Egypt Day 2

The weather has been a pleasant surprise. Today was a high of 32, but there is no humidity and a constant nice breeze.
Jet lag set in, and I didn't wake up till 10, and that's because they woke me up to get breakfast.
I spent the day sightseeing. My first stop was at the Temple of Isis on the island of Philae. There have been temples here for millennia, although the present one "only" dates back to  about 700 BC. It was one of the last temples that was active until Roman times.
While the Aswan dam was built in the 1950's it was taken apart and rebuilt at its present location. The setting is beautiful, and I have to admit it's impressive. I've seen a lot of photos and films about Egypt, but the real thing is so much more impressive.
The one sad thing is the many of the figures and hieroglyphs have been marred by Christians and Muslims.
I've done a lot of studying for this trip, and I was happy to recognize several of the gods. My favourite is Bez, the god of childbirth and merriment. I'm not quite sure how those fir together. Bez is a short, chubby god, with a rather unattractive face. My kind of God. I can now say I have the physique of a god.
I also visited the site of the "Unfinished Obelisk". Aswan has several granite quarries, where many obelisks originated. This particular one was the be the largest ever, 42 m high, 1200 tons. The process used was staggering. Visualize a 42 rock. You start to pound it with rocks, until you've removed all the rock around. It took several hundred men several months to do this. You then smooth the surfaces with sand until it is very smooth. Then You engrave it with inscriptions. Finally you move this 1200 ton 42 m long obelisk 100 K up the Nile and stand it up.
Unbelievable!
After many months of working on this stone a crack developed, and it had to be abandoned. Bummer!
Street hustlers are more common here than in Jordan. I had a guy try to sell me a 10 Euro note. He started at 150 Egyptian pounds (about 12 Canadian dollars) and after following me for a couple of blocks it dropped to 50. I was almost tempted, 4 dollars for a genuine fake Euro bill. I resisted the temptation.
I don't know about the rest of Egypt, but this part is much more conservative than Jordan. Lots of burkas. I saw one funny thing today. A woman, completely covered, was explaining something on her iPad to a man. Lots of women have mobile phones. Quite a sight, a woman in a burka using her cell phone.
I hope I have caught up on my lost sleep.
Till tomorrow