After a hearty breakfast we took the ferry boat across the Nile to see the Mausoleum of the Aga Khan, which was sited high up on the sandy hilltop.

 

 

There are places on the West Bank that can best be reached by camel, and we spent some time getting to know the cantankerous beasties before proceeding to our off the beaten track destinations.

 

 

West Bank from Garden island

 

    Returning to the East Bank we then headed off to see the Unfinished Obelisk in the Rose Granite Quarries. This obelisk, commissioned by Queen Hatchepsut was to be the largest single piece obelisk ever to be made, but unfortunately, after months of back breaking work ... a large crack appeared near the needle pointed top of the stone and the work was simply abandoned. The gods were not smiling on those poor unfortunates that day.

 

 

  The obelisks  were cut from the surrounding rock by pounding at a small section of the large-grained granite with a much harder fine-grained black rock made of diorite. Every hit with the pounding rock smashed a very tiny piece of the granite to dust and this was continued countless millions of times every day, removing a fraction of millimetre at a time, one man to a groove.

 

 

A day's work squares, the Diorite Pounding Stones, and the immense size of the obelisk

 

  It took countless days to make any impression at all. but then again, labour was cheap, and plentiful, and ever so willing to do the Pharaoh's bidding for the glory of the gods. A whole day's work can be seen in each of the little square impressions in the rock where each worker toiled away in the hot sun, pounding away at the granite with his stone pounding rock hammer. Heat, dust, bloody trapped fingers, it must have been quite awful.

  From the quarries we head southwards and upwards past the Nile Cataracts and the new town to the Old Dam and the temples on the Island of Philae. Well actually, it isn't the original island but another very similar where the temples was moved to and rebuilt to avoid the constant flooding cause by the Old Dam.

 

Cruise Boats waiting on the Old Lake for tourists to take out to the Temple of Philae.  

 

  We had a great time on Philae Island, where all the temples had been rebuilt exactly as they were in their original locations ... but we have a problem ... When one copies photographs to a safe location one should ensure that one is not actually erasing the lot. So I regret at the moment there are no photos of the Temple of Philae or of Abu Symbol.

 

The Great Aswan Dam, looking towards Aswan.  

 

                         The Upper Great  Aswan Dam                        The Lotus Monument of Cooperation

 

                    The Temple of Kalabasha and a Great Lake Cruise Boat                    David Roberts

 

   Until I find a way of rescuing my lost photos you will have to make do with some original paintings by David Roberts and other painters of antiquities, as we wend our way back to the boat for the overnight trip retracing our voyage down the river to the Temple of Kom Ombo.

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