West Bank of Luxor

Day 6 (29/10/08): West Bank of Luxor

Disembarkation after breakfast. Today we'll be out for a tour around the West Bank of Luxor, visiting three main sites: the Valley of the Kings, (skipping the Valley of the Queens because it is a smaller version of Kings without as much to see), the Temple of Queen Hatsheput, as well as the Collosei of Memnon.

Valley of the Kings:

The Valley of the Kings is a valley in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the 16th to 11th century BC, tombs were constructed for the kings and powerful nobles of the New Kingdom (the Eighteenth through Twentieth Dynasties of Ancient Egypt). The valley stands on the west bank of the Nile, across from Thebes (modern Luxor), within the heart of the Theban Necropolis. The wadi consists of two valleys, East Valley (where the majority of the royal tombs situated) and West Valley.

With the 2005 discovery of a new chamber, and the 2008 discovery of 2 further tomb entrances, the valley is known to contain 62 tombs and chambers (ranging in size from a simple pit to a complex tomb with over 120 chambers), and was the principal burial place of the major royal figures of the Egyptian New Kingdom, together with those of a number of privileged nobles. The royal tombs are decorated with scenes from Egyptian mythology and give clues to the beliefs and funerary rituals of the period. All of the tombs seem to have been opened and robbed in antiquity, but they still give an idea of the opulence and power of the rulers of this time.

One of the ongoing archeological digs right in the middle of the tombs









Alabaster Museum and Demonstration:

Temple of Queen Hatshepsut

The Mortuary Temple Of Hatshepsut arose as a necropolis, consecrated to the goddess Hathor in the eleventh dynasty (2120 - 1991 B.C.). It was then abandoned, until queen Hatshepsut took it over some five hundred years later. This became the period of its highest importance. After being abandoned again, it was turned into a monastery. The monastery, "Northern Monastery", whose presence at the temple is the reason for its being so well preserved today, has given the temple its present Arabic name, Deir el-Bahri.

The Hatshepsut Temple is built into the rock, and consists of three terraces. The temple itself is located on the top terrace. It was created by the famous architect Senmut. Queen Hatshepsut is best known as the only woman who actually reigned as a pharaoh - probably to her son Thutmosis III's great annoyance. Hatshepsut took over the rule of Egypt in 1473 B.C. after her husband, Thutmosis II, died. Thutmosis II was incidentally both her husband and her half-brother.

When her son Thutmosis III came of age, she was so unhappy about having to hand over the power to him that she, together with the priests, figured out a way to avoid it. The solution included wearing male clothes, as well as the false beard made of wood and leather worn by all pharaohs. When her son finally did come to power, he seemed to find it necessary to demonstrate to the World that he could rule much better than his mother through great conquests of neighbouring countries that he later become known as "the Napoleon of Egypt".

Us (above) standing at the site of the Luxor massacre, which the tourguides kept bringing up with eerie comfort. The Luxor Massacre took place on 17 November 1997, at Deir el-Bahri, an archaeological site located across the River Nile from Luxor in Egypt. Deir el-Bahri is one of Egypt's top tourist attractions, most notably for the spectacular mortuary temple of 18th-dynasty female pharaoh Hatshepsut, known as "Djeser-Djeseru."

The attack is thought to have been instigated by exiled Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya ("The Islamic Group") leaders attempting to undermine the July 1997 "Nonviolence Initiative", an effort to end an Islamist terrorist campaign that had killed hundreds of Egyptians and foreigners since 1992. In the mid-morning attack, terrorists from the Islamic Group and Jihad Talaat al-Fath ("Holy War of the Vanguard of the Conquest") massacred 63 people at the attraction. The six assailants were armed with automatic firearms and knives, and disguised as members of the security forces. They descended on the Temple of Hatshepsut at around 08:45. With the tourists trapped inside the temple, the killing went on systematically for 45 minutes. The dead included a five-year-old British child and four Japanese couples on their honeymoons - in total 4 Egyptians and 59 tourists were dead.

The attackers then hijacked a bus, but ran into a checkpoint of armed Egyptian tourist police and military forces. One of the terrorists was wounded in the shootout and the rest fled into the hills where their bodies were found in a cave, apparently having committed suicide together.

And apparently they still like to tell this story to tourists.

