Aswan

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Aswan

Aswan (formerly spelled Assuan), (in standard Aswan) Egyptian

Egyptian language

Egyptian is a branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages language family along with the Chadic languages, Berber languages, Semitic languages, Cushitic languages and possibly Omotic languages languages....
: Swenet (trade), Coptic

Coptic language

Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the final stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic languages language spoken in Egypt until at least the seventeenth century....
: Swan; Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: Syene; ) is a city in the south of Egypt

Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
, the capital of the Aswan Governorate

Aswan Governorate

Aswan Governorate is one of the governorates of Egypt. It is the southmost governorate in Upper Egypt. The capital of the governorate is Aswan....
.

It stands on the east bank of the Nile

Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the List of rivers by length in the world.The Nile has two major tributary, the White Nile and Blue Nile, the latter being the source of most of the Nile's water and silt, but the former being the longer of the two....
at the first cataract and is a busy market and tourist center. Its ancient name, Swenet, translates as "trade". It contains the island of Elephantine

Elephantine

Elephantine is an island in the Nile, located just downstream of the Cataracts of the Nile at at the southern border of Ancient Egypt. This region is referred to as Upper Egypt because the ancient Egyptians oriented themselves toward the direction from which the river flowed....
.

Aswan is one of the driest inhabited places in the world; as of early 2001, the last rain there was six years earlier.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Aswan'

Start a new discussion about 'Aswan'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

Aswan (formerly spelled Assuan), (in standard Aswan) Egyptian

Egyptian language

Coptic language

Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the final stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic languages language spoken in Egypt until at least the seventeenth century....
: Swan; Greek

Greek language

Egypt

Aswan Governorate

Aswan Governorate is one of the governorates of Egypt. It is the southmost governorate in Upper Egypt. The capital of the governorate is Aswan....
.

It stands on the east bank of the Nile

Nile

Elephantine

Nubia

Nubia is a region in Southern Egypt along the Nile and in what is now northern Sudan. Most of Nubia is situated in Sudan with about a quarter of its territory in Egypt....
n settlements, they generally do not bother to roof all of the rooms in their houses.

History

Aswan is the ancient city of Swenet, which in antiquity was the frontier town of Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
to the south. Swenet is supposed to have derived its name from an Egyptian goddess

Goddess

A goddess is a female deity. Often deities are part of a polytheism system that includes several deities in a pantheon .Common associations of goddesses are the Earth goddess, the Mother Goddess, Love goddess, and the hearth goddess, reflecting historical gender roles....
with the same name. This goddess later was identified as Eileithyia by the Greeks and Lucina

Lucina

In Roman mythology, Lucina was the goddess of childbirth. She safeguarded the lives of women in labor. Later, Lucina was an epithet for Hera as ....
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 language

Egyptians

Egyptians is the name of the nationality and Mediterranean North African ethnic group native to Egypt.Egyptian identity is closely tied to the Geography of Egypt, dominated by the lower Nile Valley, the small strip of cultivable land stretching from the Cataracts of the Nile to the Mediterranean Sea and enclosed by desert both to the Easte...
oriented toward the origin of the life-giving waters of the Nile in the south, Swenet was the first town in the country, and Egypt

Egypt

Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the List of rivers by length in the world.The Nile has two major tributary, the White Nile and Blue Nile, the latter being the source of most of the Nile's water and silt, but the former being the longer of the two....
, immediately below (north of) the first cataract of the flowing waters, which extend to it from Philae

Philae

Stone quarries of ancient Egypt

The Stone quarries of ancient Egypt once produced quality stone for the construction of decorative monuments such as sculptures and obelisks. Some of these sites are well identified and the chemical composition of their stones is also well known, allowing the geographical origin of most of the monuments to be traced using Petrography techni...
located here were celebrated for their stone, and especially for the granitic rock called Syenite. They furnished the colossal statues, obelisk

Obelisk

An obelisk An Obelisks is a tall, narrow, four-sided, tapering monument which ends in a pyramid like shape at the top. Ancient obelisks were made of a single piece of stone, a monolith; however, most modern obelisks are made of individual stones, and can even have interior spaces....
s, and monolithal shrines that are found throughout Egypt

Egypt

Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the List of rivers by length in the world.The Nile has two major tributary, the White Nile and Blue Nile, the latter being the source of most of the Nile's water and silt, but the former being the longer of the two....
, and a road, four miles in length, was cut beside them from Syene to Philae

Philae

Philae or Pilak or P'aaleq or Arabic language: Anas el Wagud, is an island in the Nile River and the previous site of an Ancient Egyptian temple complex in southern Egypt....
.

