Went to Kom Umbo yesterday and had a great time. If anyone is thinking of going just a couple of words of advise. First the ticket office is not sign posted it's in a little grubby room down from the car park. Yildez and I were the only visitors and it being Friday maybe things were a little lax, one more issue was that the toilets were all locked and no one has the key so if toilet facilities are required you have to go to the little coffee shop that is within the grounds.
Apart from that we enjoyed our visit and found the temple very interesting and the new Crocodile museum although small is well worth a visit all the exhibits are well displayed and short explanations above them very informative.
On the way back called in El Kab, didn't want to go to the tombs, which we have been to before, but to the mud brick town across the railway, well after a little negotiation we were allowed to visit. A very nice chap took us and showed us where to enter the town, I hated it, got the strangest feeling in there so left Yildez to make her way to the Temple complex alone. The width of the wavy mud brick walls there are incredible.
So another good day out tiring but well worth it.
Rest day today.

Poor Yildez abandoned in a deserted town to fend for herself what exactly made you feel uneasy in the place carrie?

Believe me Yildez is more than capable of looking after herself. I don't know Horus what it was, I was tired maybe that had something to do with it and not trying to say that I am in touch with the ancients or reincarnated (don't believe all that guff) but some places I get a really nice feeling from Gebil Silsila being one and Medinet Habu the other but there I just felt threatened, hard to explain I just didn't like it. Wouldn't want to put anyone off going to see the place but not somewhere I would return to.

I know what you mean Carrie, I go walking a lot usually on my own with my dog and on occasions even in the countryside you come across places that make you feel uneasy to be there. One example was to stumble across a circle of Yew trees surrounding a well and it had all sorts of weird stuff hanging from the branches of the trees.

My favorite temple, did you spot the underground water fountains and the two ram pumps ?
Most people have no idea what they are, but then they don't understand ancient technology....

While I didn't get the same feeling as Carrie, I did find the town enclosure at El Kab oppressive, almost airless. I had to trek a long way across a sort of dry marsh to get to the temple, wouldn't have managed without a very pleasant young man to lead the way. Didn't see the fountains or ram pumps Doc, but it's all extremely overgrown so not surprising.

Carrie and I agreed afterwards, that we could just have wandered across the railway lines and along the dirt track to the entrance without a guide, and with no one the wiser! Hindsight is a wonderful thing

I wonder why a temple so close to the Nile would need a Nileometer ?
Was their eyesight that bad ? ;-)

Most temples near the Nile have them. I believe that when the Nile started to flood, the depth of the inundation could be gauged by the speed it rose up the steps of the nileometer. Maybe if the forecast was a poor flood, extra channels etc could be dug in time to maximise it?

Well, interestingly enough, I lived by the River Dee for many years and like the Nile it has the same thing in common, it runs south to north and starts from a great lake. in this case Llyn Tegid ( or lake Bala for the sake of the tourists )
I lived on the WB back then and it would flood the fields on that side only... Why ? Because of the rotational direction of the Earth.

We measured the depth by the height of the water on the east bank wall of the river channel there was gradiated post on the bend, like a plimsol line on a ship..
or how close it was to your back door of your house on the West Bank if you could not make it down to the river due to the flood......

It does seem to be a lot of effort expelled just to monitor water depth in my humble opinion... Kind of like NASA needing to create a pen to work in space, when the Russians solved that little problem by using a pencil.


But those subterranean passageways down to the river ? I cant remember the official excuse for those.


coincidently, my dear beloved is in Glasgow for some conference, staying close to West Nile street by George Square. Hopefully she will be back tonight, I'm bloody starving to death...

The Nilometers were a means of accurately calculating the extent of the inundation, this task was carried out by the priesthood. As the Nile passes through Egypt it does not have the same level of mountains or desert on each bank, some parts will be restricted and narrow and others have flatter land not much higher than the river itself and these flatter areas could stretch a lot further inland. Just observing the water height would only work for that particular locality and Egypt is a long country, so a few feet of height in one particular location may not make the river appear much wider visually, but elsewhere that same height rise could be seen to visibly move hundreds of metres inland. As the taxation and food surplus (or famine) was determined by the amount of land that became irrigated during the flood it was important to get those calculations correct. As the land contours would remain fairly constant over the millennia then a certain rise in water level at the Nileometer would indicate a precise area of land under water.

The priests were responsible for reinstating all the field boundaries after the inundation to reflect the original ownership and for this reason they were very skilled in surveying and record keeping. Therefore it was not difficult for them to conclude after decades of observation that if you dig a well that is influenced by the level of groundwater and then put a mark at various heights within the well, then any given height will tell you (by experience) exactly how much land is under water. A given height on the Nileometer will always accurately indicate this, for example just a few more inches in height may result in a lower lying area behind a small rise becoming flooded and adding a large amount of irrigated land into the equation. Think of it like the priests getting lots of tax returns from cities along the Nile, they can easily collate the findings to give an overall picture to the point where a reading at Aswan could indicate the inundation level at Luxor. Each Nilometer reading would confirm the other and have the benefit of avoiding unscrupulous officials pulling a fast one not to mention all the effort that was saved.

The crocodile was worshiped at Kom Umbo and other places but I read that the priests there also watched how high on the bank the crocs laid their eggs. They seemed to know in advance how high the Nile would rise and build either higher or lower each year so that the egg nest would not get flooded.

Good point Carrie, Crocodiles like Turtles will usually build their nests above the high water line although I suspect they too do it from some past experience and they do get it wrong sometimes. This observation would of course give the priests an early warning of what they could expect, but it would be a prediction rather than an accurate measurement of what is actually happening at the time.

Crocodiles probably know a thing or 2, having been the longest non aquatic inhabitants on planet Earth, seeing off all the of the Dinosaur era's, and no doubt still be here long after we have left..
Funny how humans measure intelligence..

So in effect, the Croc's could have replaced Nileometers if the people had been a bit more observant ?

Frighting to think how much power those priests had, makes you wonder how far back the Puppet pharaoh's really go ?

A bit like this other excellent example

Rodent meteorologist's.. Whatever next ?


Diily Dilly...

You have to wonder at whoever came up with the towns name of Gobblers Knob! the mind boggles.
Dilly Dilly

3 of us tried that in April 2011 or our return from a visit to the temple of Seti I at Kanais. The police soon came chasing after of us, and of course told off our driver for stopping there.

The whole walled area is immense, very overgrown, and there really is not much to see. It did have a very odd atmosphere: I would describe it as peaceful.