Collosi of Memnon

Kom-Ombu & Edfu

Day 5 (28/10/08): Kom-Ombu/Edfu/Cruise

We woke up on the cruise ship very early, enjoyed a buffet breakfast, and met our guide in the lobby to go visit the dual temple of Sobek and Haroeris in Kom-Ombu.

KOM OMBO, EGYPT:

Located in the town of Kom-Ombo, about 28 miles north of Aswan, the Temple, dating to the Ptolemies, is built on a high dune overlooking the Nile. The actual temple was started by Ptolemy VI Philometor in the early second century BC. Ptolemy XIII built the outer and inner hypostyle halls. The outer enclosure wall and part of the court were built by Augustus sometime after 30 BC, and are mostly gone. There are also tombs from the Old Kingdom in the vicinity of Kom-Ombo village.

The Temple of Kom Ombo is an unusual double temple built during the rule Ptolemaic dynasty in the Egyptian town of Kom Ombo. Some additions to it were later made during the Roman period. The building is unique because its 'double' design meant that there were courts, halls, sanctuaries and rooms duplicated for two sets of gods. The southern half of the temple was dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek, god of fertility and creator of the world with Hathor and Khonsu. Meanwhile, the northern part of the temple was dedicated to the falcon god Haroeris, also known as Horus the Elder, along "with Tasenetnofret (the Good Sister, a special form of Hathor) and Panebtawy (Lord of the Two Lands)."The temple is atypical because everything is perfectly symmetrical along the main axis.

Everything is duplicated along the main axis. There are two entrances, two courts, two colonades, two hypostyle halls and two sanctuaries. There were probably even two sets of priests. The left, or northern side is dedicated to Haroeris (sometimes called Harer, Horus the Elder) who was the falcon headed sky god and the right to Sobek (the corcodile headed god). The two gods are accompanied by their families. They include Haroeris' wife named Tesentnefert, meaning the good sister and his son, Panebtawy. Sobeck likewise is accompanied by his consort, Hathor and son, Khonsu.

In ancient times, sacred crocodiles basked in the sun on the river bank near here. Much of the temple has been destroyed by the Nile, earthquakes, and later builders who used its stones for other projects. Some of the reliefs inside were defaced by Copts (Christians of the Orientatal Othodox - the sect originated in Egypt) who once used the temple as a church. All the temples buildings in the southern part of the plateau were cleared of debris and restored by De Morgan in 1893. A few of the three-hundred crocodile mummies discovered in the vicinity are displayed inside the temple.

EDFU, EGYPT:

And then it was back to the cruise to continue sailing on the way to Edfu to visit the most well-preserved temple in all of Egypt -- dedicated to Horus, the Falcon God. The Temple of Edfu is ;ocated on the west bank of the Nile which was known in Greco-Roman times as Apollonopolis Magna, after the chief god Horus-Apollo. It is the second largest temple in Egypt after Karnak and one of the best preserved. The temple, dedicated to the falcon god Horus, was built in the Ptolemaic period between 237 and 57 BCE. The inscriptions on its walls provide important information on language, myth and religion during the Greco-Roman period in ancient Egypt. In particular, the Temple's inscribed building texts "provide details [both] of its construction, and also preserve information about the mythical interpretation of this and all other temples as the Island of Creation." There are also "important scenes and inscriptions of the Sacred Drama which related the age-old conflict between Horus and Seth." They were translated by the German Edfu-Project.

There were a lot of images of animals and we learned about which animals symbolized what and which were thought to be gods. Summary:

Hippos = Bad luck
Beetles = Good luck

The temple of Edfu fell into disuse as a religious monument following Theodosius I's edict banning non-Christian worship within the Roman Empire in 391 CE. As elsewhere, many of the temple's carved reliefs were razed by followers of the Christian faith which came to dominate Egypt. The blackened ceiling of the hypostyle hall, visible today, is believed to be the result of arson intended to destroy religious imagery that was now considered pagan.

Over the centuries, the temple became buried to a depth of 12 meters (39 ft) beneath drifting desert sand and layers of river silt deposited by the Nile. Local inhabitants built homes directly over the former temple grounds. Only the upper reaches of the temple pylons were visible by 1798, when the temple was identified by a French expedition. In 1860 Auguste Mariette, a French Egyptologist, began the work of freeing Edfu temple from the sands.

