2 April 2022: the Nile River

We started Saturday with a short boat ride to Philae Island which is home to a temple dedicated to Isis.

This is a photo outside the temple.

A cat found Sofi and stayed close by for a long time.

Sofi was pretty sure the cat could smell the jerky she had in her backpack.

The outside courtyard led to an enclosed temple.

Isis was the god of magic so for thousands of years people have scraped material from the stones of the temple and used the stone dust in magic spells. The temple is covered with deep scratch marks like the ones in this photo.

A small temple built to honor Hathor is next to Isis's temple.

This small temple was elegantly decorated.

The small temple was dedicated to music and the columns are decorated with musicians. Here is a harpist.

This is a drummer.

Helen and Gibson with a beautiful view of the Nile.

Here we are headed back to our cruise ship. The Aswan Dam is behind us.

Back on ship we found our rooms freshly made up. The staff had created a crocodile for us out of towels and a bedspread.

Back on board, our ship set off for our next stop. Meanwhile, we got to enjoy our first talk by Michael Wilcox. It's hard to know what to call his lectures. Devotionals? Firesides? Lessons? Whatever they were called, it was an unreal experience to sit on the sundeck of our cruise ship, feel a light breeze, see the Nile River and the small farms and villages as we sailed and learn about Hagar and Joseph of Egypt and Moses.

We passed lean cows grazing and wheat fields. It was easy to imagine Joseph sailing up and down the Nile gathering grain before the famine.

Our next stop was a double temple at Kom Ombo dedicated to Sobek and Horus.

Sobek is a crocodile god.

Horus is a falcon god. He is on the right of this photo.

This photo shows the entrances to double holy of holies, one for Sobek and one for Horus. The roofs and walls of the holy of holies are gone. The rock in the center of the photo would have held a statue of Horus and there would have been a similar rock and statue of Sobek in the other room. Only the pharaoh and the high priest were allowed in the holy of holies.

Except here is an interesting wrinkle. This grate covers a secret tunnel that leads to space underneath the altars in the holy of holies. A priest could use the secret tunnel to go underneath the statues and make it seem like the statues were talking to the pharaoh when he went to visit the statues. Tricky!

This temple was dedicated to healing and there was a hospital built next to the temple. Helen is pointing to an engraving on the wall that shows medical instruments and medicines that the priests would use to treat sick people.

This engraving is a daily calendar showing an entire year and what should happen every day of the year, for example, when to plant crops. Archaeologists haven't found another calendar in Egypt that is this detailed.

More ancient science: the priests could use this well to measure the level of the water in the Nile. The ideal height is marked on the wall of the well. Too much water led to flooding which caused famine and too little water meant crops wouldn't grow and would also cause famine. The priests determined the amount of annual taxes they would levy based on the level of water in this well.

The priests at Kom Ombo always kept a crocodile in honor of Sobek. They mummified the special crocodiles when they died. Some of these crocodile mummies are now displayed next the temple. Interesting fact: crocodiles can't get past the two dams on the Nile so there are no crocodiles in the Nile north of the Aswan Dam.

Back on the boat, we sailed a short ways to our next destination, Edfu. Our tour guides surprised us with carriage rides to the temple at Edfu. There were about 80 people on our tour and 4 people could fit in each carriage so you can imagine the scene of 20 horse drawn carriages clopping along through an Egyptian town.

Egyptian temples started to look very familiar as we got to our third temple for the day. Their decorations may vary, but they all have the same design of a courtyard outside a large pylon that marks the entrance to the temple. Inside the rooms get progressively smaller and higher as you approach the Holy of Holies.

Here we are outside the temple waiting for a light show to begin.

We toured the temple in the dark while a light show and narration described the purpose for the temple.

This dramatic photo looking down the center of the temple to the Holy of Holies highlights how the floor ascends while the ceiling descends: heaven meeting earth in the temple.