He rowed his small boat across the surface of Lake Nasser and regarded two somber men who hauled in a net. Droplets of water scattered from its thin mesh as they took it in; their skiff traced the invisible line that still lay submerged. The Temple of Isis’s six pylons climbed out of an island’s jungle of date palms and fig trees. Bisher would have preferred to be earlier; already feluccas ferried tourists to and from the island in full view of his work. The piece of the Osiris was buried under the temple at Philae, but the temple was not in its original location. The Temple of Isis had been moved, stone-by-stone, to its new location on the Island of Agilkia. The Island of Philae lay beneath Lake Nasser not five hundred yards from where the tourists tramped. The construction of the Aswan Dam had swallowed the temple. In 1960, UNESCO drove steel pilings around the original island, which it used to create a wall, and then pumped the temple free of water.