Today Edfu is nearly intact and it is the best preserved example of an ancient Egyptian temple in Egypt.







Below is one of the tunnels under the temple. It was dug through the ground and eventually reached the Nile. Depending on how high the water level was inside the tunnel (and thus the height of the Nile that year), that determined how high the taxes were for a given year. The higher the water level, the better the year for agriculture, the more money people had, and thus the higher the taxes would be.



Hand-made exit signs to direct us back to our horse and carriage ride. It was so upsetting to see how emaciated the horses were. You could literally count their ribs and see their bones poking out everywhere. I asked our driver how long his horse or the average horse in Edfu lived and he responded they live very long, like 10-11 years. However, when I looked up how long the average horse lives in a non-abusive environment such as Edfu, it turns out they live about 20-30 years on average (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_lifespan_of_a_horse). Very upsetting.




We rode in the carriage back to the cruise ship, and made it just before the ship disembarked from the port. We were on our way north now to Luxor.

The Nile Cruise Begins

Day 4 (27/10/08): Aswan Islands & Nile Cruise

We woke up, ate breakfast, and met our guide for the day. Our hotel was situated on the Nile River, so our felucca was docked right up against the back of our hotel. The three of us climbed on board, and our two captains (roughly a 12 year old and 15 year old little boys) navigated us to our first destination: the botanical gardens of Kitchener Island, about a 15 minute boat ride away.

Kitchener Island (also Known as The Island Of Trees) is located to the north of Elephantine Island. This botantical garden was started by Lord Horatio Kitchener, the English General who fought in the Sudan in 1898. The island is filled with beautiful plants and birds. Kitchener, who was a keen gardener turned his island home into a botanical garden, importing exotic plants and trees which flourished in the Aswan climate. The botanical garden was constructed in 1899 under the supervision of the Ministry of Irrigation and turned into an experimental station for plants from equatorial regions in 1928. Alongside the native trees and plants of Aswan such as the Sycamore Fig and the Date Palm, many trees were brought from abroad and cultivated for use in the timber industry. Experimental oil and fruit crops were also propagated on the island by the Ministry of Agriculture. Because we arrived so early in the morning, the guides were so helpful and even the head gardener took us around personally, and insisted on getting photographs with us. They picked the leaves from various plants and crumbled them, having us sniff certain plants or feel the texture of others. My favorite was a plant that when you touched its tiny leaves, they would wither and shrivel and pretend that branch was dead. It did this by draining the water from its leaves so they would curl in on themselves. Without the water it would appear dead and animals would ignore it. Within a few minutes, the water would return and the leaves would regain their shape!

From here we boarded our boat again, and sailed fifteen minutes to the Elephantine Island. Our felucca docked in a rocky area, with no clear port or path or any sign of civilization. We stopped next to a group of ten local men who were welding some part of a boat engine using primitive tools and causing quite a raucous. The boys disembarked, leaving us bewildered and confused, and from what I can recall just some random welder silently stepped forward and became our guide across the island. We hiked up a non-existent path until we reaches the top of the island, where we wove around huts made of twigs and dirt, small patches of farmland, and down dusty narrow dirty paths.

Plot of farmland:

Nubian children playing outside a house:

Narrow dirt roads winding through the neighborhoods:

Outdoor cooking area:

Elephantine is an island in the centre of the Nile at Aswan. This was the original 'border town' between Egypt and the Nubian lands to the south and in ancient times was an important strategic position both for the defence of the border and as a trading route. The island has been inhabited from the Early Dynastic Period through Roman times until the present day. Its ancient name was 'abu' or 'yebu', which means elephant and was probably derived from the shape of the smooth grey boulders which surround the island, looking like elephants in the water. However, it also may have received its name because it was a trading place for Ivory.

Over the centuries there has been a great deal of building activity on Elephantine, though most of the ancient structures have now vanished. Excavations and reconstructions have been carried out over the past 100 years by teams of German archaeologists and the largest surviving structure today is the Temple of the ram-headed creator-god Khnum, at the southern end of the island, dating from New Kingdom to Roman times.

