In 1912, an old rest house on the southern tip of Elephantine Island was converted into a museum. Expanded in the 1990s, the museum boasts a collection that focuses on the history of Aswan and Nubia. The displays include mummies, weapons, pottery, utensils, and statues. Outdoors, a garden leads to the ruins of Abu, the pharaonic settlement on the island. Labels are in Arabic and English. THE MUSEUM The villa-like main building of the Elephantine Museum was erected in 1902 to serve as residence and office for the engineer in charge of administration for the first Aswan dam. With an extension to the east, it nowadays houses finds from the older excavations of the ancient town, as well as from excavations made in northern Nubia before the first high dam was built. The Egyptian antiquities administration is preparing a new installation of the collection following on the removal of a number of objects - including statues from the Heqa-ib sanctuary (VP 18) and a mummified ram from the cemete...

  ELEPHANTINE   (Greek version of ancient Egyptian Ibw “the country of the elephants,, the largest island in the Nile, opposite Syene (ancient Egyptian Swn “market,” modern Aswān).  The island was always the administrative center of the southernmost province of Egypt, controlling the first cataract and the main frontier post en route to Nubia,  but during the Achaemenid occupation (525-402, 342-332 B.C.E.) the military garrison (Aram.   haila ) increased in importance. The   rab haila   “commander of the army” had military jurisdiction over Upper Egypt as far as Memphis, though he lived in Syene.  Syene was a port of call for contingents of the various ethnic elements of the empire (Persians, Phoenicians, Chorasmians, Medians, Assyrians, and Babylonians), with chapels for their divinities and the administrative seat of the Achaemenid civilian governor ( fratarak ). In Syene a number of tombs of Semitic peoples have been excavated . Under the Achae...

Elephantine is 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) from north to south, and is 400 metres (1,300 ft) across at its widest point.  The island is located just downstream of the First Cataract, at the southern border of Upper Egypt with Lower Nubia.  This region above is referred to as Upper Egypt because it is further up the Nile. The island may have received its name after its shape, which in aerial views is similar to that of an elephant tusk, or from the rounded rocks along the banks resembling elephants. Known to the ancient Egyptians as bw "Elephant"  the island of Elephantine stood at the border between Egypt and Nubia. It was an excellent defensive site for a city and its location made it a natural cargo transfer point for river trade.  This border is near the Tropic of Cancer, the most northerly latitude at which the sun can appear directly overhead at noon and from which it appears to reverse direction or "turn b...

  The   walls   of   the niches of these two tombs are each divided into two registers:  the upper register is devoted to the myth of Osiris, the lower to that of Persephone     The upper frieze of the tombs’ back walls shows the lustration of the mummy ( the death of Osiris, though it may as likely refer to the death of the inhabitant of the sarcophagus assimilated to the deity). Below is a scene of the abduction of Persephone, a scene frequent in Roman-period tombs throughout the Empire, regardless of the gender of the deceased.   The left wall of Tomb 2, and almost certainly the right wall of Tomb 1 (the lower part is destroyed by the robbers’ cut), present two more scenes – the upper interpreted  as the resurrection of Osiris and, below, the   anodos   of Persephone partly risen from the earth, having finally been discharged from Hades for six months of the year. The latter is a scene rarely visualized in Greek or   Roman a...