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Another clear, cloudless, blisteringly hot day in Aswan .  A high of 42° C today, and this is the cooler part of the year?  My.  I can barely manage to walk around for a few hours, much less carve granite.  It makes the accomplishments of the quarrimen all the more impressive.  It also makes cold Coke taste really good.

Our day starts at the unfinished obelisk .  This is exactly as described, an obelisk that cracked while being quarried thousands of years ago, left in place and still undisturbed.  It isn't out in the middle of nowhere, to the contrary, these hills have been quarried continuously since the times of the earliest Pharoahs.  Half a mile down the road is a current active cement factory.  A residential neighborhood stretches within feet of the site.  And the huge, largely completed obelisk remains, trapped in the rock for eons.  It looks as though the workers left on a break, leaving their tools for a few minutes.

The quarry also provides a lesson in techniques .  The ancient Egyptians didn't have iron or other hard metal tools.  They shaped stone with stone, diorite in particular being a favorite for carving tools, as it is harder than granite, limestone, and other common materials.  Workers would use fist-sized spheres of diorite to slowly scrape out the rock, and essentially shave them into shape.  Expert craftsmen would finish the pieces and carve the heiroglyphs once the blocks were in place.  The obelisk, however, was intended to be a single piece and clearly a lot of rough shaping took place before the fatal crack.  The blocks were detached through the careful application of wooden wedges.  When soaked in water and allowed to expand, they pop the rock off the hill.  The evidence of this technique is everywhere, and the marks look a bit like giant stiches from a sewing machine.

Our next step is a modern marvel of engineering, the Aswan high dam .  This is not the only dam on the Egyptian Nile, as is sometimes thought, but it certainly is the one of most superlatives.  The largest, longest, highest dam containing the largest cachement of water (until the Chinese Three Gorges dam), this is the world extreme in hydroengineering.  It does not, surprisingly supply a large percentage of Egypt's electrical power.  It supplies some, but was intended to control the annual innundation and save water, not provide power.

The benefits of controlling the annual flood cycle are many, but the detriments are also making themselves known.  Most obviously, dozens of Nubian temples were covered by the rising waters and required massive efforts to be moved.  Perhaps less obviously, the huge lake has changed the water table of the whole country.  Groundwater as far away as Cairo is rising and threatening many historic buildings.  The humidity of Aswan and the rest of upper Egypt has changed dramatically -- there are clouds in the sky.  No rain as yet, but what is the impact of this change on the monuments and people?  Move one pawn and you change the entire future of the game.  It is thought that civilization arose in the Nile valley when the progressive drying of the climate combined with the annual innundation cycle to provide the necessity to mother the invention of village cooperatives.  How will Egypt's unique ecosystem be impacted over the next few hundred years?

There is an earlier dam in Aswan, built at the turn of the century.  It is a few kilometers downstream of the high dam, and long before Abu Simbel'd jigsaw puzzle, it caused another treasure to be submerged.  The temple of Isis at Philae was later moved from the island of Philae to a nearby, higher, but similar island.  Its' many years spent underwater cost us some of the beauty of the temple as the plaster and painting were washed away, but its' marvelous aspect and solitude remains.  Philae was one of the last temples in active use, remaining a center of worship well into the Christian era.  Lower Egypt converted to the new religion by the 400s, but this far reach of the Roman Empire remained outside their control.  It wasn't until into the 500s that it was taken over and a church built on the site to force the conversion of the population to the new state religion.  Similarly, this region was slow to convert from Christianity to Islam after 640.  The isolated and serene island of Philae saw many changes, but remained a holy place.

The temple itself is from the Ptolemaic period, very late, and the architecture shows that odd Graeco-Egyptian blend common to that era.  Columns and arches in the Greek style lie wihin a classical hypostyle hall, behind a pylon .  There are actually several temples on the island , and the afore-mentioned Roman church.  Unlike some sites that are now surrounded by modern cities, the island remains calm and creates that sense of reverence engendered by all places of devotion.

This afternoon we boat our boat for the next five days of cruising down the Nile.  The Sun Boat IV is owned by Abercrombie and Kent, and provides a modern answer to the British tradition of creating civilization in any location.  While it is elegant beyond any expectation, the staff ensures that the service provides comfort rather than being oppressive.  The passengers are a ployglot bunch, a group from South Africa, a few Brits, some South American couples, a French couple, and four other Americans.  The staff easily switches languages and helps everyone feel at ease, and the variety of small groups provides us all the opportunity to meet a number of fascinating people from around the world.  One does, however, rather wish for a more suitable frock.  

As night falls, we decide to wander the streets of the city and see the market.  Markets are fascinating and reveal an enormous amount about a country -- its level of development and globalization, gender roles, social strata, income levels, interaction styles -- it's a microcosm in action. Many of the stalls here are oriented to tourists.  Nubian spices!  Indigo!  Henna!  Papyrus!  Statues!  Galabeyas and belly dancing clothes!  The last are a bit eye-popping in a land where almost all women are veiled.  One expects the touts to be somewhat aggressive anywhere.  That is the nature of their livelihood.  Here they have found a new game to engage the tourist, guessing where they are from.  It's odd to walk down the street with random people shouting country names at you.  One nice young man is so excited to shown me dried lotus blossoms that he grabs my arm to pull me over to his table.  No threat, but enthusiasm.  Steve rescues me and forbids me to buy spices in a rather forceful tone.  

Unlike the Khan el-Khalili in Cairo, here the local stores are intermingled with the others.  Huge baskets of dates and grapes, fresh cut meat, bottled water and hibiscus leaves for tea are bargained for with vigor by black-draped women.  Men look on from tea shops, smoking shisha and discussing the day.  It's efficient but friendly, no pushing or yelling.  Theft is unheard of, though bargaining is an art that applies to almost all transactions.  Farther on can be found fabric stores, groceries, pharmacies, all the needs of the household.  The women in their city black gather their bundles and head for the bus home, and we to our boat, as the soft night breeze cools the air and the lights of the Corniche reflect on the river.

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