Our guide led us around the village, past houses, small shops, two elementary schools, a church, and a few cages with chickens or ducks inside, covered with the reddish brown clay of the ground. Eventually we came upon one of the nicer structures, a clay home with higher ceilings and an actual wooden door (the others simply had open-air doors, or holes in the walls to enter). We went inside the house and were led into a tiny room on the side, where our guide introduced us to our host, his friend, who insisted on bringing us some tea, although only two of us accepted, given we were pretty full of tea at this point (every place gave you a 'welcome drink' and since they were Muslim and don't believe in alcohol consumption, you wind up with way too many cups of tea per day). Then he brought out one of his two pet baby crocodiles which he found along the shore of the Nile near his house. He said they found them often, as the smallest ones can make it safely through the dam. However, soon he would return them to Lake Nassar, which is where all the remaining crocodiles are kept. He showed us some of his crafts, which we awkwardly complimented but did not offer to buy, and had some tea in a small bedroom with two doves that coo-ed loudly the whole time. The room smelled strongly of strawberry incense and when I complimented it, he insisted on me taking three sticks of it, although I was obviously without any mechanism to enjoy it at the hotel. Then he served us peppermint tea which was delicious, but forced upon us (even Dave who had clearly declined the offer). We sipped our tea and sat quietly with our host and guide. Then when we reminded our guide we had to start moving in order to arrive at the cruise in time for check-in, we stood to leave. Our host then began to speak in broken English about how his tea was his business and had been for many years. Our guide stopped and waited as we told him we were impressed and appreciated his hospitality (awkwardly making conversation in broken English is never fun) and after ten minutes of this banter back and forth, our guide motioned that we should pay him for his services. Egyptians have a way of subtly demanding money when there was no service rendered or asked for, so we gave him some money and turned to leave. He handed the money back to Dave and we assumed we misunderstood and that he was letting us go (after all, he brought the tea un-requested), but then when we turned to leave he said that the money wasn't enough and that he wanted that much for each of us. The audacity! Annoyed and frustrated, we paid him what he asked and left, once again pawned by the ongoing deception of Egyptian businessmen.

His pet crocodile, caught from the Nile, which he would later return to Lake Nassar:





The boys waiting for our forced teatime:

We caught our boat back to the hotel, where we met our next guide who drove us to our awaiting cruise ship to check in. We had our first of many buffet-meals on the ship, and looked around, amazed that the five-star cruise ship actually lived up to our expectations.

Deck of the Cruise Ship:

With time to kill, we decided to visit the huge markets of Aswan. They sold everything from spices to meats to crafts to clothing to fake designer bags to literally anything you could imagine. Haggling was too much effort for us, and they were far more agressive than we really wanted to deal with, but we had fun walking up and down the long streets. People were fascinated by me and especially fascinated by the fact that I was one girl walking with two men and would scream out questions about it or asked why it was so. We got a few good laughs as random men would run over and offer to buy me for x number of camels. I learned that typically a woman used to receive 40 camels in ancient Egypt for getting married. I'd like to brag that I was offered all the camels in Egypt, although the suitor's friend counter-offered that there were not enough camels in Egypt for me. I decided that when I have my mid-life crisis and need to feel attractive, I will return to Egypt, where everyone is propositioned on every street corner and therefore feels like the most desirable thing in the world.

The Aswan market:





After having enough of the chaos, we walked back to the cruise ship, ate a buffet dinner, laid around on the top deck, played some cards, and set sail overnight to Kom Ombu, our next destination.

Aswan, Egypt

Day 3 (26/10/08): Aswan

To save 150$ we had decided to skip the overnight cars which were equipped with beds and opted for reclining chairs. Even at 5'2'' and with the luxury of a travel neck pillow, this proved to be a brutal error. The cars weren't heated and when the temperatures plummeted at night, we all were shivering and restless and wound up concocting eccentric looking outfits out of every article of clothing we packed. By the time we arrived in Aswan, I was wearing pants 1/2 way over my shorts, four short-sleeved shirts, two thin long-sleeved shirts and two scarves. The boys slept even worse than me. Other than that the trains weren't too bad. They were relatively safe considering the three of us blondes were traveling alone - there were several guards armed with M5's walking up and down the corridor, although some were not in uniform which always makes you a little nervous. Outside the window we We arrived in Aswan around 8 am and were met by our guide who drove us to our hotel where we unpacked and showered. We met out next guide and set out to explore Aswan.

