Aswan

  Aswan, Egypt
Friday, April 13, 2007

We arrived Aswan early the following day via a sleeper train from Cairo - this was quite interesting and fairly comfortable - we had a better night sleep than any other night travel. Aswan is the south most City of Egypt and it is from here that we were to start our Cruise up the river Nile - but before then we visited the Philae temple and the Nile High Dam.

The Nile high Dam  is of great importance to the local Economy.  The Nile used to flood once every year and to prevent this this dam was constructed to enable all year round farming on the edges of the Nile. In addition the dam Generates 175 MW of electricity for Egypt and export to Syria and Lebanon.

The Philae Temple is a Greek Roman Temple that is located on an island on the edge of the Nile - this temple is considered to be the epitome of the combination of Egyptian, Greek and Roman culture. Our new guide Marwa (who Liz claimed had a squares shaped behind) explained in details how the Romans after capturing Egypt about 280 BC accepted the Egyptian gods and started using the Egyptian temples for their own worship. Therefore in this church one finds both the ancient Egyptian scripts with the memoirs of Egyptian Kings and  of course Roman and Egyptian gods - Isis, Osiris and Horus.

Before the birth spread of Islam in Egypt Christians first occupied Egypt after the collapse of the Roman empire. The Philae temple was used by Christians during this period. In some of the pillars one finds the Coptic cross incised amid various Egyptian other heretic writings . Some of the images of the Egyptian and Roman gods were also scrapped out by the Christians (believe in one God) during the period that they used the temple. Never the less the history still remains overlay intact.