CULTURE
THE LIFE-GIVING NILE:
Lake Nasser threatened ancient monuments in 1964, when water began rising behind
the Aswan High Dam. Two massive monuments stood at Abu Simbel-the Great
Temple, built about 1270 B.C. by Pharaoh Ramses II in his own honor, and
the Small Temple, dedicated to his queen, Nefertari. These magnificent structures
rose in the southern reaches of Ramses' empire, possibly to discourage Nubian
uprisings. Engulfed by invading sand over the centuries, the temples lay hidden
until they were discovered by a Swiss traveler in 1813.
To prevent the monuments' disappearing again, this time underwater, UNESCO launched
a worldwide campaign to dismantle them and move them to a higher site. During the
four-year, 40-million-dollar project, the temples were cut into 1,050 sections. (Here
the pharaoh's 21-ton visage is lifted by crane from the head of one of the
67-foot-high figures that guarded the Great Temple.)
Today the reassembled colossi gaze across Lake Nasser from a reconstructed hill
similar to the original. Egyptians revered Philae Island as the "pearl of Egypt." There
stood the temple of the goddess Isis, dating from the third century B.C. When the Aswan
Dam was completed early in this century, rising waters began to swallow the island, and
the problem worsened with the High Dam. Finally, in 1972, a 30-million-dollar salvage
program was begun, half of it funded through UNESCO. Some 40,000 original blocks were
removed and reassembled to crown the loftier Agilkia Island, now also called
Philae for the celebrated island that has vanished beneath Lake Nasser.
Read a wonderful essay on the People
affected by the DAM
Also click here
to read more on the effects of the Dam
