Philae Temple – The Temple of Isis at Philae | Aswan, Egypt

The Temples of Philae | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 3 (Part 26) 02D20

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

Our next destination is the temple complex of Philae. The Philae temple is the oldest temple that was built by the last of the Pharaohs, Nectanebo II, who was Egyptian. Once he died in 343 BC, his successors were Persian conquerors and then Greek kings. The Macedonian Greeks started the Ptolemaic dynasty, which began with the death of Alexander the Great and ended when Cleopatra died.

The original Philae temple was in the middle of the Nile, when it was first built more than 2000 years ago. Once the Aswan Low Dam was completed in 1902, flooding started to damage it more than ever.

In 1960, Egypt, UNESCO, and 30 other nations started an epic engineering rescue feat to move these colossal ancient Egyptian temples from floodwaters to another island.

I was literally shocked when my guide told me they moved the whole temple complex from one island to another. You can’t even tell these humongous structures were cut, moved, and reattached. I only saw some lines which the guide showed me that are the results of the joints. I would not have even noticed had the guide not mentioned it.

To this day, I find it unbelievable and remarkable how engineers managed to cut a complete temple apart and rebuild it exactly to its original specifications without being obvious.

To reach the present-day Philae temple, which is located on Agilkia Island, we had to take a boat. I will talk about the rest of the Philae Temple trip in the next post.