The dam is 2,185 yards long and over ninety feet thick at the base; in places it rises one hundred feet above the bed of the river.  It is built of the local red granite, and at each end the granite dam is built into the granite hillside.  Seven hundred and eight thousand cubic yards of masonry were used.  The sluices are 180 in number, and are arranged at four different levels.  The sight of the great volume of water pouring through them is a very fine one.  The Nile begins to rise in July, and at the end of November it is necessary to begin closing the sluice-gates to hold up the water.  By the end of February the reservoir is usually filled and Philae partially submerged, so that boats can sail in and out of the colonnades and Pharaoh’s Bed.  By the beginning of July the water has been distributed, and it then falls to its normal level.

“It is of course regrettable that the engineers were unable to find another site for the dam, as it seemed inevitable that some damage would result to the temples of Philae from their partial submergence.  Korosko was proposed as a site, but was rejected for cogent reasons, and apparently Shellal was the only possible place.  Further, no serious person, who places the greatest good of the greatest number above considerations of the picturesque and the ‘interesting,’ will deny that if it is necessary to sacrifice Philae to the good of the people of Egypt, Philae must go.  ‘Let the dead bury their dead.’  The concern of the rulers of Egypt must be with the living people of Egypt rather than with the dead bones of the past; and they would not be doing their duty did they for a moment allow artistic and archaeological considerations to outweigh in their minds the practical necessities of the country.  This does not in the least imply that they do not owe a lesser duty to the monuments of Egypt, which are among the most precious relics of the past history of mankind.  They do owe this lesser duty, and with regard to Philae it has been conscientiously fulfilled.  The whole temple, in order that its stability may be preserved under the stress of submersion, has been braced up and underpinned, under the superintendence of Mr. Ball, of the Survey Department, who has most efficiently carried out this important work, at a cost of L22,000.

[Illustration:  449.jpg THE KIOSK AT PHILAE IN PROCESS OF UNDERPINNING AND RESTORATION, JANUARY, 1902.]

Steel girders have been fixed across the island from quay to quay, and these have been surrounded by cement masonry, made water-tight by forcing in cement grout.  Pharaoh’s Bed and the colonnade have been firmly underpinned in cement masonry, and there is little doubt that the actual stability of Philae is now more certain than that of any other temple in Egypt.  The only possible damage that can accrue to it is the partial discolouration of the lower courses of the stonework of Pharaoh’s Bed, etc., which already bear a distinct high-water mark.  Some surface disintegration from the formation of salt crystals is perhaps inevitable here, but the effects of this can always be neutralized by careful washing, which it should be an important charge of the Antiquities Department to regularly carry out.”