Travel: Final swing through Egypt

Jamaica Gleaner News (Laura Tanna)

Our last day with our guide, we drive to Aswan Dam, built by the British between 1898 and 1902, and then to the High Dam, built between 1960 and 1971 with the assistance of the Soviet Union, commemorated by a lotus-shaped tower. The High Dam created not only the world's largest artificial lake at the time, Lake Nasser, but necessitated the flooding and removal of some 800,000 Nubians, many of whom settled in Aswan.

We take a motorboat to the Temple of Philae, partially submerged by the dam until with the assistance of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), from 1972-1980, the temple was cut into 41,000 pieces, each numbered, and reassembled on nearby Angilika Island. Temples cannot be sited randomly. Rather, it depends on how they face the sun and the god's relevance to the local area. Here, we find a Temple of Isis from which she could watch over a nearby mythical burial site of her husband Osiris, judge of the dead. The dedication involved in saving and rebuilding this beautiful temple is remarkable, but not nearly as mind-boggling as the work that went into saving the two temples at Abu Simbel.