Philae Temple

It's one of the world's famous landscapes, and it deserves its fame. Every sketcher sketches it; every traveler describes it. Yet it is just one of those places of which the objective and subjective features are so equally balanced.

 

IT's currently an island in the reservoir of the Aswan Low Dam, downstream of the Aswan Dam and Lake Nasser, Egypt. Philae was originally located near the expansive First Cataract of the Nile River in southern Egypt, and was the site of an Ancient Egyptian temple complex. These rapids and the surrounding area have been variously flooded since the initial construction of the Old Aswan Dam in 1902.

 

 

The temple complex was later dismantled and relocated to nearby Agilkia Island as part of the UNESCO Nubia Campaign project, protecting this and other complexes before the 1970 completion of the Aswan High Dam