We were a little nervous about the safety of Aswan, given the events that occurred a few weeks before our arrival. In case you didn't hear, 19 hostages were taken south of Aswan (11 European tourists and 8 guides) by Sudanese rebel forces and held for some time before being mysteriously released in the desert. When I asked the guides if they were afraid that this would hurt tourism or asked them questions in general about the situation, they kind of seemed oblivious to the whole situation - so I was unable to get any more information than what I could just find online:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/127714
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/world/middleeast/10egypt.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/world/middleeast/30egypt.html

Aswan is one of the last big cities in the south of Egypt, standing on the east bank of the Nile at the first cataract and is a busy market and tourist center. Its ancient name, Swenet, translates as "trade". Aswan is one of the driest inhabited places in the world; as of early 2001, the last rain there was six years earlier. As of September 8th 2008, the last rainfall was a thunderstorm on May 13, 2006. And lucky for us, the weather was gorgeous high 80s-low 90s the whole time of our stay.

Our first stop was the Unfinished Obelisk. Much of the red granite used for ancient temples and colossi came from quarries in the Aswan area. Around these quarries are many inscriptions, many of which describe successful quarrying projects. The Unfinished Obelisk located in the Northern Quarry still lies where a crack was discovered as it was being hewn from the rock. Possibly intended as a companion to the Lateran Obelisk, originally at Karnak but now in Rome, it would have weighed over 2.3 million pounds and would have been the worlds largest piece of stone ever handled. However, a crack in the stone occurred, which caused it to be abandoned. Tools left by it's builders have given us much insight into how such work was performed. Obelisks were sometimes put in front of or into temples, where they acted as "antennas", drawing cosmic energy down to Earth. As religion had an overwhelming power in the lives of the Egyptians, religious artifacts, like the obelisks, were produced, transported and erected regardless of their great cost and labor.

The Egyptians would find a good piece of stone for a potential statue and obelisk and given the primitive technology, they had an interesting process to extract these giant single pieces of rock out of the mountainside. They made a row of holes app. 10 centimeters (4 inches) wide, and inserted wood in the holes. Then they poured water on the wood. The wood then expands by such force because of the water that the rock splits. The basic shape of the obelisk is created by rows of workers pounding the shape on the rock with dolomite rocks, or dolostone, and creating the app. 1 meter (3 feet) wide shafts at each side of the obelisk-to-be. This is possible because the dolomite is even harder than granite. To smoothen the sides, bricks are heated and put on the places that are to be treated. When the rock is sufficiently hot, cold water is poured on, and the uneven parts come off in flakes, thanks to the crystalline structure of the granite. Then everything was transported by boat up the Nile to its final destination.

Next stop was the notorious Aswan High Dam.

Without impoundments, the River Nile would flood each year during summer, as waters from east Africa flowed down the river as they did in ancient times. These floods brought nutrients and minerals that made the soil around the Nile fertile and ideal for farming. As the population along the river grew, there came a need to control the flood waters to protect and support farmland and cotton fields. In a high-water year, the whole crop may be entirely wiped out, while in a low-water year there was wide spread drought and famine. The dam also powers twelve generators each rated at 175 megawatts, producing a hydroelectric output of 2.1 gigawatts. Power generation began in 1967. When the dam first reached peak output it produced around half of Egypt's entire electricity production (about 15% by 1998) and allowed for the connection of most Egyptian villages to use electricity for the first time. The dam mitigated the effects of dangerous floods in 1964 and 1973 and of threatening droughts in 1972–73 and 1983–84. A new fishing industry has been created around Lake Nasser, though it is struggling due to its distance from any significant markets. Lake Nassar is one of the few remaining places in Egypt where you can find crocodiles, as they cannot make it through the dam to continue downriver (to northern Egypt).

Unfortunately, many people do not like the dam because of its controversial affects on the environment and historical areas. We were able to see some of this from the train on the way to Aswan. Right along the sides of the river there are short areas where you have a green oasis-like area which is well-nourished and full of vegetation. Then almost immediately, the green ends and the desert begins. This represents much of what has happened to formally fertile regions along the lower (norther) Nile. (Also notice that Northern Egypt is known as "Lower Egypt" because the Nile actually flows from south to north due to decreasing elevation as you move north, and therefore southern Egypt, where Aswan is located, is known as "Upper Egypt" - and yes, this got very confusing when they would mention locations). To compensate for the lack of silt, farmers are turning to fertilizers which are more expensive and also drain back into into the Nile and damage the fish population.

