History

Philae’s original island — a granite outcrop near the First Cataract — was considered by ancient Egyptians to be one of the burial places of Osiris. The earliest stone structures on the island date to the reigns of Nectanebo I and II (380–343 BC), but the temple complex as it stands was built mainly under the Ptolemaic dynasty and the Roman emperors, beginning with Ptolemy II Philadelphus around 280 BC. The cult of Isis at Philae remained active into the early Christian period through a formal treaty between the Roman emperor Diocletian and the Blemmyes and Nobatae tribes (298 AD), who were permitted to continue worshipping at Philae after paganism had been banned elsewhere in the Empire. The last hieroglyphic inscription — a priest’s demotic graffito dated 394 AD and translated by the Egyptologist Francis Griffith in 1935 — was carved at the Gate of Hadrian.

The Aswan Low Dam, completed by the British in 1902, raised the Nile’s water level sufficiently to submerge Philae’s island for most of each year. Between December and April — when dam sluices were opened — the temples re-emerged from the brown water, encrusted with silt and slowly dissolving. Divers mapped the submerged stonework; photographers documented the temples from boats, the columns rising from the water like a mirage. The Aswan High Dam, completed in 1970, would have submerged the site permanently, which prompted the UNESCO campaign that began in 1972. Working from 1972 to 1980, an international team dismantled 45,000 blocks of stone — numbered and catalogued individually — and reassembled the complex on Agilkia Island, which had been reshaped with fill to match Philae’s original topography. The project cost $30 million (1980 values) and involved 23 countries.