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- Aswan - Philae was formerly an island in the First Cataract of the Nile river and the previous site of an Ancient Egyptian temple complex of Isis. The complex was dismantled and relocated to the nearby Agilkia Island during a UNESCO project started because of the construction of the Aswan Dam, after the site was partly flooded by the earlier Aswan Low Dam for half a century. Prior to the inundation, it was not more than 380 metres (1,250 ft) long and about 120 metres (390 ft) broad. The Pharaoh Nectanebo I, who reigned during the years 380 - 362 BC has built a Temple, devoted to the Goddess Isis on the southern part of the island. His initiative was later supported by the Ptolemaic and first Roman Kings of Egypt. The walls of the Temple are decorated with the bas-reliefs with the scenes from the life of Osiris. According to ancient Egyptian legend, Osiris was buried on the island Abaton, neighboring to the Philae. In 1960 UNESCO started a project to try to save the buildings on the island from the destructive effect of the ever increasing waters of the Nile. The temples had been practically intact since the ancient days, but with each inundation the situation worsened and in the sixties the island was submerged up to a third of the buildings all year round. First of all a large coffer dam was built, constructed of two rows of steel plates between which a million cubic meters 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 enables the exact reconstruction of the original size of the building blocks that were used by the ancients. Then every building was dismantled into about 40,000 units, and then transported to the nearby Island of Agilkia, situated on higher ground some 500 metres (1,600 ft) away.
Below are the drawings of Napoleon's expedition, showing the Philae Island and the Temple of Isis.
The Temple of Isis in 1910:
Below is the satellite image of the Agilkia island and photos of the relocated Temple of Isis.
Leaving the current location of the historical monument, we took the boat and go to the place of the original Temple location.
The Napoleonic expedition drawings are also depicting this place:
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