Aswan

 

or Assuan (both: äswän', ăswăn') , city (1986 pop. 190,579), capital of Aswan governorate, S Egypt, on the Nile River at the First Cataract. It is one of the driest cities in the world. Long famous as a winter resort and commercial center, the city has become an important industrial center since the start nearby of hydroelectricity production in 1960. A chemical fertilizer plant is the largest of the new industries. Iron ore and hematite are mined in the vicinity.

The city was called Syene or Seveneh in the Bible and is described as the southern limit of Egypt. It was a trade center, serving as the gateway to Sudan and Ethiopia, and was the place where the annual Nile flood was first sighted in Egypt. From the syenite quarries nearby came stone for the temples and statuary of the Pharaohs. On Elephantine island, in the Nile opposite Aswan, and Philae island (submerged by the Aswan High Dam complex), south of the city, are found ancient Egyptian and Roman ruins. Aga Khan III (1877–1957), leader of the Muslim Ismailis, is buried in Aswan.

The Aswan Dams

The Aswan Dam, 3 mi (4.8 km) south of the city, was built by the British and completed in 1902. It and the barrages at Asyut in central Egypt were the chief means of storing irrigation water for the Nile valley before the completion of the Aswan High Dam. After being enlarged in 1934, the dam added c.1 million acres (404,700 hectares) of cropland along the Nile. In 1960 a hydroelectric station with an annual capacity of 2 million kilowatt-hours was opened at the dam.

The Aswan High Dam, about 4 mi (6.4 km) upstream of the Aswan Dam, was constructed from 1960 to 1970 and was dedicated in 1971. The Soviet Union took over much of the dam's financing after the United States and Great Britain quit the project in 1956. Built of earth and rock fill with a core of clay and concrete, the High Dam is 375 ft (114 m) high and 11,811 ft (3,600 m) long. Lake Nasser (c.2,000 sq mi/5,180 sq km), the dam's reservoir and one of the world's largest artificial lakes, has a storage capacity of c.204 billion cu yd (157 billion cu m); it loses some water through evaporation. The creation of Lake Nasser required the relocation of 90,000 people, most of whom lived in Sudan, and of many archaeological treasures. Under UNESCO auspices, the Nubian temples at Abu-Simbel were moved (1963–68) to a cliff 200 ft (61 m) above the old site and reconstructed. In return for its financial assistance in this project, the United States was given the Roman temple of Dendur, now displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. In addition to providing hydroelectric power, the Aswan High Dam has greatly benefited irrigation projects and the fishing industry in Egypt. However, its flooding has caused some land erosion and agricultural problems.

Aswan (Egyptian: Swenet (=trade); Coptic: ⲥⲟⲩⲁⲛ Swān; Greek: Συήνη Syene; Arabic: أسوان Aswān; Spanish: Asuán) (24°05′N, 32°56′E, population 200,000) 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.

Aswan is one of the driest inhabited places in the world; as of early 2001, the last rain there was 6 years earlier. As of 13 October 2007, the last rainfall was a thunderstorm on May 13 2006. In Nubian settlements, they generally do not bother to roof all of the rooms in their houses.

History

Aswan is the ancient city of Swenet, which was in antiquity the frontier town of Egypt to the south. Because the Egyptians oriented towards the south, Aswan was the first town in the country, and Egypt was always conceived to open or begin at Aswan. It stood upon a peninsula on the right (east) bank of the Nile, immediately below (north of) the first cataract, which extend to it from Philae. It is supposed to have derived its name from an Egyptian goddesses with the same name, the Ilithya of the Greeks, and of which the import is the opener.

swn.t in hieroglyphs

The name of the city is also said to derive from the Egyptian word for trade. The quarries of Aswan 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. Aswan 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).

The latitude of Aswan – 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, and 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 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.

See also

• Aswan Dam
• Elephantine
• Philae
• Luxor
• Kitchener's Island

References

• This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography by William Smith (1857).

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