Aswan (, also ; ) is a city in

Southern Egypt Upper Egypt ( ', shortened to , , locally: ) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the Nile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel North. It thus consists of the entire Nile River valley from Cairo south to Lake N ...

, and is the capital of the Aswan Governorate. Aswan is a busy market and tourist centre located just north of the

Aswan Dam The Aswan Dam, or 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. When it was completed, it was the tallest earthen dam in the world, surpassing the Chatuge D ...

on the east bank of the

Nile The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the List of river sy ...

at the first cataract. The modern city has expanded and includes the formerly separate community on the island of

Elephantine Elephantine ( ; ; ; ''Elephantíne''; , ) is an island on the Nile, forming part of the city of Aswan in Upper Egypt. The archaeological site, archaeological digs on the island became a World Heritage Site in 1979, along with other examples of ...

. Aswan includes five monuments within the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae; these are the Old and Middle Kingdom tombs of

Qubbet el-Hawa Qubbet el-Hawa or "Dome of the Wind" is a site on the western bank of the Nile, opposite Aswan, that serves as the resting place of ancient nobles and priests from the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Old and Middle Kingdom of Egypt, Middle Kingdoms of anc ...

, the town of

, the stone quarries and Unfinished Obelisk, the Monastery of St. Simeon and the Fatimid Cemetery. The city's

Nubian Museum The Nubian Museum (officially the International Museum of Nubia) is an archaeological museum located in Aswan, Upper Egypt. It was built following the UNESCO International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, to a design by architect Mahmoud ...

is an important archaeological center, containing finds from the

International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia The International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia was the effort to relocate 22 monuments in Lower Nubia, in Southern Egypt and northern Sudan, between 1960 and 1980. This was done in order to make way for the building of the Aswan Dam, a ...

before the

flooded all of

Lower Nubia Lower Nubia (also called Wawat) is the northernmost part of Nubia, roughly contiguous with the modern Lake Nasser, which submerged the historical region in the 1960s with the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Many ancient Lower Nubian monuments, ...

. The city is part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the category of craft and folk art. Aswan joined the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities in 2017.

Other spellings and variations

Aswan was formerly spelled Assuan or Assouan. Names in other languages include (;

Ancient Egyptian Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

: ; ; ; proposed

Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...

: סְוֵנֵה ''Sǝwēnê''). The

Nubians Nubians () ( Nobiin: ''Nobī,'' ) are a Nilo-Saharan speaking ethnic group indigenous to the region which is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt. They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley, believed to be one of th ...

also call the city ''Dib'' which means "''fortress, palace''" and is derived from the Old Nubian name ⲇⲡ̅ⲡⲓ.

History

Aswan is the ancient city of Swenett, later known as Syene, which in antiquity was the frontier town of

Ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

facing the south. Swenett is supposed to have derived its name from an Egyptian goddess with the same name. This goddess later was identified as Eileithyia by the Greeks and Lucina by the Romans during their occupation of Ancient Egypt because of the similar association of their goddesses with childbirth, and of which the import is "the opener". The ancient name of the city also is said to be derived from the

Egyptian ''Egyptian'' describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of year ...

symbol for "trade", or "market". Because the Ancient Egyptians oriented themselves toward the origin of the life-giving waters of the Nile in the south, and as Swenett was the southernmost town in the country,

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

always was conceived to "open" or begin at Swenett. The city stood upon a peninsula on the right (east) bank of the

, immediately below (and north of) the first cataract of the flowing waters, which extended to it from

Philae The Philae temple complex (; , , Egyptian: ''p3-jw-rķ' or 'pA-jw-rq''; , ) is an island-based temple complex in the reservoir of the Aswan Low Dam, downstream of the Aswan Dam and Lake Nasser, Egypt. Originally, the temple complex was ...

. Navigation to the delta was possible from this location without encountering a barrier. The stone quarries of ancient Egypt located here were celebrated for their stone, and especially for the granitic rock called syenite. They furnished the colossal statues,

obelisk An obelisk (; , diminutive of (') ' spit, nail, pointed pillar') is a tall, slender, tapered monument with four sides and a pyramidal or pyramidion top. Originally constructed by Ancient Egyptians and called ''tekhenu'', the Greeks used th ...

s, and monolithic shrines that are found throughout Egypt, including the

pyramids A pyramid () is a Nonbuilding structure, structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a Pyramid (geometry), pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid ca ...

