Temple of Kalabsha

Listen for the water first. Small waves tap against the rocks of this island, and a boat engine fades behind you. The ground underfoot is pale sand and broken stone. Ahead of you rises a wall of golden sandstone, warm even in the morning, with a stone path running straight towards it from the shore. This is the Temple of Kalabsha. Almost nobody arrives here by accident. That quiet is part of what makes the place worth the effort.

Before we walk closer, here is the first surprise. This temple does not stand where it was built. For close to two thousand years, it stood on the west bank of the Nile, roughly fifty kilometres south of here. The place was called Talmis in ancient times. Today, that original site lies under the waters of Lake Nasser, the great reservoir created by the Aswan High Dam. What you see in front of you was taken apart and carried here.

The rescue happened in the early 1960s, while the High Dam was under construction. A team from what was then West Germany led the work. They cut the temple into thousands of numbered blocks, often quoted as around thirteen thousand. Then they shipped the blocks north and rebuilt the temple on this rocky island near the dam. It was one of the first major projects in the international campaign to save the monuments of Nubia, the region that stretches south from Aswan into Sudan.

Now look at the path under your feet as you approach. A causeway runs from the water to the main gateway, which is called a pylon. A pylon is the pair of tall, sloping towers that frame the entrance to most Egyptian temples. In the old location, this causeway led up from a landing stage on the river. Priests and pilgrims arrived by boat, just as you did. The arrival you made this morning follows an old pattern.

So who was worshipped here? The temple was dedicated to Mandulis, a sun god of Lower Nubia. He was a local deity, not one of the great national gods like Amun or Osiris. Egyptian priests linked him with Horus and with the sun, so he often appears with a tall crown of feathers and horns. A temple of this size for a regional god shows how important this stretch of the river was to the rulers of Egypt.

Those rulers, by the time this building went up, were Romans. The temple dates mainly to the reign of the emperor Augustus, around the turn of the first century. It probably replaced an older, smaller sanctuary from the Ptolemaic period, when Greek-speaking kings ruled Egypt. The Roman emperors presented themselves as pharaohs in this land. So on these walls you will find a Roman emperor carved in the old Egyptian style, making offerings to Egyptian gods.

Walk through the pylon into the open forecourt. On three sides, columns once supported a covered walkway around the edges. Then comes the hall of columns, the hypostyle hall. Look at the tops of the columns, which are called capitals. They are carved as bundles of plants, with flowers and leaves, and no two neighbouring capitals are quite the same. Beyond the hall, the rooms become smaller and darker, leading towards the sanctuary where the god's image once stood.

Here is the second surprise. This temple was never finished. Look carefully at the walls, and you will see large areas of smooth stone with no carving at all. In other places the outlines of figures are only roughly cut. Work seems to have stopped before the decoration was complete. Many visitors walk past these blank surfaces without noticing them. But they show you the stages of the work — first the dressed stone, then the outline, then the final carved relief.

The temple's story did not end with the pharaonic gods. In late antiquity, this region saw new peoples and new powers. On one of the walls there is a long inscription in Greek, left by a Nubian king named Silko. He ruled the Nobadae, a people of the Nile valley to the south, probably in the fifth century. In the text, he describes his victories over a rival desert people called the Blemmyes. It is a rare written voice from Nubian history at that time.

Another inscription on the site is more ordinary, and more human. In the third century, an official ordered that pigs must be driven out of the temple, so that the rites could be carried out properly. It is a small detail, but it shows real daily life. Animals, mud, and neighbours were close to the sacred space. Later still, Christians used parts of the building as a church, and you may see traces of that period on some surfaces.

If the stairs are open, take them up towards the roof. From above, you can see how the temple sits on its island. Water lies on several sides, and the hard, dark rock of the Aswan area rises around the lake. Look north and you may see the long, low line of the High Dam itself. It is strange to stand on a monument that the dam forced to move, while the dam stands in plain view.

This island holds more than one rescued monument. Nearby you can visit the small rock-cut temple of Beit el-Wali, built under Ramesses the Second, with brightly coloured scenes of his campaigns. There is also the elegant kiosk of Qertassi, a small open pavilion with columns topped by the face of the goddess Hathor. One more piece of the Kalabsha story is far away. A gateway from this site was given to Germany, and it now stands in a museum in Berlin.

Before you leave, walk once more along the outer wall and touch the sandstone if you can. Feel how the surface is rough in some places and smooth in others. Notice the thin lines between the blocks, where modern engineers fitted the ancient stones back together. Listen again for the water against the rocks. This temple has already travelled once. As your boat pulls away, look back at the pylon in the light — and remember that you have seen a building that the river nearly took.