Aswan travel guide

Top 10 sights in Aswan

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1

   Sehel Island

   A granite island in the Nile above Aswan whose boulders carry more than two hundred and fifty ancient inscriptions, cut by officials on their way to Nubia. One is the Famine Stela, a Ptolemaic text claiming a seven-year famine in the reign of Djoser two thousand years earlier.

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2. 

   2© Morburre · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Famine Stela

   An inscription cut into a boulder on Sehel Island, telling of seven years of famine under King Djoser and of the land he granted to the god Khnum in return for the flood. It was carved more than two thousand years after the events it describes.

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3. 

   3© Roland Unger · CC BY-SA 4.0

   New Kalabsha

   A promontory near the Aswan High Dam where temples from Lower Nubia were re-erected in the 1960s to save them from the rising Lake Nasser. The great Temple of Kalabsha, the rock-cut Beit el-Wali of Ramesses II and the Kiosk of Qertassi were all moved here block by block.

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4. 

   4© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   unfinished obelisk

   An obelisk still lying in the northern granite quarry, abandoned when a crack opened along it. Had it been finished it would have been some forty-two metres and over a thousand tonnes, larger than any obelisk ever raised, and the tool marks around it show exactly how the work was done.

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5. 

   5© Vyacheslav Argenberg · CC BY 4.0

   Temple of Isis in Philae

   The temple of Isis, and the last place in Egypt where the old religion was practised — it was closed by imperial order in the sixth century. Between 1972 and 1980 it was cut into forty thousand blocks and rebuilt on a neighbouring island above the water.

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6. 

   6© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Agilkia island

   The island in the reservoir of the old Aswan dam to which the Philae temples were moved. Its rock was cut away to match the contours of the drowned island, so that the buildings could be set down in the same relation to each other.

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7. 

   7© Roland Unger · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Qubbet el-Hawa

   A cliff of rock-cut tombs on the west bank opposite Aswan, holding nobles and priests of the Old and Middle Kingdoms. One belongs to Harkhuf, who recorded his expeditions south and the delight of the boy king at the dancing dwarf he brought back.

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8. 

   8© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Trajan's Kiosk

   An unfinished temple of fourteen columns, roofless and open to the sky, moved to Agilkia with the rest of Philae. Reliefs inside show Trajan making offerings as pharaoh, which is how it got its name; locals call it Pharaoh's Bed.

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9. 

   9© Dennis G. Jarvis · CC BY 2.0

   Temple of Kalabsha

   A temple to the Nubian god Mandulis, built under Augustus fifty kilometres upstream and moved stone by stone in the 1960s ahead of the High Dam. It is the largest free-standing temple of Egyptian Nubia.

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10. 

    10

    International Museum of Nubia

    A museum opened in Aswan in 1997 to hold what was recovered from Nubia before the reservoir filled, and to tell the story of the rescue itself. Its building won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2001.

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1. 

   1© Hedwig Storch · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Mausoleum of Aga Khan

   The tomb of Aga Khan III, spiritual leader of the Ismailis, who died in 1957 and chose this hill above the Nile. Built of pink granite in Fatimid style, it looks over the river and the villa where his widow lived for decades afterwards.

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2. 

   2© Olaf Tausch · CC BY 3.0

   Temple of Beit el-Wali

   A small rock-cut temple of Ramesses II, moved with Kalabsha in the 1960s. Its painted reliefs of Nubian and Syrian campaigns are unusually well preserved, with colour still on the raised arms of the captives.

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3. 

   3

   Aswan Museum

   A museum on Elephantine island, set up in 1912 in the villa of the engineer who built the first Aswan dam. It holds Nubian material rescued before the reservoirs drowned the sites, and the excavations of the ancient town lie immediately outside its door.

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4. 

   4© Dennis G. Jarvis · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Kiosk of Qertassi

   A small Roman pavilion with slender papyrus columns inside and Hathor columns at the door, left unfinished and uninscribed. Six of its original fourteen columns survive; it was moved to New Kalabsha with the other rescued temples.

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5. 

   5© Hajor · CC BY-SA 3.0

   El-Tabia Mosque

   A mosque completed in 1974 on a hill in the centre of Aswan, with two minarets flanking an arched entrance and a single dome over the prayer hall — a departure from the Ottoman pattern, and the landmark of the modern town.

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