Agilkia Island

Agilkia Island (also called Agilika; Arabic: أجيليكا, from Old Nubian: ⲁ̅ⲅⲗ̅, romanised: agil, "mouth"[1]) is an island in the reservoir of the Old Aswan Dam along the Nile River in southern Egypt; it is the present site of the relocated ancient Egyptian temple complex of Philae. Partially to completely flooded by the old dam's construction in 1902,[2][3] the Philae complex was dismantled and relocated to Agilkia island, as part of a wider UNESCO project[4] related to the 1960s construction of the Aswan High Dam and the eventual flooding of many sites posed by its large reservoir upstream.[5][6]

Philae temple on Agilkia Island as seen from the Nile

Agilkia, like the island, was the name chosen for the planned landing site on a comet by the Rosetta spacecraft mission's Philae lander.[7][8] Upon initial touchdown, however, the lander took a large bounce followed by a smaller one before finally coming to rest perhaps a kilometre away from Agilkia, at a site named Abydos, after the ancient Egyptian city.

References
  1. Browne, Gerald M. (1996). Old Nubian Dictionary. University of Virginia: In Aedibus Peeters. p. 4.
  2. Frederic Courtland Penfield, Harnessing the Nile, Century Magazine, (February, 1899)
  3. Sidney Peel, The Binding of the Nile and the New Soudan, Oxford 1904 , p.76
  4. Monuments of Nubia-International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia World Heritage Committee, UNESCO
  5. The Rescue of Nubian Monuments and Sites, UNESCO
  6. Murray, Tim (2007). Milestones in Archaeology: a Chronological Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 464. ISBN 1-57607-186-3.
  7. Platt, Jane (6 November 2014). "Rosetta Races Toward Comet Touchdown". NASA. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
  8. Knapton, Sarah (4 November 2014). "Historic Comet Landing Site Has a New Name: Agilkia". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 4 November 2014. Retrieved 4 November 2014.
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