All the furniture, movables, and household stock and other property whatever that I shall leave, I bequeath to the mother of my children and my wife Ptolema, the freedwoman of Demetrius, son of Hermippus, with the condition that she shall have for her lifetime the right of using, dwelling in, and building in the said house, court, and rooms.  If Ammonous should die without children and intestate, the share of the fixtures shall belong to her half-brother on the mother’s side, Anatas, if he survive, but if not, to...  No one shall violate the terms of this my will under pain of paying to my daughter and heir Ammonous a fine of 1,000 drachmae and to the treasury an equal sum.”  Here follow the signatures of testator and witnesses, who are described, as in a passport, one of them as follows:  “I, Dionysios, son of Dionysios of the same city, witness the will of Pekysis.  I am forty-six years of age, have a curl over my right temple, and this is my seal of Dionysoplaton.”

During the Roman period, which we have now reached in our survey, the temple building of the Ptolemies was carried on with like energy.  One of the best-known temples of the Roman period is that at Philse, which is known as the “Kiosk,” or “Pharaoh’s Bed.”  Owing to the great picturesqueness of its situation, this small temple, which was built in the reign of Trajan, has been a favourite subject for the painters of the last fifty years, and next to the Pyramids, the Sphinx, and Karnak, it is probably the most widely known of all Egyptian buildings.  Recently it has come very much to the front for an additional reason.  Like all the other temples of Philse, it had been archaeologically surveyed and cleared by Col.  H. Gr.  Lyons and Dr. Borchardt, but further work of a far-reaching character was rendered necessary by the building of the great Aswan dam, below the island of Philse, one of the results of which has been the partial submergence of the island and its temples, including the picturesque Kiosk.  The following account, taken from the new edition (1906) of Murray’s Guide to Egypt and the Sudan, will suffice better than any other description to explain what the dam is, how it has affected Philse, and what work has been done to obviate the possibility of serious damage to the Kiosk and other buildings.

“In 1898 the Egyptian government signed a contract with Messrs. John Aird & Co. for the construction of the great reservoir and dam at Shellal, which serves for the storage of water at the time of the flood Nile.  The river is ‘held up’ here sixty-five feet above its old normal level.  A great masonry dyke, 150 feet high in places, has been carried across the Bab el-Kebir of the First Cataract, and a canal and four locks, two hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, allow for the passage of traffic up and down the river.

[Illustration:  447.jpg The Great Dam Of Aswan]

     Showing Water Rushing Through The Sluices