aswan and elephantine

aswan and elephantine
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Aswan is a border town, 900km (558 miles) south of Cairo, and is situated at the First Cataract,  where modern Egypt begins. To the north, the Nile flows downwards towards Cairo and the Delta, to the south it extends behind the High Dam into the vast and into the seemingly infinite Lake Nasser, disappearing deep into the Sudan.
The Nile at Aswan is studded with numerous granite islands. The largest, Elephantine Island has various monuments, and a Nubian settlement. Another well known island close by is Kitchener's Island, home to the green oasis of the botanical gardens, and variously known by locals as "plant island", "flower island" and "botanic island". Lord Kitchener, British Consul of Egypt was deeded the island by the Egyptian government for his campaigns in the Sudan in the 19th century.

Elephantine Island

The largest island at Aswan, Elephantine is situated opposite the modern town, and is one of the most ancient sites in Egypt, dating back to the predynastic period. It was known as Elephant Island (or Abu or Yabu) probably because it was a trading post for ivory. An excellent defensive site for a city, the island commanded the First Cataract that formed a natural boundary to the south, and noblemen bore the title "Guardians of the Southern Gate."

The ram headed god of the cataracts, Khnum, one of the creator gods and part of the triad of the goddesses Satet and Anuket, had his main cult centre on Elephantine Island, and the ruined temple of Khnum on the southern tip of the island dates to the 18th Dynasty. Other the main attractions on the island include an ancient Nilometer, one of only three on the Nile, the Elephantine Museum, the old town, and the colourful Nubian village.

Unfortunately many of the artifacts are now in ruin, although ongoing excavations at the town by the German Archaeological Institute have uncovered many findings, including a mummified ram of Khnum, that are now on display in the museum located on the island. Artifacts dating back to predynastic times have been found on Elephantine. The oldest ruins still standing on the island are a granite step pyramid from the third dynasty and a small shrine, built for the local sixth-dynasty nomarch Hekayib.

Elephantine Island, with its luxury resort hotel, seen from Aswan at night.

A rare calendar, known as the Elephantine Calendar, dating to the reign of Thutmose III, was found in fragments. Also on the island is one of the oldest nilometers in Egypt, last reconstructed in Roman times and still in use as late as the 19th century. The ninety steps that lead down to the river are marked with Hindu-Arabic, Roman, and hieroglyphic numerals, and inscriptions carved deep into the rock during the 17th dynasty can be seen at the water's edge.

Prior to 1822 there were temples of Tuthmosis III and Amenhotep III which were destroyed by the then Turkish (Ottoman) occupying government. Both were relatively intact at that time.

The Elephantine papyri are caches of legal documents and letters written in Aramaic, which document the community of Jewish soldiers stationed here during the Persian occupation of Egypt. They maintained their own temple that functioned alongside that of Khnum. The Jewish community at Elephantine was probably founded as a military installation in about 650 BCE during Manasseh's reign, to assist Pharaoh Psammetichus I in his Nubian campaign. The documents cover the period that the Jewish garrison was stationed on the island, between the years of 495 and 399 BC.

Qubbet el-Hawa was the burial ground of the Old Kingdom noblemen from Elephantine, and their tombs were hewn out of the rock, about halfway up the hill facing the river.
 

The Aswan Dam, the High Dam and the UNESCO project

The British began construction of the first dam in 1899 and it was completed in 1902. A gravity dam, it was 1900 metres long and 54 metres high. However, the initial design was soon found to be inadequate and the height of the dam was raised in two subsequent phases, from 1907–1912 and then again between 1929–1933. With each successive heightening, the waters built up, and monuments and people were threatened.

The Aswan High Dam, with the power station on the left hand side, and the reservoir, Lake Nasser on the right. The dam is 3600 metres in length, 980 metres wide at the base, 40 metres wide at the crest and 111 metres tall. Lake Nasser is 550 km long and 35 km at its widest point. The dam powers twelve generators each rated at 175 megawatts, which meant that many Egyptian villages had access to a permanent source of electricity for the first time.

