Kiosk of Qirtasi

This charming kiosk was originally at Qirtasi 40km S of Aswan. Theren seemed to be no remains earlier than the Ptolemaic period at this site. It was connected with extensive quarries which were once worked there. Here there was a shrine and ex votos inscriptions in Greek of
the priests presiding over the transport of the cut stone. They were addressed to Isis and twolocal Nubian gods, Srupkithis and Pursepmunis, who seems to have been a form of Osiris. Close to this shrine and now under water was a stone-built fortress with walls over
6m high. Inside this was a Temple of Isis, but this disappeared in the 19C. small door. Before it was moved the roof had fallen except for a single cross beam. On one column there is a relief of the king before Isis and Horus, otherwise the temple is undecorated. It dates therefore to the Ptolemaic or Roman periods.

Description of qirtasi

According to Günther Roeder – the first scholar to publish research on this building – the kiosk of Qertassi dates to the Augustan or early Roman period. The structure “is only twenty-five feet square, and consists of a single Hathor court oriented north or south, and originally surrounded by fourteen columns connected by screen walls.”[4] Of the 14 pillars, only 6 have survived in place.[5] The pillars or columns were made of brown sandstone; the structure itself was “perhaps connected to a small temple on the East Bank [of the Nile] which was still in existence in 1813. This kiosk has now been moved to the site of New Kalabsha in Southern Egypt as part of the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, but “once stood to the entrance to the sandstone quarries” of Qertassi.[7] Its capitals “are decorated with Hathor heads, in honour of the goddess who was [the] patron of quarry-men and miners.[8] Since Hathor was often associated with Isis, as she is at Philae, it has been suggested that “this kiosk and the small temples of Dabod and Dendur were way stations on the processional route taken by priests bearing the image of Isis around Lower Nubia, which was held to be her estate.”[9] Due to the paucity of timber in the arid region of Nubia, the kiosk’s roof was constructed with sandstone slabs that were supported by architraves on its long sides.