At the second day in Aswan we go by taxi to the boat landing to Es-Schallal. Our first place of destination at this day is the temple of Philae. Before getting out of the car our driver, a Copt, explains that he has to park a short distance away. That’s why we should call him by one of the security guys later. To get this worked we have to keep his taxi number in mind – or better: we should write it down. Also he asks how much time we will take? Yes, a good question, after all we have never been at that temple and don't know how long the boating trip will take. But two hours should be enough for the tour.

We will have to buy the tickets for the temple of Philae already ashore (on the quay’s right side). Though, to reach the sanctuary, the boats will have to be chartered first.
But which one? Several ones are anchored on both sides of the quay, but, unlike the merchants on the bazar, the coxswains don’t exactly impose their services on passengers. Or don’t they take stock on bringing us to the island? When we choose one of them and ask him for the fees he will name a completely exaggerated price. Then it will be necessary to beat it down onto a normal level which is not too difficult with reference to other coxswains.

At 8.20 we will set sail. However, the journey doesn’t take us to the Isle of Philae but to the nearby island of Agilkia on which the temple of Isis is situated nowadays. Otherwise, we would have had to take gum boots with us, if not our snorking gear. Because the site became flooded several montship every year already after the old embankment’s construction. The Nile’s better regulation by the new high dam in the south would have worsened this situation so that the Isle of Philae partly lies under water at our visit, too. By the way, the rescue has taken only two and a half years, during which the buildings had been sawed into 37363 blocks of stone weighing between 2 and 25 tons and truly to original reconstructed.

The legend has it that then Isis found the heart of her husband Osiris on the island, after his brother Seth killed, fragmented and littered him in the whole country. When Isis succeeded in collecting (nearly) all bodily parts with a help of her sister, she added the corpse. But Osiris wouldn’t tarry among the living people anymore, but he plomped for the hereafter. Well, however Isis became pregnant and gave birth to Horus. In the Mamisi (birthplace) of the temple the relieves delineate his birth and his childhood in the everglades of the delta of the Nile before he continued his battle against his uncle Seth. Isis herself got venerated as goddess of love, fertileness and deliverance as well as mistress flood.

The far-flung Philae, which was built at present of the Ptolomans and Romans, was able to allege against the Christians for a long time and to conserve their cult in spite of the Egyptian religion left the island and so they set the seal on the definitive demise of the old deities and their more than thousand year old rites. Only a few years later the prophet Mohammed was born in Mecca.

We feel comfortable that Philae, even if it is one of the most beautiful aims along the nil, only a few travellers find. So we merely met a French party and some individual travellers. So we can look around almost undisturbed between the two lines of pillars as well as the building behind the Pylons, before we allow us to take the next (vitally important) cold drink in the shade of the grove.

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