Part 5
Indy Anna Bones took a train from Luxor to Aswan, a city that has marked the Egyptian frontier since before the time of Ramses the Great.
After riding all night, she awoke to the same sunrise over the desert that the Pharaohs had watched thousands of years before her.
The landscape was barren and rugged, and she saw no living things.
Beyond Aswan was what Indy Anna had come to see, the most spectacular discovery of Giovanni Belzoni.
After an Egyptian breakfast of bread, bread, bread, bread, and bread with a side of cheese, the train had arrived, and it was time to have a look around Aswan.
Ancient Egyptians oriented themselves to the Nile, and a series of rapids made the river impassable, so Aswan was considered the “beginning” of the river.
The ancient name of the city refers to a goddess of childbirth, but also meant ‘market’ and ‘trade,’ as this was where Egyptian and Nubian traders met to exchange goods.
Pharaohs garrisoned Aswan with soldiers to protect the people and temples were stuffed with priests to protect the religion.
Aswan has maintained its position as a cultural center through a long list of empires that followed after the reign of the Pharaohs came to an end.
Before she set out on adventure, there was always time to stop and pet a street cat, and Aswan has plenty of them.
To reach her first destination, Indy Anna needed to take a boat.
While she waited for the boat to launch, she chatted about Belzoni with a friendly stork.
When Belzoni reached the Nile with the Young Memnon back in Luxor, there was no vessel large enough to bear the granite bust to Alexandria.
Belzoni saw the delay as an opportunity, and took a boat to Aswan, which had only recently seen its first Europeans since the Crusades.
There he came upon the island temple of Philae.
Originally marking the burial site of Osiris, the temple was one of several historic buildings moved to higher ground to protect them from the rising floodwaters of Lake Nasser in the 1960’s.
The Philae complex is an example of the ancient aesthetic that was adhered to for thousands of years.
Even though Ramses the Great was dead a thousand years when construction began on Philae’s oldest structures, the Pharaohs that built it still wanted to look just like the champion of Kadesh.
There is evidence that the ancient religion of Egypt continued into Christian Roman times, and graffiti around the temple hint at co-habitation of both religions at the site.
Some historians believe worship of Amun and Osiris may have continued until the Muslim conquest.
On his first trip to Philae, Belzoni took note of the many treasures he hoped to bring back to England, including a massive frieze of Osiris.
Belzoni took drawings and collected artifacts to bring back to Europe for all to see, but unfortunately, he was being misled.
All this time Belzoni believed he was collecting artifacts for the British Museum.
In truth, he was procuring for Henry Salt, a British diplomat that hoped to sell these artifacts to the British Museum for his own profit.
The British Museum expressed interest only in the Young Memnon bust that even Napoleon had been unable to move.
Indy Anna was pleased to see cats still rule throughout Egypt today.
It’s easy to criticize Belzoni’s methods of archeology in 2020, but in 200 years, our methods will look just as crude.
While Belzoni smashed walls with battering rams and pulverized piles of dusty mummies to reach papyrus stacked beyond them, his only hope through it all was to bring the wonders of Ancient Egypt to the wider world.
His patron, Salt, and his chief rival, Bernardino Drovetti wished only to enrich themselves.
Philae is the reason Indy Anna Bones reviled Drovetti as much as she did.
On that first trip to Philae, Belzoni did not have the space or manpower to collect the treasures he claimed, and he still intended to continue further south.
Returning to Philae a year later, he found the ancient artifacts smashed and defaced in spite by Drovetti.
The frieze of Osiris was smashed to rubble, but Belzoni collected what he could and brought it back to Salt in Alexandria.
As far as Indy Anna was concerned, Bernardino Drovetti was as low as it goes.
He’d first come to Egypt in Napoleon’s invasion where he distinguished himself as a soldier.
Drovetti plundered mainly in Luxor, where he gathered artifacts to sell as collections to the royalty of Europe.
Among his discoveries is a priceless papyrus king list dated to the time of Ramses the Great.
Drovetti was a merciless and unscrupulous opponent in the field, and he is known to have hampered both Giovanni Belzoni and Jean-Francois Champollion, who deciphered the Rosetta Stone.
On Belzoni’s third trip to Philae, he managed to move a massive obelisk from the temple to the Nile, and narrowly lost it when the obelisk broke free and plunged into the river.
After the artifact had been loaded onto Belzoni’s vessel, he was attacked by Drovetti and his goons, who stole the obelisk at gunpoint.
This catastrophe spelled the end of Belzoni’s activities in Egypt, and he returned to England to write his memoirs.
Drovetti went mad and spent his last days in an insane asylum.
Good.
Indy Anna Bones still had more of Belzoni’s great Egyptian discoveries to see for herself though, so it was time travel again.
This vast expanse is no mirage, it is Lake Nasser, created when the Aswan High Dam blocked the Nile in the 1960's.
Now one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, Egypt relies on the lake for agriculture and electricity.
Beneath these blue waters lay a vast wealth of flooded ancient sites that were lost when the Aswan High Dam was built.
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