Philae Temple (Temple of Isis)

Reaching Philae is half the pleasure: you take a little motorboat from the Shellal dock across a stretch of the Nile to Agilkia Island, and the temple reveals itself rising straight from the water. Dedicated to Isis, the great mother goddess, it is a graceful Ptolemaic and Roman complex, and the last place in Egypt where hieroglyphs were carved, as late as the fourth century AD. The whole temple was actually moved here stone by stone in the 1970s, rescued from the island next door which had vanished beneath the reservoir behind the old dam. Wander through the twin pylons and colonnaded courts to the sanctuary, spotting the reliefs early Christians hacked away when they turned it into a church, and do not miss the elegant riverside Kiosk of Trajan, the Pharaoh's Bed, one of Egypt's most photographed structures. Come early for soft light and few boats, or return for the atmospheric evening sound-and-light show.