; and the traces of the quarrymen who worked (alongside domesticated draft animals) in these 3,000 years ago are still visible in the native rock. They lie on either bank of the

, and a road, in length, was cut beside them from Syene to

. Swenett was equally important as a military station and for its position on a trade route. Under every dynasty it was a garrison town; and here tolls and customs were levied on all boats passing southwards and northwards. Around 330, the legion stationed here received a bishop from

Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...

; this later became the Coptic Diocese of Syene. The city is mentioned by numerous ancient writers, including

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-si ...

Stephanus of Byzantium Stephanus or Stephen of Byzantium (; , ''Stéphanos Byzántios''; centuryAD) was a Byzantine grammarian and the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled ''Ethnica'' (). Only meagre fragments of the dictionary survive, but the epit ...

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...

Vitruvius Vitruvius ( ; ; –70 BC – after ) was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work titled . As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissan ...

, and it appears on the

Antonine Itinerary The Antonine Itinerary (, "Itinerary of the Emperor Antoninus") is an , a register of the stations and distances along various roads. Seemingly based on official documents, possibly in part from a survey carried out under Augustus, it describes t ...

. It may also be mentioned in the

Book of Ezekiel The Book of Ezekiel is the third of the Nevi'im#Latter Prophets, Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and one of the Major Prophets, major prophetic books in the Christian Bible, where it follows Book of Isaiah, Isaiah and ...

and the

Book of Isaiah The Book of Isaiah ( ) is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. It is identified by a superscription as the words of the 8th-century BC prophet Isaiah ben Amo ...

. The

is nearly wide above Aswan. From this frontier town to the northern extremity of Egypt, the river flows for more than without bar or

cataract A cataract is a cloudy area in the lens (anatomy), lens of the eye that leads to a visual impairment, decrease in vision of the eye. Cataracts often develop slowly and can affect one or both eyes. Symptoms may include faded colours, blurry or ...

. The voyage from Aswan to

usually took 21 to 28 days in favorable weather.

Archaeological findings

In April 2018, the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced the discovery of the head of the bust of Roman Emperor

Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius Antoninus ( ; ; 26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoicism, Stoic philosopher. He was a member of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty, the last of the rulers later known as the Five Good Emperors ...

at the Temple of Kom Ombo during work to protect the site from groundwater. In September 2018, the Egyptian Antiquities Minister Khaled el-Enany announced that a sandstone

sphinx A sphinx ( ; , ; or sphinges ) is a mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of an eagle. In Culture of Greece, Greek tradition, the sphinx is a treacherous and merciless being with the head of a woman, th ...

statue had been discovered at the temple of Kom Ombo. The statue, measuring approximately in width and ) in height, probably dates to the

Ptolemaic Dynasty The Ptolemaic dynasty (; , ''Ptolemaioi''), also known as the Lagid dynasty (, ''Lagidai''; after Ptolemy I's father, Lagus), was a Macedonian Greek royal house which ruled the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Ancient Egypt during the Hellenistic period. ...

. Archaeologists discovered 35 mummified remains of Egyptians in a tomb in Aswan in 2019. Italian archaeologist Patrizia Piacentini and El-Enany both reported that the tomb, where the remains of ancient men, women and children were found, dates back to the Greco-Roman period between 332 BC and 395 AD. While the findings assumed belonging to a mother and a child were well preserved, others had suffered major destruction. Other than the mummies, artifacts including painted funerary masks, vases of bitumen used in mummification, pottery and wooden figurines were revealed. Thanks to the

hieroglyphs Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters.I ...

on the tomb, it was detected that the tomb belongs to a tradesman named Tjit. Piacentini commented "It's a very important discovery because we have added something to the history of Aswan that was missing. We knew about

tomb A tomb ( ''tumbos'') or sepulchre () is a repository for the remains of the dead. It is generally any structurally enclosed interment space or burial chamber, of varying sizes. Placing a corpse into a tomb can be called '' immurement'', alth ...

s and necropoli dating back to the second and third millennium, but we didn't know where the people who lived in the last part of the Pharaonic era were. Aswan, on the southern border of Egypt, was also a very important trading city". Stan Hendrick,

John Coleman Darnell John Coleman Darnell (born August 1962) is an American Egyptologist. Biography Darnell attributes his interest in archaeology to his mother, who also had a lifelong interest in archaeology. He grew up in south Alabama and had a particular intere ...

