20250309 Sunday March 9, 2025 Boating through the Cataracts, Nubian Village, Philae Temple, Papyrus Institute, Kom Ombo Temple.

20250309 Sunday March 9, 2025 Boating through the Cataracts, Nubian Village, Philae Temple, Papyrus Institute, Kom Ombo Temple.

The Hathor remained tied up in Aswan overnight and we were able to have a leisurely breakfast.  Our morning excursion started with a short walk up the esplanade to board some awaiting water taxis which corresponded with our usual tour coaches.  These motored us upstream toward the Aswan High Dam.  

Just below the dam, there are remnants of the First Cataracts, which during low water can be very treacherous to navigate.  The Old Cataract Hotel is a setting for the Agatha Christie novel Death on the Nile.  

The 1978 movie was shot on location and Agatha Christie is amongst many famous prior guests, who also include Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy Carter and Princess Diana. We motored past this, navigating around boulder islands and tall stands of reeds.  There were a variety of birds including herons, kingfishers, egrets and even a falcon that we saw as we worked our way upstream.  

Our boats pulled up at a landing at the foot of a Nubian Village where we visited a family compound which was brightly painted.  The compound consisted of mud brick and concrete walls, many rooms arranged around a central courtyard and 3 levels.  

They did have a few live crocodiles in a pen in the courtyard and offered passengers the opportunity to be photographed with or hold a small crocodile.   There were several Nubian women painting henna tattoos and several also selling handcrafted items within the courtyard who were uncharacteristically low key salespersons, that is they had wares arranged in front of them on tables, and waited for you to approach and look through their merchandise.  There was no chasing you down or constant pleading for you to buy something.  Outside of the villa, between the boat landing and villa it was another story altogether.  The vendors outside the villa were as aggressive and persistent as anywhere else in Egypt.  There were several small children visible and they were good children- seen but not heard, and very well behaved despite the invasion of their villa by all these tourists.

The Nubians are a very dark skinned race distinct from their northern Egyptian neighbors.  There is a relatively new museum in Aswan honoring the Nubian culture and civilization, which was largely drowned when Lake Nassar was filled.  According to Fatma, efforts have more recently been made to right some of the past wrongs related to the Aswan High Dam project and its impact on the countless number of Nubians who were displaced by the project.  Nubian communities are relatively easy to spot in Egypt.  They prefer brightly colored houses and are partial to domed structures which provide cooling via passive convection.

After our visit with the Nubians, we took the boats back across the Nile to the Philae Temple.  This temple was situated on an island that was partially to completely drowned by the first Aswan Dam. Repeated inundation lead to degradation of the art and structure.  Eventually, a coffer dam was built around it and it was taken apart and reassembled bit by bit on a different higher island. Because this temple was not carved out of solid rock like Abu Simbel, this was a relatively simpler move, but still a remarkable achievement in the name of cultural preservation.

Rosetta Stone predecessor

Because it was situated on a small island, it was a bit more compact.  The most prominent monument is the Great Temple of Isis, who is the main deity of the island.  The earliest structures date to the Ptolemaic period (~305-30BC) and others to the Roman Period (30BC-306AD).  This temple contains what are likely to be the last ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic monumental inscriptions dating around 400AD.  There are inscriptions on the walls that match those found on the Rosetta Stone, and a stele with hieroglyphics, Greek and Demotic texts, also like the Rosetta Stone.

The Kiosk of Nectranebo I is one of the oldest structures on the site. It features columns topped with Hathor headed capitals.  In ancient Egyptian mythology, Hathor is the goddess of love, motherhood and music.  And again the namesake of our ship.

The largest structure is the Temple of Isis.  Isis was the daughter of the earth god Geb and sky goddess Nut. She was married to Osiris.  In other temples we had heard of the legend of her reconstructing Osiris from the 13 pieces she could recover after Seth killed and disassembled Osiris.  She used the clay prosthesis for the missing 14th piece, resulting in the immaculate conception of Horus when mounted that 14th piece while in the form of a falcon.  This temple depicts her nursing an infant Horus in one frame, while below this, it shows what appears to be an adolescent Horus still feeding rom her breast.  This depiction may have made the Greeks and Romans uncomfortable because the faces on this sculpted panel are defaced.

Baby Osiris at the breast of Isis

Not so baby Osiris at the breast of Isis

The relationship between Isis and Hathor seems to be BFF since both are frequently depicted together mutually supporting the Pharaoh during his transition between this world and the next.

Isis and Hathor guiding the Pharaoh

We reboarded the boats and then transferred to buses to go to Sondos Papyrus where they had a brief demonstration of how Papyrus is made, and compulsory shopping stop.  The green outer bark of the papyrus stem is pulled off, leaving the woody central pulp.  This is then pounded flat and fermented for a week to transform the sugars in the pulp into a sort of glue.  

Custom Cartouche painting

The flattened papyrus strips at then laid in cross plies and then pressed and dried.  The shop was air conditioned and had free bathrooms, so that was nice, but the papyrus artworks were not by any means cheap.  But to be fair, making papyrus is very labor intensive.  We have several papyrus works framed at home that were purchased by Janet’s Dad during his trip to Egypt many years ago.

We returned to the ship for lunch, which sailed back down the Nile as we dined in the Aquavit Terrace.  It was very pleasant and scenic cruising back from Aswan towards Kom Ombo.

The ship docked at Kom Ombo in the afternoon. We could see the temple from the river just before the ship turned its bow back upstream and sidled up to the boat landing.

Kom Ombo Temple

Kom Ombo is a dual temple dedicated to Horus and Sebak.  Horus is the god of wisdom frequently depicted with a falcon’s head. Sebak the Crocodile headed god who represents fertility and productivity, perhaps related to the fertility associated with the annual flooding of the Nile. 

Horus and Sebak

However, for a significant period of time, this served as a hospital or sanitarium.  One of the inscriptions on the walls depicts an array of medical instruments including forceps, scalpels, dilators, retractors, sponge and scale, along with an Eye of Horus counterbalance weight set and medication bags.  

One of the side temples as constructed like a confessional where a high priest could sit in a concealed room and secretly listen in onto the prayers of someone in the confessional because there was an acoustic channel built into the temple walls that could amplify the spoken prayers of the confessor.

There was a small crocodile museum adjacent to the temple.  This contained quite a few very large mummified crocodiles along with exhibits on crocodiles throughout ancient Egypt’s history.

The ship cast off very shortly after everyone walked back on board from their visits to Kom Ombo.  The daily briefing came with the news that our disembarkation luggage tags would be arriving tonight along with disembarkation instructions.  A couple from Australia had breakfast with another couple who were under the impression that we were going to disembark tomorrow and spend 2 nights in Cairo.  That was in error, but both sets of couples probably packed up their bags a day earlier than they really had to.

Dinner featured a French Onion soup.  Ben had grilled grouper on fava beans which was quite good while Janet had a roast Chateaubriand Bernaise which was also good.  Desserts featured an Egyptian Sago pudding, which was like a tapioca pudding with pistachios, and chocolate brownie ala mode.  We also got some handmade chocolate truffles.

Grouper on java beans

Double Chocolate Brownie

Egyptian Sago pudding

Tomorrow we have our last excursion for this Nile River Cruise which is a visit to the Edfu Temple.  We will then have to get to work packing our things back into our suitcases and preparing for disembarkation.