As our train pulled into the station in Aswan, we hopped off and weaved our way through the bustling crowds. Our van brought us near the bank of the Nile. Winding our way past the trinket-selling merchants, we hopped on a boat to Philae Island. Actually, it was Fake Philae Island. The real island is now submerged under the waters of the Nile thanks to a couple of dams (see below). The island was deemed important enough that they took all the structures apart and moved them to a higher island. The temples here were from the Greek and Roman periods. However, unlike Alexandria, they looked fully Egyptian with lotus and papyrus capitals on the columns and had that distinctive flat Egyptian art style etched into the walls.
We checked into our hotel, admiring the view of the Nile from our rooms. Having a few hours of free time, we asked our guide to arrange a taxi to two interesting sites in the area.
Our first stop was a quarry where they hewed out granite obelisks. Obelisks are tall, skinny towers made of a single block. Some ancient obelisks were taken to other countries. What makes this place remarkable is there’s a mostly-complete obelisk still in the ground. Why? Someone had a bad day when he hit his hammer wrong and created a big crack in the stone, ruining it. While that had been a bad day, it makes a good day for those of us who like seeing how they quarried these massive stones. How did they move such massive blocks? When the Nile flooded, they somehow floated them downstream to where they would be erected.
Our second stop was what you probably connect the name Aswan to: the Aswan High Dam. It’s called the high dam because there’s an older, low dam, too. The high dam is a massive construction. It would take 17 of Great Pyramids of Giza to make the same volume as the dam. Upstream of the dam is Lake Nasser, the largest artificial lake in the world.