When the dam almost overflowed in 1946, it was decided that rather than raise the dam a third time, a second dam would be built six kilometres upriver. Proper planning finally began in 1952, just after the Nasser revolution. Initially both Britain and America were to help finance construction of the second dam, however both nations then cancelled the offer in July 1956 for reasons not entirely known. Soon after, Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, intending to use its tolls to subsidize the High Dam project. This prompted Britain, France, and Israel to attack Egypt, occupying the Suez Canal and precipitating the Suez Crisis. The United Nations, US, and USSR forced the invaders to withdraw and the canal was left in Egyptian hands. The Egyptian government continued to intend to finance the dam project alone by using the revenues of the Suez Canal to help pay for construction. But as part of the cold war struggle for influence in Africa, the then Soviet Union stepped in in 1958, and possibly a third of the cost of the dam was paid for as a gift. The Soviets also provided technicians and heavy machinery. The enormous rock and clay dam was designed by the Russian Zuk Hydroproject Institute.

NASA satellite image of the Aswan High Dam. The first stage of the dam was finished in 1964, but the dam itself was fully completed on 21st July 1970. The reservoir began filling in 1964 whilst the dam was still under construction and first reached its capacity in 1976.

Satellite image courtesy of Google Imagery, DigitalGlobe, TerraMetrics

In 1960, when work finally began on what was now to be the new Soviet financed High Dam, it meant that the Nubian people were in danger of losing all their land, and that major sites would be lost under the creation of the largest reservoir in the world, Lake Nasser. A UNESCO co-ordinated project was launched, not only to record the threatened Nubian monuments, but to dismantle and reassemble on higher ground, piece by piece, 24 major ancient monuments such as the temples of Philae, Abu Simbel and Kalabsha.

The Nubians from Lower Nubia were resettled in Kom Ombo and Aswan, and those from Upper Nubia were taken to Qasr el-Girba in northern Sudan. Social studies on both groups have shown how well they have adjusted to their new conditions.

The advantages of the dam include no inundation (flooding), twice yearly cropping and more land availability. However advantages are often balanced by disadvantages, in this case the increased salinity of the water has adversely affected crops, in particular in the Delta region, which now requires constant irrigation and drainage.

Environmental issues

Apart from the obvious benefits of the damming the Nile, it must also be noted that the dams have caused a number of environmental issues, including:

	Damming the Nile flooded much of lower Nubia and displaced over 90,000 people. The creation of Lake Nasser flooded many valuable archaeological sites.
	The silt which was deposited in the yearly inundation and made the Nile floodplain fertile, is now held behind the dam. Silt deposited in the reservoir is lowering the water storage capacity of Lake Nasser.
	Poor irrigation practices are water logging soils and bringing salt to the surface.
	Mediterranean fishing declined after the dam was finished because nutrients that used to flow down the Nile into the Mediterranean were trapped behind the dam.
	There is some erosion of farmland down-river. Erosion of coastline barriers, due to lack of new sediments from floods, will eventually cause loss of the brackish water lake fishery that is currently the largest source of fish for Egypt.
	The subsidence of the Nile Delta will lead to the inundation of the northern portion of the delta with seawater, in areas that are currently used for rice crops. The delta itself, no longer renewed by Nile silt, has lost much of its fertility. The red-brick construction industry, which relied heavily on delta mud, is also severely affected.
	The need to use artificial fertilisers supplied by international corporations is controversial too, causing chemical pollution which the traditional river silt did not.
	The dam has been implicated in a rise in cases of schistosomiasis (bilharzia), due to the thick plant life that has grown up in Lake Nasser, which hosts the snails who carry the disease.
	There is a significant erosion of coastlines all along the eastern Mediterranean - this is due to a lack of sand, which was once brought by the Nile.