In Aswan. We’ve been traveling in a lovely wooden ship on Lake Nasser, which is a HUGE freshwater lake created by the Aswan Dam. Our program director, Nora, told us the dam is so heavily protected because, were it to be destroyed in, say, a terrorist attack, Egypt would be flooded and destroyed within 9 hours.

On yesterday’s excursion we went to see some amazing Nubian temples. These temples were built so far away from the capital at the time that it was presumed the king would never see them and so they were created in a more slapdash manner and lacked the precision of others we have seen. One of the temples from Greco Roman times showed Ptolemy (sp?) making offerings to the god Horus the Child, son of the goddess Isis, whom the Nubians worshipped as late as the 1600s AD. Continue reading →