and Maria Gatto in 2012 excavated petroglyphic engravings from Nag el-Hamdulab in Aswan which featured representations of a boat procession, solar symbolism and the earliest depiction of the White Crown with an estimated dating range between 3200BC and 3100BC. In February 2021, archaeologists from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced significant discoveries at an archaeological site called Shiha Fort in Aswan, namely a Ptolemaic period temple, a Roman fort, an early Coptic church and an inscription in

hieratic Hieratic (; ) is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BCE ...

script. According to Mostafa Waziri, the crumbling temple was decorated with palm leaf carvings and an incomplete sandstone panel that described a Roman emperor. Researcher Abdel Badie states more generally that the church contained ovens used to bake pottery, four rooms, a long hall, stairs, and stone tiles. In July 2024, a joint Egyptian–French archaeological expedition conducting an underwater photographic survey between the old

and the Aswan High Dam uncovered a trove of rock carvings,

stelae A stele ( ) or stela ( )The plural in English is sometimes stelai ( ) based on direct transliteration of the Greek, sometimes stelae or stelæ ( ) based on the inflection of Greek nouns in Latin, and sometimes anglicized to steles ( ) or stela ...

, inscriptions, and miniature royal images submerged in the Nile near Aswan. The discoveries include representations of New Kingdom pharaohs

Amenhotep III Amenhotep III ( , ; "Amun is satisfied"), also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent or Amenhotep the Great and Hellenization, Hellenized as Amenophis III, was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Eighteenth Dynasty. According to d ...

and Thutmose IV and Late Period rulers Psamtik II and Apries. Initial research suggests these finds, dating back to the

Eighteenth Dynasty The Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XVIII, alternatively 18th Dynasty or Dynasty 18) is classified as the first dynasty of the New Kingdom of Egypt, the era in which ancient Egypt achieved the peak of its power. The Eighteenth Dynasty ...

(c. 1550–1295 BC) through the Late Period (c. 747–332 BC), may shed new light on shifting political and religious practices in southern Egypt. These artifacts were initially discovered during the Nubian Monuments Rescue Campaign in the 1960s.

Geography

Northern Tropic boundary

The

latitude In geography, latitude is a geographic coordinate system, geographic coordinate that specifies the north-south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from −90° at t ...

of the city that would become Aswan – located at 24° 5′ 23″ – was an object of great interest to the ancient geographers and mathematicians.Venturi, Jacir J.
Eratóstenes e a Esfericidade da Terra
. Revista Articulistas. /d They believed that it was seated immediately under the tropic, and that on the day of the

summer solstice The summer solstice or estival solstice occurs when one of Earth's poles has its maximum tilt toward the Sun. It happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere ( Northern and Southern). The summer solstice is the day with the longest peri ...

, a vertically positioned staff cast no shadow. They noted that the sun's disc was reflected in a deep well (or pit) at noon. This statement is only approximately correct; at the summer solstice, the shadow was only of the staff, and so could scarcely be discerned, and the northern limb of the Sun's disc would be nearly vertical. More than 2200 years ago, Greek polymath

Eratosthenes Eratosthenes of Cyrene (; ; – ) was an Ancient Greek polymath: a Greek mathematics, mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theory, music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of A ...

used this information to calculate

Earth's circumference Earth's circumference is the distance around Earth. Measured around the equator, it is . Measured passing through the poles, the circumference is . Treating the Earth as a sphere, its circumference would be its single most important measuremen ...

Climate

Aswan has a

hot desert climate The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk'') is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in desert ...

(

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...

''BWh'') like the rest of Egypt. Aswan and

Luxor Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt. Luxor had a population of 263,109 in 2020, with an area of approximately and is the capital of the Luxor Governorate. It is among the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited c ...

