The following, gleaned from other sources, will, perhaps, be also acceptable as a guide to the sight-seer.
No person ought to leave Egypt without visiting Assowan and Philoe, particularly if he go up as high as Thebes; for he can form no correct judgment of Egypt and her wonderful and gigantic works, unless he sees the temples and shrubberies at Esireh Fdjou, Koon, Ombes, Assowan, and Philoe, as well as those in the Thebaid and at Tentyra. By traversing Egypt from Alexandria to Assowan, you can with ease inspect all those wonderful remains of labour and art, unequalled in the world for extent or size as architectural works, and which, to the mind of the observer, place beyond doubt the wealth, the power, the science, and great population of ancient Egypt. To attempt to convey to a person who has not seen structures of the kind, any idea of what these ruins are, is out of the question. In the granite quarries at Assowan, from whence these immense monuments were taken, are two unfinished sarcophagi and an obelisk cut and formed, but still attached to the native rock. The obelisk is shaped out and cut round on all sides except its under one, a bed which still attaches it to the rock. It measures 76 feet in length, and 12 feet broad, and in depth to the drift-sand in which it has imbedded itself 6 feet thick. The marks of the workman's chisel and wedge, with which instruments, it appears, these immense masses have been disjoined from the native rock, are as fresh as if they had been applied but yesterday. It is inconceivable how such entire masses could have been taken from their bed to the Nile, a distance of at least a mile and a half, and from thence transported to where we see them still standing, seventy, eighty, and ninety feet in height, and eight, ten and twelve feet square at the base, as at Luxor, Karnak, Helipolis, Frorun, and at Alexandria, covered with deeply engraved figures and hieroglyphics, in some places still bearing a glossy and fresh polish. In the island of Philoe there are some beautiful and extensive remains of Egyptian, as also one of Grecian, architecture. Leaving Luxor in the night of the third of May, we arrived at Khenneh the following day, and, after visiting the temple of Hentyra or of Isis, on the opposite bank of the Nile, and remaining an hour or two at Khenneh, we left that place for Cairo, where we arrived on the sixteenth of the same month.