Aswan Museum is a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

Elephantine Elephantine ( ; ; arz, جزيرة الفنتين; el, Ἐλεφαντίνη ''Elephantíne''; , ) is an island on the Nile, forming part of the city of Aswan in Upper Egypt. The archaeological sites on the island were inscribed on the UNESCO ...

, located on the south-eastern side of

Aswan Aswan (, also ; ar, أسوان, ʾAswān ; cop, Ⲥⲟⲩⲁⲛ ) is a city in Southern Egypt, and is the capital of the Aswan Governorate. Aswan is a busy market and tourist centre located just north of the Aswan Dam on the east bank of the ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

. It was set up in 1912 by the British Egyptologist

Cecil Mallaby Firth Cecil Mallaby Firth (5 July 1878 – 1931) was a British Egyptologist. Firth was baptised at Ashburton in Devon on 14 August 1878, the son of Henry Mallaby Firth, gent., and Frances (Fanny) Caunter. He became a lawyer, and after briefly wor ...

. The museum features artifacts from

Nubia Nubia () (Nobiin: Nobīn, ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the first cataract of the Nile (just south of Aswan in southern Egypt) and the confluence of the Blue and White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sudan), or ...

, which were housed there during the construction of the

Aswan Dam The Aswan Dam, or more specifically since the 1960s, the Aswan High Dam, is one of the world's largest embankment dams, which was built across the Nile in Aswan, Egypt, between 1960 and 1970. Its significance largely eclipsed the previous Aswan L ...

. In 1990, a new department was inaugurated. It displayed findings that were discovered on Elephantine island itself, such as utensils, weapons, pottery and mummies. The museum is situated close to the Ruins of Abu, where excavations are still taking place.

Museum contents

The museum includes many statues of kings and individuals, some mummies of the ram, the symbol of the god "

Khnum Khnum or also romanised Khnemu (; egy, 𓎸𓅱𓀭 ẖnmw, grc-koi, Χνοῦβις) was one of the earliest-known Egyptian deities, originally the god of the source of the Nile. Since the annual flooding of the Nile brought with it silt an ...

", various types of pottery, architectural and decorative elements, a number of sarcophagi, tools of daily life, and some funerary paintings. In recent years, the German mission excavating in Elephantine, in cooperation with the Supreme Council of Antiquities, established an annex to the old museum located to the north of it and includes some of the antiquities that the mission found during its excavations that took place for many years on the island. The museum also includes a garden, caves carved with rock carvings,

minaret A minaret (; ar, منارة, translit=manāra, or ar, مِئْذَنة, translit=miʾḏana, links=no; tr, minare; fa, گل‌دسته, translit=goldaste) is a type of tower typically built into or adjacent to mosques. Minarets are generall ...

s in the Islamic style, a Nubian house surrounded by a lake, the Temple of the Gods

satet Satet, Satit or Satjet, Satjit in Ancient Egyptian ( egy, Sṯt or ', ."Pourer" or "Shooter"), Greek: Satis, also known by numerous related names, was an Upper Egyptian goddess who, along with Khnum and Anuket, formed part of the Elephantin ...

, the Temple of haqanaan ayb, and a

Nilometer A nilometer was a structure for measuring the Nile River's clarity and water level during the annual flood season. There were three main types of nilometers, calibrated in Egyptian cubits: (1) a vertical column, (2) a corridor stairway of steps l ...

Museum development

Between 1991 - 1993, a new annex was added to the Aswan Museum, called the Incs, located on Elften Island, about ten meters to the north of the Aswan Museum. The area of the museum annex is about 220 square meters and has 3 exhibition halls and a glass ceiling topped by a concrete roof and crowned in the central region in a hierarchical form. The German Archaeological Institute on Elephantine Island from 1969 until 1997. After closing a period since the January 2011 revolution, the Minister of Antiquities decided to reopen the Aswan Museum on Elephantine Island again to foreign tourists, coinciding with the passage of 100 years since the establishment of the museum in 1917, and a major celebration on this occasion.

Gallery

File:Aswan, Aswan Governorate, Egypt - panoramio (11).jpg File:Sanakadakheto királynő és férfi kísérőjének szobra.jpg File:Satet Temple (8612400526).jpg File:IlhaElefantina.jpg File:Musée d'Aszan - panoramio.jpg File:Assuan-Museum 02.JPG File:مجسم يوضح احدى النساء النوبيات وهي تغني في إحدى حفلات الزفاف. متحف أسوان.jpg

References

Elephantine Archaeological museums in Egypt 1912 establishments in Egypt Museums established in 1912 {{Egypt-museum-stub