The Nile 



These statues of a dead and gone Rameses 

 are some sixty feet in height, two on each side of 

 the entrance to the gloomy interior whose walls 

 are still covered with the paint and frescoes of 

 long-past ages. These stately figures, which 

 keep watch and ward over the mysteries within, 

 appear weird and ghostly in the moonlight. 



Soon the temple fades from view. Then, with 

 an occasional accidental bump on a hidden sand- 

 bank, we steam onwards past the long lines of 

 majestic date palms. Leaving on our right hand 

 an ancient Roman fortress towering overhead on 

 a bold bluff, we approach the great Assuan Dam, 

 in whose lake, formed by the pent-up waters, the 

 temple of Philae stands placidly gazing at the 

 iron-bound shore around. It is built upon an 

 island, now submerged so that the waters lap its 

 pylons and walls, covering the foundations in 

 some depth of water. The carvings stand out in 

 bold relief, and the capitals of the massive 

 columns are highly decorated with chiselling, 

 evidences of a very far-advanced civilization. 



The great wall of masonry built to dam up the 

 waters of the Nile with a view to improve the 

 irrigation of Lower Egypt is about a mile from 

 Philae, and its position is marked by the arms of 

 lofty cranes, used to drop the stones and concrete 

 into their places in the new outer wall that is 

 beinof constructed to strengthen the foundations 

 for a further barrier, sixteen feet higher, to allow 



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