Nile Cruise: Day 1 Aswan, Granite Quarry, High Dam, Temple of Philea

This past April 2012, my mom made the trip out to visit us during my Spring Break from school. We had ten days to experience as much of Egypt as we could. We did a community service project in the Wadi Nature Protectorate, visited the Khan el Khalili bazaar, had a felucca ride on the Nile and took in the Egyptian antiquities museum at Tahrir Square. The highlight of the trip, however, was our Nile Cruise from Aswan to Luxor.

Seth and I had been holding off on a Nile Cruise in anticipation of my mom's trip. This was one of the experiences we knew we must have before leaving Egypt, and it did not disappoint. After a "spring fling" party at our place to celebrate the end of school for awhile, we woke up bleary eyed for our early morning flight down to Aswan.

Day One

We checked in to our cabins on the Movenpick Royal Lily at 8:00 am, and headed up to the sun deck to take in the views of the Nile and Elephantine Island. For this first day of the 4 day, 3 night cruise the boat would remain docked in Aswan with a couple of excursions around the area.

Our first excursion took us to the Granite Quarry, where much of the pink granite that is seen in monuments around Cairo came from. On the bus ride to the quarry we passed lines of cars that stretched for over 1 mile pulled off to the side of the road waiting for gas. People had clearly slept in their cars in these lines to get fuel.

One of the remarkable features of the Granite Quarry is the "unfinished obelisk", which would have been the largest obelisk carved out of a single block of granite had it been finished. It was abandoned in the quarry when a crack appeared during it's carving.

Our next stop was the Aswan High Dam, which created Lake Nasser. On the upstream side, you can see the Temple of Philea, which had to be moved to higher ground when the island it was originally built on was flooded due to the damming of the Nile.

Following the dam, we headed for the felucca docks and piled in for our boat ride to the Temple of Philea. This temple was dedicated to the goddess Isis.

Most of temples we visited had a common design at their entrances: two tall tower-like structures separated by a gap directly above the main entrance. This is symbolic of the East and West banks of the Nile, separated by the river flowing in between.

At this temple our tour guide began to tell us the ancient myth of Isis and Osiris. He asked for 4 volunteers to pay the parts of the main players in this myth. My mom volunteer Seth and I, and another couple in our tour group came forward as well. As the guide began introducing the gods and goddesses in this myth he first explained Isis, and her brother, Osiris (who were also husband and wife). He then turned to us to introduce the next god and goddess: Seth & Nephthys. The guide points to Seth (my husband) and says, "This is Seth" (meaning Osiris' brother) and we start cracking up. We try to explain the coincidence that his name really is Seth, but we could not get anyone to believe us for quite awhile.

The day ended much as it began, as you will see from the photo below.