Everything about Aswan totally explained
Aswan (formerly spelled
Assuan;
Egyptian:
Swenet (literally meaning "trade");
Coptic:
Swān;
Greek: Συήνη
Syene;
Aswān;
Spanish:
Asuán) is a city in the south of
Egypt, the capital of the
Aswan Governorate. It stands on the east bank of the
Nile at the
first cataract and is a busy market and tourist center. It contains the island of
Elephantine.
Aswan is one of the driest inhabited places in the world; as of early 2001, the last rain there was six years earlier.
As of 31 March 2008, the last rainfall was a thunderstorm on
May 13 2006. In
Nubian settlements, they generally don't 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 to the south. Because the
Egyptians oriented toward the south, Swenet was the first town in the country, and
Egypt always was conceived to open or begin at Swenet. It stood upon a peninsula on the right (east) bank of the
Nile, immediately below (north of) the first cataract of the flowing waters, which extend to it from
Philae.
Swenet is supposed to have derived its name from an Egyptian goddess with the same name, the
Eileithyia of the Greeks, Ilithya of the Romans, and of which the import is the opener. The ancient name of the city also is said to be derived from the
Egyptian word for
trade.
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,
obelisks, and monolithal shrines which are found throughout
Egypt, including the pyramids; and the traces of the quarrymen who wrought in these 3000 years ago are still visible in the native rock. They lie on either bank of the
Nile, and a road, 4 miles in length, was cut beside them from Syene to
Philae.
Swenet was equally important as a military station and as 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 (ii. 30),
Strabo (ii. p. 133, xvii. p. 797,
seq.),
Stephanus of Byzantium (
s. v.),
Ptolemy (vii. 5. § 15, viii. 15. § 15),
Pliny the Elder (ii. 73. s. 75, v. 10. s. 11, vi. 29. s. 34),
De architectura (book viii. ch ii. § 6) and it appears on the
Antonine Itinerary (p. 164). It is also mentioned in the Book of Isaiah from the Scriptures (ref. Isaiah 49:12).
The latitude of 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, 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 noonday. 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 used measurements at Aswan (
Elephantine) to contest the
Flat Earth theory and attempt to determine the circumference of the Earth, using
Syene (as the Greeks called Swenet) as the originating point and
Alexandria 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 is nearly 3000 yards wide above Aswan. From this frontier town to the northern extremity of
Egypt it flows for more than 750 miles without bar or cataract. The voyage from Aswan to
Alexandria usually occupied between 21 and 28 days in favourable weather.
Gallery
Image:Aswan_IMG_0764.jpg|The El-Tabia Mosque in Aswan
Image:Railway Station Street, Aswan, Egypt, Oct 2004 A.jpg|A view along the street connecting railway station and Nile
Image:Aswan Street, Egypt, Oct 2004.jpg|A street parallel to Corniche in Aswan
image: Assuan.jpg|Aswan
Image:Assuao.jpg|The Nile at Aswan, seen from Elephantine Island
Further Information
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