Jonathan Kieran

Philae Island at the Southern frontier of Ancient and modern Egypt, near the First Cataract of the Nile, these days trapped behind Aswan Dam, is ever-beguiling, standing as it has for almost 2,400 years in the hot silence of Mystique. Isis, the crafty and all-purpose “superheroine” goddess to whom the fabled island’s conglomeration of Greco-Roman temples, chapels and subsidiary shrines was dedicated, was and remains the voice glistening like crystal above the desert sands and rugged hills, summoning visitors of all stripes for centuries. Hers is an invitation to magic, without equivocation. Her temple on Philae is certainly not the largest or most imposing of Ancient Egypt’s monuments, but it is far and away the most scintillating and magical. “The Pearl of the Nile” was what early explorers and archaeologists called the temple, the island, and its lush colloquiums of attendant date palm trees.

I first spotted a photograph of the temple of Philae in my father’s collection of forbidding black Collier’s Encyclopedias, stuck in a corner on the floor of a closet where I could while away any given day browsing through the illustrated volumes. It wasn’t the most top-shelf set of encyclopedias in the world, but it was stately and thorough and respectable. My lifelong broad reading interests were cultivated by the kind of broad perusal any devoted bookworm could achieve using a set of encyclopedias, which by their nature covered every subject deemed worthwhile for human knowledge. A kid might get “made fun of” by family and friends for spending entire days of youth shunning the outdoors and reading encyclopedias, but a person can sure as hell end up with a well-rounded imagination and a swift “forever ability” to chime-in on a wide variety of subjects and ideas that might crop-up in any setting, any crowd, at any time.

Of course, some interests were more gripping than others. Ancient Egypt and its splendors had already captured my heart by age six or seven. This was due to the fame that had attended the international tour of King Tut’s funerary wonders in the mid-1970s—a lingering tidal wave of sensation and curiosity that sent entire continents adrift and swooning with Egyptological fascination. Brainy little kids like me gravitated toward those exotic golden treasures and the amazing story of their discovery the same way we hovered over books and programs and toys centered upon dinosaurs. These were mesmerizing, otherworldly phenomena that exerted almost irresistible appeal for hungry-minded youngsters with any shred of mystical or whimsical light glimmering at the edge of our adventurous thought-horizons.

The appeal of sultry, enigmatic Ancient Egypt was helped to no end, at least in my world, by the presence of a popular Saturday morning kids’ TV show—a live action trifle called The Secrets of Isis. In this staple of youthful entertainment, a sexy California schoolteacher named Andrea travels to Egypt and happens to dig-up a four thousand year-old amulet in the shape of the classic sun-disc and cow-horn headdress, which was one of the goddess Isis’s signature accessories. Created for a queen by a “royal sorcerer,” the fictional amulet confers upon Andrea the power to transform herself into the goddess Isis, that she might use her multitude of magical powers and strengths to confound any number of weekly bad guys up to no good in sunny Burbank and environs. Sure, the show was cheesy, but it was not mind-frazzlingly violent and always managed to emphasize some moral lesson to dutiful Saturday viewers of the pajamas-and-cereal-bowls set. Most of all, it played up the trappings and trimmings of Ancient Egyptian symbols and scenery, thus fortifying my own burgeoning interest with all things relating to Ancient Egypt, its gods and its myths.

When I was leafing through my father’s dusty old Colliers Encyclopedias and happened upon a full-page black and white photo of an actual Egyptian temple dedicated to the brunette I saw kicking criminals in the ass on weekly TV, an Egyptological love affair was sealed.

That romance grew exponentially over the years. I traveled the world and saw many thrilling places, but Egypt was not on my itinerary until 1998, when I visited with a girlfriend. There is no possible way to describe the lump in my throat as our little ferry boat approached the incomparable, dazzling site of the island of Philae and its UNESCO-rescued Temple of Isis one bright October morning. Try describing an out-of body experience or the improbable fulfillment of a lifelong yearning that seemed impossibly out of reach—too magical and far-fetched to ever consider attainable. The entire scene might as well have been a mirage.

Yet, there I was, stepping onto that fabled island, the last bastion of Ancient Egyptian religious practice before the Emperor Justinian closed the temples down in 535 CE, as Christianity suppressed and subsumed the storied gods whose colossal shrines could no longer be maintained by a fading Empire. The only thing to which I can compare the experience of first visiting Philae—and I employ this comparison with the utmost delight—would be the act of literally stepping into the pages of a well-loved storybook and touching the previously obscured world all by yourself. The endeavor was exactly that; I had pierced some impossible veil and entered the very cosmos contained within the pages of my family’s set of encyclopedias.

I touched the columns and pylons and sphinxes and hieroglyphic panels and astounding relief-carvings of Isis herself on the temple walls, in one of her original settings, no superhero amulet needed. This was her own sanctum … not a giddy children’s show. Thousands of years flew like fluttering pages in my mind as I wandered throughout the elegant interior of the majestic sanctuary, encountering not only the enchanted queen of the domain herself, but all the deities of her classic mythical entourage: Horus, Osiris, Nephthys, Hathor, Nut, Khnum, Tefnut, et al.

It was a shattering encounter, a step outside time and space. There is more to be said about Philae and its astonishing history and meaning in my own perspective of the overwhelming world, but this shall suffice for now. Nothing on earth ever prepares the indomitable wanderer for such a spiritual and sensory experience of breathtaking glory … nothing on earth is ever the same after the moment has taken place.

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[Jonathan is busy writing and illustrating and finishing a whole slew of projects in preparation for upcoming major releases. Don’t expect a helluva lot of bloggin’ to get done unless something really strikes his fancy. Be patient. Marvelous things are on the way.]

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