Philae by launch
Isis's island temple, rescued stone by stone from the rising lake — arrive across the water at opening.
Port of call VII
Aswan
Granite islands, black water, journey's end.
Day 4 · ArrivalOn the four-night journey
210 kmFrom Luxor
Half day ashoreTime ashore
Morning on the waterWhen we visit
Philae Temple · The First Cataract · Elephantine Island · Nubian villages
The river changes character at Aswan — granite instead of sandstone, Nubia instead of Egypt, islands scattered across black water. Philae waits on its own island, reached the only way it should be: by boat.
What you'll see
Worth the mooring.
The First Cataract
Where the Nile once broke white over granite; feluccas thread the islands now.
A Nubian shore
Painted houses, hibiscus tea and a slower Arabic on the west bank of the world's oldest border town.
Where Egypt ended and the road south began.
Aswan was the frontier. South of the first cataract the Nile stops being navigable and Egypt stops being Egypt — beyond it was Nubia, and the trade in gold, ivory, ebony and incense that came north through this town for three thousand years. The ancient name, Swenett, is the root of the modern one, and the granite quarried here went into obelisks and colossi the length of the country.
The unfinished obelisk still lies in its quarry, cracked and abandoned where it was being cut. Had it been raised it would have stood nearly forty-two metres and weighed over a thousand tonnes — larger than any obelisk ever erected. A flaw opened in the granite and the work stopped, which is why it is there: the only place you can see exactly how the cutting was done, at full scale, unfinished.
Philae is the reason most people come. The temple of Isis stood on an island that the first Aswan dam left half-submerged for most of the year; when the High Dam was planned it would have drowned entirely. Between 1972 and 1980 it was cut into forty thousand blocks, lifted, and rebuilt on Agilkia island, which was reshaped to match the original. It was the last place in the Roman empire where the old Egyptian religion was still practised — the final hieroglyphic inscription anywhere was carved here, in AD 394.
The river changes at Aswan. It widens, the granite breaks the surface in black islands, and feluccas work the wind between them. The west bank is desert within a few hundred metres of the water, and the Nubian villages along it are painted in colours that have nothing to do with the rest of Egypt.
In pictures
Aswan, as we find it.
Before you go ashore at Aswan.
- How long ashore
- Philae takes about two hours including the boat across. A fuller day adds the obelisk and a Nubian village.
- Getting there
- Philae is on an island — a short motorboat crossing, which is part of the pleasure of it.
- The walking
- Level throughout, with a few steps at the landing. One of the easier sites.
- Shade
- Reasonable inside the colonnades; little on the island paths.
- Photography
- The approach by water is the shot. Late afternoon light is best on the pylon.
- Worth adding
- Abu Simbel, three hours south by road and usually taken as an early start on the morning you disembark.
- Where we moor
- At Aswan, with the granite islands in view. The last night aboard is spent here on the southbound journeys.
How the Nile Spirit visits
Our last morning: breakfast on deck among the islands, Philae by private launch, and your onward transfer arranged to the minute.