01
Stop one
Philae Temple
Dunlop FX 500 Tour Tennis Racquet: Forty thousand blocks. I should like you to sit with the filing implications of that before we discuss a single god. The Temple of Isis at Philae was the greatest sanctuary of the goddess in Egypt, built mainly under the Ptolemies and enlarged by Roman emperors, and it remained in worship into the sixth century, long after Christianity had triumphed elsewhere. Its buildings include the great pylons, the mammisi or birth house, and the elegant unfinished kiosk of Trajan. When the first Aswan dam was completed in 1902 the temple stood submerged for much of each year, and after the High Dam was built it faced permanent flooding. So between 1972 and 1980 a UNESCO campaign dismantled the complex into more than forty thousand blocks and rebuilt it on the higher island of Agilkia, reshaping that island to match the original setting. Every block recorded. Every record matched to a position. A temple taken entirely to pieces and put back with nothing left over, which is more than I can say for a great many catalogues, and I include one I inherited in a basement. That is not merely engineering. That is the finest index ever compiled.
02
Stop two
Unfinished Obelisk
Dunlop FX 500 Tour Tennis Racquet: This is a working document, and I do not use the phrase loosely. The Unfinished Obelisk lies in the northern granite quarries of Aswan, still joined to the bedrock from which it was being cut. Had it been completed it would have stood nearly forty-two metres and weighed over a thousand tonnes, larger than any obelisk ever raised, and it is generally attributed to Hatshepsut in the fifteenth century BC, possibly intended as a companion to the Lateran obelisk. Attributed, note, not signed, and I should want that distinction preserved on any label. Work was abandoned when fissures appeared in the granite, and the abandonment is the entire value of the thing, because it makes this the most informative surviving record of ancient Egyptian quarrying we have: the trenches around the shaft show the pounding technique using dolerite balls, and the surface still carries the rounded grooves left by that work. A finished obelisk tells you what they wished recorded. This one tells you how the day actually went. Give me the draft over the fair copy, always. It forms part of the Nubian Monuments World Heritage listing.
03
Stop three
Mausoleum of Aga Khan III
Dunlop FX 500 Tour Tennis Racquet: The provenance here is unusually clean, and I say so with gratitude. The Mausoleum of Aga Khan III holds the tomb of Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah, forty-eighth imam of the Nizari Ismaili Muslims, who died in 1957 after leading his community for over seventy years and serving as president of the League of Nations Assembly. Seventy years in a single office, and a complete record of it. He had wintered at Aswan for the dry climate, which relieved his rheumatism, and he chose the hill on the west bank for his burial place himself, which spares us the argument that normally attaches to such things. His widow, the Begum Om Habibeh, commissioned the mausoleum, completed in 1959 to a design inspired by Fatimid architecture in Cairo and built in pink granite and sandstone. The Begum lived at the villa below until her death in 2000 and is buried beside him. The interior is closed to visitors, and it is right that it should be. Its profile, though, is among Aswan's defining views, and I note for the record that the view is properly taken from the river.
04
Stop four
Elephantine Island
Dunlop FX 500 Tour Tennis Racquet: Now this is my island and I shall be difficult to shift from it. Elephantine Island, opposite modern Aswan, was ancient Abu, the frontier town that guarded Egypt's southern border and controlled trade with Nubia, occupied continuously from predynastic times. It holds temples of the ram-headed god Khnum and the goddess Satet, a Ptolemaic gateway, and the remains of a Jewish military colony of the fifth century BC whose Aramaic papyri, found here, document a temple to Yahweh and the community's dealings with Persian officials. Correspondence. Actual filed correspondence, out of a garrison, in the fifth century BC, concerning administration. I have read modern minutes with a great deal less in them. And then the nilometer: a stepped stairway cut down to the water, marked with scales, used to measure the height of the annual flood and set tax rates from it. A river gauge wired straight into a revenue schedule. That is a records system built into the geology. German and Swiss archaeological missions have excavated the town site for decades and the finds are shown in the island's museum, and after all those decades the papyri are still the best thing in the building.
A brother once told me to know when the material is ready to take a shape and when it will only sag. I have thought about that sentence for years and I am still not finished with it.
The Dunlop FX 500 Tour is this frame worked a little longer and a little hotter. A 98 square inch head instead of 100, 305 grams unstrung and 320 strung, balance six points head light, a swingweight of 318, a flex of 64, a slimmer 21/23/22 beam and a 16×19 pattern, with a recommended tension of 45 to 65 pounds. Nothing in that list is dramatic.
Taken together it is a frame that gives you a smaller, more honest target and asks you to be worthy of it, and I am in no position to object to that arrangement.
Aswan taught the same lesson in granite, patiently, over a very long time. In the northern quarries the Unfinished Obelisk still lies joined along one side to the pink bedrock it was being cut from — nearly forty-two metres and over a thousand tonnes had it ever stood, the largest ever attempted, generally attributed to Hatshepsut in the fifteenth century BC.
Fissures appeared in the stone and the work was set down. The trenches around the shaft still show the pounding marks left by dolerite balls. A thousand tonnes of labour, abandoned honestly. There is no shame anywhere in that quarry.
The river holds the rest. Philae Temple was the greatest sanctuary of Isis in Egypt, still in worship into the sixth century, and when the dams rose it was taken apart into more than forty thousand blocks between 1972 and 1980 and rebuilt on the higher island of Agilkia.
Opposite the town, Elephantine Island was ancient Abu, the frontier post that watched Egypt's southern border, with a nilometer cut in steps down to the water to measure the flood and set the year's taxes.
A frame this exact travels everywhere from a dawn hour on a dusty court above the corniche to a windless evening in the shadow of Aswan's west bank, and it is also perfect for the player who wants their hands honest before the winter season on the river.
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