign of Nectanebo I (380 – 362 BC), the founding pharaoh of the thirtieth and last dynasty of native rulers. It was dedicated to Hathor, sometimes named Athor, who was associated by the Greeks with the goddess Aphrodite.
The temple was approached from the river by way of a double colonnade. Beyond the entrance into the principal court were small temples or chapels, one of which was dedicated to Hathor (Athor) and contains sculptures representing the birth of Ptolemy Philometor under the figure of the god Horus.
Philae Temple was apparently dedicated to Isis, evidenced by the few columns that remain that are surmounted with the head of the goddess, who is thought to have found the heart of her husband Osiris here after he was killed and dismembered by his brother Set.
For centuries the temple complex was the holiest site for worshippers of Isis, and it remained in use long after other temples had been forcibly closed. The temple was officially closed in the sixth century by the Byzantine emperor, Justinian (527 – 565 AD). The Hypostyle Hall of Philae Temple was converted into a church, which was partly built of stone blocks from some monuments.
To the rescue
The first Aswan Dam was the brainchild of Mohamed Ali Pasha, who saw that great progress could be made in Egypt if it no longer had to undergo the troubles and uncertainties of the annual Nile flood. After it was constructed in 1902, however, several ancient landmarks were partially submerged, including the temple complex of Philae. The dam was raised twice, from 1907 to 1912 and again from 1929 to 1934, and the island of Philae was nearly always flooded.
The temples had been practically intact over the centuries, but with each inundation the situation had worsened and by the 1960s a third of the buildings were submerged year round. When the new High Dam was completed in 1970, the entire complex was dismantled and relocated to a nearby island under the international salvage project organized by UNESCO. Archaeologists and engineers set out to save Philae and other buildings from the ever rising water of the Lake Nasser. First of all a large coffer-dam was built, constructed of two rows of steel plates, between which a million cubic metres of sand was tipped. Any water that seeped through was pumped away. Next the monuments were cleaned and measured, by using photogrammetry, a method that enabled the exact reconstruction of the original size of the building blocks that were used by the ancient builders. Then every building was dismantled and transported to the nearby island of Agilkia, which was on higher ground some 500 metres away.