![]() “To go to Philae feels as if you are stepping back in time.” “That ferry ride never ceases to amaze me,” says Sabrina Higgins, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and a co-leader of the Canadian research team. Still, Isis’ rebuilt temple retains its power to inspire awe, looming over the Nile as visitors approach in flat-bottomed river boats, much as pilgrims might have done in the age of the pharaohs. In the late 1970s, it was carefully disassembled and moved, block by block, to Agilkia, a higher island a quarter-mile downriver, after Philae was flooded by the construction of the Aswan High Dam. The Philae Temple complex is, technically, no longer on Philae. And, in one of the most ambitious projects to date, a Canadian team has been working since 2016 to create a 3D model of the Temple of Isis that will allow researchers to explore, in intimate detail, the devotions of people like Sasan and Nesmety, who lived and died millennia ago. Last year, an international team of researchers debuted “Ithaca,” a deep neural network-a form of artificial intelligence-designed to read damaged or incomplete Greek inscriptions. In Italy, researchers are documenting graffiti in medieval churches using a technique called photogrammetry. The Ancient Graffiti Project has digitized thousands of Roman graffiti since its founding at Washington and Lee University in Virginia in 2014. But these researchers have the advantage of breakthrough technology that is helping them recover, preserve and publicize these etchings, from sophisticated image capture to massive online databases and even artificial intelligence. The tools of ancient graffiti artists were simple-a knife, a chisel, perhaps a stick of charcoal. “People are looking more at women, the enslaved, people who have been left out of the historical record-and graffiti are really one of the best ways to get at these voices,” says Jacqueline DiBiasie-Sammons, a classicist at the University of Mississippi, whose research centers on graffiti in the doomed Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Jitse Dijkstra and Roxanne Bélanger Sarrazin record graffiti on the roof of a temple in the courtyard of the Temple of Isis.īut over the last two decades, the etchings of the worshipers at Philae and other sites across the ancient world have gradually become the focus of serious inquiry, part of a broader turn away from the monarchs and monuments that long dominated our study of the past-and limited our historical perception. (Contemporary graffiti, like the messages recently carved by tourists on the wall of Rome’s Colosseum, is still considered vandalism.) For generations, most archaeologists were principally interested in the temple’s epic architecture and the official ornamentation on its walls, which include intricate reliefs of gods and goddesses carved by skilled artisans. ![]() When European explorers began visiting Philae in the 19th century, more than a millennium after the cult of Isis slipped into history, they labeled these informal inscriptions “graffiti,” from the Italian for “scratches.” To these visitors, the phenomenon was a curiosity, at best-and at worst, vandalism. … As for the one who will erase these writings, his name will be erased forever.”Īn ancient pilgrim visited Philae and etched this boat on the wall of one of the temples. “Our hearts are entrusted to you upon the way.” Others were likely carved on pilgrims’ behalf by the priests who worked at the temple: “His name endures forever: Nesmety, the banker of Isis. Nubian envoy named Sasan, beside a crude self-portrait. Some testified to the difficulty of their journey: “Isis, you are the Mistress of the Road,” wrote a third-century A.D. They beseeched Isis, the queen of the Egyptian pantheon, for aid and thanked her for interceding in their affairs.īefore heading home, many also etched their marks-a carving of their footprints on sacred ground, a picture of the deity, a name, a date or perhaps a short prayer-into the temple’s massive sandstone blocks. Coming from all parts of the Egyptian empire, and even as far away as Cyprus and Rome, they passed between 60-foot towers to attend elaborate seasonal ceremonies that celebrated Isis’ miraculous resurrection of her husband, the god Osiris, and the birth of their son, Horus. and continuing for more than 800 years, the Temple of Isis on the small island of Philae, set where the Nile flowed out of Nubia, was visited by a stream of pilgrims. Beginning with its construction in the fourth century B.C.
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