have the hottest summer days of any city in

. Aswan is one of the hottest, sunniest and driest cities in the world. Average high temperatures are consistently above during summer (June, July, August and also September) while average low temperatures remain above . Average high temperatures remain above during the coldest month of the year while average low temperatures remain above . Summers are very prolonged and extremely hot with blazing sunshine although desert heat is dry. Winters are brief and pleasantly mild, though nights may be cool at times. The climate of Aswan is extremely dry year-round, with less than of average annual precipitation. The desert city is one of the driest ones in the world, and rainfall does not occur every year; in early 2001, the last rain in Aswan had been seven years earlier. When heavy precipitation does occur, as in a November 2021 rain and hail storm, flash flooding can drive scorpions from their lairs to deadly effects. Aswan is one of the least humid cities on the planet, with an average relative humidity of only 26%, with a maximum mean of 42% during winter and a minimum mean of 16% during summer. The weather of Aswan is extremely clear, bright and sunny year-round in all seasons, with low seasonal variation and almost 4,000 hours of annual sunshine – very close to the maximum theoretical sunshine duration. Aswan is one of the sunniest places on Earth. The highest record temperature was on July 4, 1918, and the lowest record temperature was on January 6, 1989.

Education

In 2012, the

Aswan University Aswan University is a university located in Aswan, Egypt. Established in 2012, it was previously known as the Aswan branch of the South Valley University. History Aswan University branch was established in 1974 as a branch of Assiut Unive ...

was inaugurated, which is headquartered in the city. Aswan is also home to the Aswan Higher Institute of Social Work, which was established in 1975.

Transport

The city is crossed by the Cape to Cairo Road, which connects it to

and

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

to the north, and

Abu Simbel Abu Simbel is a historic site comprising two massive Rock-cut architecture, rock-cut Egyptian temple, temples in the village of Abu Simbel (village), Abu Simbel (), Aswan Governorate, Upper Egypt, near the border with Sudan. It is located on t ...

and

Wadi Halfa (, , ":wikt:esparto, Esparto Valley") is a city in the Northern (state), Northern state of Sudan on the shores of Lake Nasser, Lake Nubia near the Egypt–Sudan border, border with Egypt. It is the terminus of a rail transport in Sudan, rail lin ...

to the south. Also important is the Aswan- Berenice highway, which connects with the ports of the

Red Sea The Red Sea is a sea inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. Its connection to the ocean is in the south, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. To its north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and th ...

. Aswan is linked to Cairo by the

Cape to Cairo Railway The Cape to Cairo Railway is an unfinished project to create a railway line crossing from southern to northern Africa. It would have been the largest, and most important, railway of the continent. It was planned as a link between Cape Town i ...

, which also connects it with Wadi Halfa. The railway is incomplete towards the south. Other key transport infrastructures are the Port of Aswan, the largest river port in the region, and Aswan International Airport.

International relations

Twin towns/Sister cities

Aswan is twinned with: * Sonoma, California, United States

Gallery

File:Archangel Michael's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, built in the Coptic style 2006-10-EGYPT-ASWAN.jpg, Archangel Michael's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, built in the Coptic style. File:El-Tabia Mosque, Aswan.jpg, El-Tabia Mosque in Aswan File:Lotus-tower near Aswan.jpg, The Lotus-Tower near Aswan, monument to Arab-Soviet Friendship. Near

Aswan High Dam The Aswan Dam, or 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. When it was completed, it was the tallest earthen dam in the world, surpassing the Chatug ...

. File:Aswan Nubian Museum entrance.jpg, Nubia Museum entrance File:Fatimid Cemetery at Aswan.jpg, Fatimid Cemetery File:Unfinished Obelisk in Aswan.jpg, Unfinished Obelisk in Aswan File:Aswan street parallel to Corniche, Egypt, October 2004.jpg, A street parallel to Corniche in Aswan. File:Al Khattarah Aswan Bridge.jpg, Aswan Bridge File:Kitchener-Insel Aswan Botanical Garden.jpg, Aswan Botanical Garden File:Aswan Souq (West Gate).jpg, Aswan souq File:Market, Shopping street, Aswan, Egypt.jpg, Market in Aswan File:Aswan Railway station (Egypt).jpg, Aswan station File:Gharb Seheil by Hatem Moushir 1.JPG, Gharb Seheil File:Assuao.jpg, Nubian village in Elephantine Island. File:Cimetières des nobles Qubbet el-Hawa.jpg,

File:Nile River, Boats and feluccas, Aswan, Egypt.jpg, River Nile in Aswan File:Nile Feluccas in Aswan.jpg, Feluccas in Aswan

References

External links

Ancient Aswan City
{{Authority control Governorate capitals in Egypt Archaeological sites in Egypt Populated places in Aswan Governorate Roman sites in Egypt Tourism in Egypt Medieval cities of Egypt Upper Egypt