Position 84 - Assuan And The Island Of Elephantine (south) From The Western Cliffs Of The Cemetery

At last we have reached the first goal of the Nile tour, the first cataract (Map 3). You cannot see it from here, but it is just over yonder on the right above the islands beyond the two native boys. Our position is on the western cliffs, which you notice drop almost sheer to the water's edge, and we look southward across the river, the northern end of the island of Elephantine (the larger one), the little “Island of the Sirdar” in the foreground, and the modern town of Assuan on the other or eastern shore (Map 17).

That boy faces down river, that is, northward; before him sixty-eight miles away is Edfu, from which we have just come. On the other shore you see the wild and tumbled surface of the eastern desert stretching far away to the desolate horizon; behind us is the Sahara, even more melancholy and forbidding.

Some sixty-five miles below Assuan, that is, just after leaving Edfu, we passed out of the limestone, and we are now standing with sandstone beneath us, of which these rugged rocks (on the right) are excellent specimens. The town on the other shore has long marked the southern limit of Egypt proper, and does so still. Its name, Assuan, more properly Aswan, is very ancient. It is mentioned in the Old Testament (Ezekiel xxix, 10; xxx, 6), and was known to the Greeks as Syene, but already occurs long before Greek or Old Testament times in the Egyptian inscriptions. It is now a garrison town, and possesses several hotels.

The important town of early Egyptian times was located on the large island out there, at its further end. These buildings at this end are a hotel and a British Army hospital, but behind the masses of trees at the other end lie low ruins, heaps which have grown from fallen brick houses, such as we have seen so often before. The town, like the island, was called “Elephant town” by the early Egyptians themselves, and the Greeks did likewise, merely translating it as “Elephantine.”

Far back in the days of the pyramid builders it formed the southern frontier town of the kingdom, through which passed the trade of Nubia in ebony, ivory (explaining the name of the place), gold and ostrich feathers. The nobles who lived here were employed by the Pharaoh in trading expeditions in the remote south, perhaps as far as Sudan. They were the frontiersmen of that ancient day, and many are the adventures which they passed through.

Family letters of these remote borderers have been found in the ruins of their houses on the island. They are now preserved, written on papyrus, in the Berlin museum, and in them one may read the same names which we shall find in the rock tombs beneath us. For we are now perched on the cliffs, in which these nobles excavated their tombs, and in these tombs they have recorded some of their more notable achievements in war and travel.

We shall go down now to look at one of these tombs in the cliffs beneath us. See the lines numbered 85 in the upper portion of Map 17.