It looks as if it had been constructed in the water for the purpose of some royal naumachy.

We enter with our boat--a strange port indeed, in its ancient grandeur; a port of a nameless melancholy, particularly at this yellow hour of the closing twilight, and under these icy winds that come to us mercilessly from the neighbouring deserts.

And yet how adorable it is, this kiosk of Philae, in this the abandonment that precedes its downfall! Its columns placed, as it were, upon something unstable, become thereby more slender, seem to raise higher still the stone foliage of their capitals.
A veritable kiosk of dreamland now, which one feels is about to disappear for ever under these waters which will subside no more! And now, for another few moments, it grows quite light again, and tints of a warmer copper reappear in the sky.

Often in Egypt when the sun has set and you think the light is gone, this furtive recoloration of the air comes thus to surprise you, before the darkness finally descends.
The reddish tints seem to return to the slender shafts that surround us, and also, beyond, to the temple of the goddess, standing there like a sheer rock in the middle of this little sea, which the wind covers with foam.
On leaving the kiosk our boat--on this deep usurping water, among the submerged palm-trees--makes a detour in order to lead us to the temple by the road which the pilgrims of olden times used to travel on foot--by that way which, a little while ago, was still magnificent, bordered with colonnades and statues.

But now the road is entirely submerged, and will never be seen again.