Damming the Nile has caused a number of environmental and cultural problems. It flooded much of lower Nubia and over 90,000 people were displaced, However it allowed new settlements to be planned on an improved basis. Lake Nasser flooded valuable archaeological sites such as the fort at Buhen and the Philae Temple (which I will talk about later). It seems as if they didn't realize that damming causes flooding, given their haphazard recovery efforts after the dam's construction. The silt which was deposited in the yearly floods, and made the Nile floodplain fertile, is now held behind the dam. Silt deposited in the reservoir is lowering the water storage capacity of Lake Nasser. Poor irrigation practices are waterlogging soils and bringing salt to the surface. Mediterranean fishing declined after the dam was finished because nutrients that used to flow down the Nile to the Mediterranean were trapped behind the dam. The coastline and delta of the river (where it empties into the Mediterranean) have significantly eroded, and their red-clay industry has all but collapsed. Lastly, the Mediterranean ecosystem depended on the inflow of fish from the Nile, which are no longer making it to the end of the river due to the impediment of the dam, the poisonous fertilizers, and the introduction of disease carrying snails into Lake Nassar. So as you can see, many people are not big fans of the dam. Due to this, security at the Dam was very tight, lots of armed guards, and you were forbidden to videotape anything (bizarre!).

Lake Nassar:

Next we drove from the Dam to the bank of the Nile, where we boarded little motoboats to reach the ruins of the Temple of Philae:

It was a breezy ten minute boat ride to the island where the ruins currently stand. Philae is actually a nonexistent island now buried beneath Lake Nasser. The island was sometimes visible and sometimes not after the Old Aswan Dam was built, but was permanently submerged by the High Dam. Prior to the dams, Philae Island occupied a position at the beginning or southern end of the First Nile Cataract, where the river gathered speed, dropping sixteen feet in swirling eddies and turbulent falls of white water for a distance of three miles. Various pharaohs attempted to calm or at least provide better passage around these rapids.

Prior to the building of the Aswan Dam, the engineer in charge, Captain Henry Lyon, was asked to underpin the monuments of Philae so that they could withstand the submersion, which he did. Winston Churchill cared little for this. He remarked that:

"This offering of 1,500 millions of cubic feet of water to Hathor by the Wise Men of the West is the most cruel, the most wicked and the most senseless sacrifice ever offered on the altar of a false religion. The State must struggle and the people starve, in order that the professors may exult and the tourists find some place to scratch their names."

And so with that, the water level was raised. By 1960, UNESCO had decided to move many of the endangered sites along to Nile to safer ground. Philae's temple complex was moved, piece by piece, to Agilkai, 550 meters away, where it was reassembled and remains today. That project lasted from 1977 to 1980. Some 40,000 blocks, weighing about 20,000 tons were moved to the new location. All did not turn out as badly as thought, however. The water ended up saving the temples from erosion by sand storms and helped to remove salt deposits which were damaging to the stonework. Regular inspections of the site showed that it suffered less damage than might have, except for the paint which was washed away in the water.

What we refer to today as Philae is the main temple complex relocated from that island, after the High Dam was built, to the island of Agilika. It was the center of the cult of the goddess Isis (ideal mother and wife, patron of nature and magic; friend of slaves, sinners, artisans, the downtrodden, as well as listening to the prayers of the wealthy, maidens, aristocrats and rulers) and her connection with Oriris (merciful judge of the dead in the afterlife, but also the underworld agency that granted all life, including sprouting vegetation and the fertile flooding of the Nile River), Horus (son of Isis and Oriris - represented by a man's body and a falcon's head), and the Kingship, during the Ptolemaic period of Egyptian History.

Next we headed back to our lovely hotel to take a felucca boat ride (a traditional wooden sail boat) around the two main islands of Aswan: Elephantine and Kitchener Islands. Kitchener's Island is one of two major islands on the Nile in vicinity of Aswan, the other one being Elephantine. Elephantine is much larger than Kitchener's Island and located between Kitchener's Island and the city of Aswan (east bank). Thus, it is hard to see the smaller Kitchener's Island from the city. Kitchener is also known for its exotic hanging botanical gardens while Elephantine is home to some Nubian villages, a temple, and a museum (both islands to be visited the next day).

Gorgeous views of the sunset on the Nile taken from the felucca boat: