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Aswan is a city in Upper Egypt and capital of the Aswan Governorate, on the east bank of the Nile at the First Cataract, just north of the Aswan Dam. With more than 2,600 years of recorded history, it is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.
Aswan was the southern frontier of ancient Egypt, and its granite quarries supplied stone for many great monuments. Five of its sites belong to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Nubian Monuments, among them the tombs of Qubbet el-Hawa, the town of Elephantine and the Unfinished Obelisk. It is also a UNESCO Creative City for craft and folk art.
Today it is a busy market town and a favourite winter destination. Visitors sail between its islands, visit the temples of Philae and Kalabsha, explore the Nubian Museum, see the dams that tamed the Nile and watch the sunset over the desert hills of the west bank.
The Philae Temple Complex stands on Agilkia Island in the reservoir of the Aswan Low Dam, rebuilt there between 1977 and 1980 after flooding threatened its first island. In a rescue led by UNESCO, ninety-five structures were taken apart and set up again 12.4 metres higher than before.
The Unfinished Obelisk lies in the ancient granite quarries of Aswan and is the largest obelisk known, possibly ordered by Hatshepsut. Cracks in the stone halted the work, so it still lies attached to the bedrock, but finished it would have stood about 42 metres tall and weighed nearly 1,090 tonnes.
The Temple of Kalabsha was built around 30 BC in the reign of Augustus for Mandulis, a Nubian sun god, and never finished. It first stood about 50 kilometres south of Aswan and was moved in the 1960s to escape Lake Nasser, the largest free-standing temple of Egyptian Nubia to be moved.
Qubbet el-Hawa, the Dome of the Wind, is a hillside on the west bank of the Nile opposite Aswan where nobles and priests of the Old and Middle Kingdoms were buried. About 100 tombs had been found by 2022, cut in terraces below the domed tomb of an Islamic sheikh that gives the site its name.
Elephantine is a Nile island that forms part of Aswan and was an ancient frontier town, its name meaning elephant in Egyptian. Its excavations are a World Heritage Site, and Aramaic papyri found here record a community of soldiers with its own temple to Yahweh, destroyed in 410 BC.
Aswan Museum stands on Elephantine and was founded in 1912 by the British Egyptologist Cecil Mallaby Firth to hold finds from Nubia. It shows statues, pottery, tools and mummified rams sacred to the god Khnum, and its grounds reach the Temple of Satet, a Nilometer and the ruins of Abu.
Aswan Botanical Garden covers El Nabatat Island, a small island in the Nile once known as Kitchener's Island after Lord Kitchener, who was given it while serving in Egypt. He planted it with exotic trees and plants, many from India, and it later became a government botanical research station.
The Mausoleum of Aga Khan crowns a hill on the west bank of the Nile and was built between 1956 and 1960 for Aga Khan III, who died in 1957. It is also the resting place of Aga Khan IV, who died in 2025, and a red rose has been laid on Aga Khan III's tomb every day since his wife began the custom.
The Nubian Museum shows the archaeology, history and culture of Nubia, and grew out of the UNESCO campaign of 1960 to save monuments threatened by the Aswan High Dam. Designed by Mahmoud El-Hakim, it opened on 23 November 1997 and won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2001.
The Aswan High Dam was built across the Nile between 1960 and 1970 with help from the Soviet Union, to control floods, store water for irrigation and make electricity. On completion it was the tallest earthen dam in the world, and it holds back the vast reservoir of Lake Nasser.
The Aswan Low Dam was built by the British across the old First Cataract between 1899 and 1902 and was then the largest masonry dam in the world. It was raised twice, in 1907 to 1912 and 1929 to 1933, but still held too little water, which led to the building of the High Dam upstream.
The Old Cataract Hotel opened on 8 January 1900 as Thomas Cook's Cataract Hotel on the banks of the Nile. Its guests have included Winston Churchill, Howard Carter and Agatha Christie, who set part of Death on the Nile here, and the 1978 film of the novel was shot at the hotel.
Been to Aswan? Add your best shots to the gallery.
Log in to add photosPhoto: Vyacheslav Argenberg, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
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Photo: Warren LeMay from Cullowhee, NC, United States, Wikimedia Commons, CC0
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Photo: Chabe01, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
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Photo: Olaf Tausch, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
Photo: Olaf Tausch, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
Photo: Olaf Tausch, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
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