Swenet was as equally important as a military station as that of a place of traffic. Under every dynasty it was a garrison town; and here were levied toll and custom on all boats passing southward and northward. The city is mentioned by numerous ancient writers, including Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
(ii. 30), Strabo

Strabo

Strabo was a Ancient Greeks history, geography and philosophy....
(ii. p. 133, xvii. p. 797, seq.), Stephanus of Byzantium

Stephanus of Byzantium

Stephanus of Byzantium, also known as Stephanus Byzantinus was the author of an important Gazetteer entitled Ethnica . Of the dictionary itself only meagre fragments survive, but we possess an epitome compiled by one Hermolaus....
(s. v.), Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemaeus , known in English as Ptolemy , was a Roman Greek mathematics, Greek astronomy, geographer and astrologer. He lived in History of Roman Egypt, and was probably born there in a town in the Thebaid called Ptolemais Hermiou; he died in Alexandria around 168 AD....
(vii. 5. § 15, viii. 15. § 15), Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an ancient author, naturalist or natural philosopher and naval and military commander of some importance who wrote Natural History ....
(ii. 73. s. 75, v. 10. s. 11, vi. 29. s. 34), De architectura

De architectura

File:De Architectura027.jpg is a treatise on architecture written by the Ancient Rome architect Vitruvius and dedicated to his patron, the emperor Caesar Augustus as a guide for Caesar Augustus#Building projects....
(book viii. ch ii. § 6), and it appears on the Antonine Itinerary

Antonine Itinerary

The Antonine Itinerary is a register of the stations and distances along the various roads of the Roman empire, containing directions how to get from one Roman settlement to another....
(p. 164). It also is mentioned in the Book of Isaiah from the Scriptures (ref. Ezekiel 29:10).

The latitude

Latitude

Latitude, usually denoted symbolically by the Greek letter phi gives the location of a place on Earth north or south of the equator. Lines of Latitude are the horizontal lines shown running east-to-west on maps ....
of the city that would become Aswan, located at 24° 5' 23?– was an object of great interest to the ancient geographers. They believed that it was seated immediately under the tropic

Tropic of Cancer

The Tropic of Cancer, or Northern tropic, is one of five major degree measures or major circle of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. It is the northernmost latitude at which the Sun can appear directly overhead at noon....
, and that on the day of the summer solstice a vertical staff cast no shadow. They noted that the sun's disc was reflected in a well at noon. This statement is only approximately correct; the ancients were not acquainted with the exact tropic: yet at the summer-solstice the length of the shadow, or 1/400th of the staff, could scarcely be discerned, and the northern limb of the sun's disc would be nearly vertical.

Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greeks mathematician, poet, sportsperson, geographer and astronomer. He made several discoveries and inventions including a system of latitude and longitude....
used measurements at Aswan (Elephantine

Elephantine

Flat Earth

The flat Earth model is an ancient view of the Earth's shape which conceived of it as flatness like a piece of paper or an infinite plane .This belief contrasts with the view introduced around the 4th century BC by natural philosophers of Classical Greece that the spherical Earth....
theory and attempted to determine the circumference of the Earth, using Syene (as the Greeks called Swenet) as the originating point and Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
as the terminal point of a measured arc (based upon shadow length at the solstice) to make an accurate estimate of the circumference of the Earth.

The Nile

Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the List of rivers by length in the world.The Nile has two major tributary, the White Nile and Blue Nile, the latter being the source of most of the Nile's water and silt, but the former being the longer of the two....
is nearly 3000 yards wide above Aswan. From this frontier town to the northern extremity of Egypt

Egypt

Alexandria

Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
usually occupied between 21 and 28 days in favourable weather.

Education

South Valley University is located in Aswan. It has two faculties of engineering named as Faculty of Engineering and Technology and Faculty of Engineering and Energy. It has also a faculty of science and faculties of humanities.

Aswan

History

Education

Gallery

See also

External links