Celulosa
Philaé (also written Philæ ) is an ancient city of the first names High-Egypt.
Philaé is especially known for the temple of Isis which this small island close to Assouan contains. Built tardily, it one of best is also preserved Egypt. Philaé, thanks to (more) celebrates temple of Isis, enormously had at one time grounds. Current buildings (temple of Isis, kiosk and carries Hadrian, temple of Maât - Hathor, Mammisi, gantry…) go back to the twilight of Egyptian civilization, being started with the last Pharaons autochtones (Nectanébo {{Ier}}) and being finished by the Roman Emperors, in spite of the small keys coptes. Philaé was attended until the 6th century by the Blemmyes, people of remote the Nubie.
Towards 550, the emperor Justinien prohibits the worship of Isis to the temple of Philaé, which will be transformed into church.
History
The monuments of Philaé are relatively late, the first date from the last Pharaons to the IV E and the last of the Roman epoch, while passing by the Ptolémées. The principal temple is devoted to the goddess Isis.
It is difficult to determine when the worship began from Isis on the island of Philaé. The goddess Hathor was it also venerated on the island. Mistress of the Nubie, it is in the shape of the lioness Tefnout coming from the extreme south that it would have rested there for the first time, out of Egyptian ground. On the island close to Bigeh the tomb of Osiris was.
The oldest known building goes up with the reign of Nectanébo I {{er}}.
Many pilgrims came to the temple from Isis during the ptolémaïques and Roman periods. Apart from Egypt, the worship of Isis was very popular among the tribes of North Sudan: the goddess was venerated by the Nubian tribes of the Nobades and the Blemmyes which, at the beginning of the 5th century, badgered in the valley the southern border with the Roman empire with the East.
In spite of these fights, the island of Philaé remained a peaceful ground of meeting between the two opposite camps. The priests of these tribes could, in its temple, to adore the goddess Isis. In 453, was even concluded a treaty authorizing Blemmyes and Nobades to be borrowed for a determined time, and to carry in their country, the statue of the goddess.
The worship of Isis was, among the worships returned to the old Pharaonic divinities, that which was maintained longest in Christian Egypt. It is only under the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinien - which dealt in an active way of christianization with the Nubie - that the temples were closed on its order. The pope Théodose {{II}} had issued, in 426 of our era, that Greek civilization was impious and had given the order to destroy all their temples. In Egypt, they decided to transform the temples into churches! Thus, beside the main door of the temple of Isis, a low-relief representing was Amon. The head was erased and carved of a cross copte in the place! One thus finds a character with a cross copte as a surmounted head of the two feathers of Amon!
The spectacle Its and Lights of Philaé write by André Castelot makes it possible to live again under the starlight night, the mysteries of Isis as well as the last great hours of Pharaonic Egypt.
The rescue of Philaé
After construction by the British , in 1894, of the first stopping of Aswan, the temples of Philaé partly were immersed by the Nile ten months out of twelve with the great regret of Pierre Loti: The drowning of Philæ comes, as one knows, to increase by seventy-five million books the annual produce of land surrounding. Encouraged by this success, the British go, the next year, to still raise of six meters the stopping of the Nile; blow, the sanctuary of Isis will have completely plunged, the majority of the ancient temples of the Nubie will be also in water, and of the fevers the country will infect. But that will make it possible to make of so productive cotton plantations! … .
During seventy years thus, the visit of the temple of Philaé in the boat was a spectacle where the picturesque one was combined with the beauty: We enter there with our boat But how much it is adorable thus, the kiosk of Philæ .
In 1979, one started to build the second stopping, a work representing a mass of forty-three million cubic meters of materials, project constituting a threat for Philaé. It envisaged, indeed, between the two stoppings, the establishment of a level. However, Philaé would be in the tablecloth thus created, between old construction downstream, and the news upstream. Admittedly, in this lake of reserve, the level would be lower than that which it was to reach behind the new dam, and lower even than the current maximum height. There would be a kind of stage. The water mass included would approximately reach the principal pylon of the temple of Isis only to half its height. It was not a progress. Thus the island would be never again discovered completion during part of the year. It would not have any more a season dries ! In addition - and there resided the danger of dead - the water mass was to undergo daily oscillations of an amplitude of six meters. It would result a movement from it upwards and from top to bottom which would end up filing the walls which would be thinned until the collapse.
Then always throbbing it question arose: how to save Philaé? A solution ends up being essential: to dismount the temple and to transfer it onto the small island Aguilkya, three hundred meters downstream, that water of the Nile never recovers.
The gigantic operation was carried out under the auspices of the Egyptian ministry for the Culture, of the services of archeology of Cairo as well as UNESCO, Mrs. Christiane Desroches Noblecourt being the mainstay of all the rescues .
Initially, it was necessary to build around Philaé two walls metal 17 meters in height and apart of 12 meters made up of 850 steel curtains weighing 1276 tons which, once filled of: 200000 cubic meters of sand, would form an effective protection against the pressure of surrounding water. Then the water which was inside the enclosure was pumped and rejected into the lake. The drained island, the removed mud, began the recording . The means consists in employing pairs of cameras of very utmost precision in order to give stereoscopic photographs (three-dimensional) of each monument which one can then reproduce using an apparatus particular to the Photogrammétrie, allowing to trace a continuous line of all constructions on the surface of the monument; the drawing of contour resulting from this operation is then so precise that it gives the index of guide necessary for the rebuilding of the monument in its primitive aspect.
The photogrammetric land register of the temple of Philaé was carried out by the IGN which carried out six hundred photogrammetric recordings roughly accounting for approximately 95% of all surfaces of the temples.
The temples were then cut out in blocks and extracts of the site using barges which took along the pieces to put them at the shelter, time to rebuild them on their new site of reception: the island of Aguilkia, 300 meters more in north. The island was levelled of 30 meters and was reorganized in order to give him the aspect of the original island of Philaé, that of a bird swimming on the Nile. The transport of the temples began on September 9th, 1974 and was completed two years later.
The Egyptian government, which had already contributed for more half to the expenses necessary to save the two temples of Abou Simbel, considered the question of providing the necessary amounts. Twenty-three states cotisé with the case of UNESCO; to these subsidies came to be added the incomes of the exposures of the Egyptian treasures which furrowed the world. The total of all these participations reached an amount of more than 15 million dollars.
Photographs
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