Position 90 - Looking Down (northeast) Upon The Island Of Philae And Its Temples From The Island Of Bigeh.

 Perched high on the granite rocks of Bigeh we overlook Philae and the point behind it from which we viewed it before, out there in that group of palms beyond the island, flanked by the modern buildings on the further shore. You now obtain some general idea of the extent of the island. It is 1,500 feet long and nearly 500 feet wide, the longest dimension being about in a north and south line. We are now on the southwest of the island and are looking northeastward across its buildings.

The eastern shore of the river curving around it, rises into a desolate plain, flanked by the granite hills, through which the Nile has had to force its way. It is this setting of wild nature which so enhances the effect of the architecture on the island. Over on the right is the square kiosk, which the natives call “Pharaoh's Bed.” It has no roof, and it never was finished, but it is one of the gems of the place, even though it dates from the Roman age.

The columns rise out of a surrounding balustrade or screen wall; all the forms are of the simplest, yet they make up a slender and graceful composition which most travelers remember with more pleasure than anything else on the island. The building with the large pylon is the Isis temple. It is the result of slow growth, having begun with the modest chambers in the rear under Nektanebos, about 350 B. C. He also built this little vestibule, several columns of which you see by the obelisk at the hither end of the long colonnade; but it was carried away by a high Nile and had to be restored by the Ptolemies.

In these buildings, then, we can trace, better than anywhere else, the transition from the old days under oriental Pharaohs, to the domination of the Greek dynasty of the Ptolemies. That little obelisk is one of a pair; the other has been carried to England, but its base you can still see from here some 25 feet to the right of the standing obelisk. They were erected in the time of Ptolemy IX, called Physcon (died 117 B. C.), and they are of especial interest because the one now in England was the monument which enabled Champollion to take the first steps in his decipherment of the hieroglyphic, before he employed the Rosetta stone. A Greek inscription on the base appeals to Physcon and his queen, Cleopatra, that the priests of this temple may not be obliged to entertain the numerous state officials who imposed themselves upon the hospitality of the priesthood.

The fine colonnades leading up to the temple are of Roman date, and you can read in the reliefs the oft-repeated name of Augustus, or of Tiberius, under whom Christ was crucified. The nearer of the two colonnades is concealed from us by the back wall, built up over the river. It is 300 feet long and has a row of thirty-one columns 16 feet high; the eastern colonnade, the further of the two, is unfinished and has but sixteen columns.

Landing here at the southern end of the court so enclosed, the pilgrims entered between the two obelisks, and many an imposing procession in honor of the great goddess must have moved up between these colonnades. The door in the middle of the first pylon enters a court behind it, while the one in the left-hand tower is the entrance to a “birth house” like that of which we spoke at Denderah (Position 46). Between the towers of the first pylon you can discern one of those of the second, with its opening above the channel for the flagstaves, like those in the first pylon.

Behind that second pylon lie the hypostyle, the Holy of Holies and the surrounding chambers. The space unoccupied by the temples and their enclosures was taken up by the town, which was excavated in 1895-6, some of its streets may still be followed by the casual visitor, and the excavators were still able to plot the ancient town (see Plan 18). You see the rubbish from these excavations dumped into the river through the windows in the wall opposite us.

In the town were chapels of minor gods, but Isis was the great divinity of the place. The fame of her power had spread far and wide, and in classic times she was worshiped from the Danube and the Seine to the upper cataract of the Nile. Roman ladies journeyed to this shrine to carry home the sacred waters that bathed the island. So powerful was the priesthood of this temple that the edict of Theodosius in 378, forbidding the continuance of all pagan worship in the Egyptian temples could not be enforced here, and it was not until the reign of Justinian (527-565) that the people of the locality ceased to worship the great goddess.

Her worship may have continued surreptitiously even after this, but the temple, or at least portions of it, was used as a Christian church for a long time after Justinian's reign. This island of Bigeh, where we are now, was also inhabited in the Pharaonic days, and the fragmentary ruins of a small temple of Hathor are just outside of our present prospect on the left.

There is a beautiful view from the top of the right-hand tower of the first pylon, from which point we may see something of the cataract and the modern danger which threatens Philae. There, then, we shall presently stand. This position is given by the lines numbered 91 on Maps 17 and 18.