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Aswan

[as-wahn; Arab. ahs-wahn]

Aswan or Assuan, 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.

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Aswān

City (pop., 2006: 266,013), southeastern Egypt. It lies on the Nile River just north of Lake Nasser. In ancient times it was the southern frontier of pharaonic Egypt. Later known as Syene, it served as a frontier garrison post for the Romans, Ottomans, and British. Modern Aswān is located near the old Aswān Dam (completed 1902) and the Aswān High Dam.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Aswan

Aswan (formerly spelled Assuan), (in standard أسوان Aswān) Egyptian: Swenet (trade), Coptic: Swān; Greek: Συήνη Syene; 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. Its ancient name, Swenet, translates as "trade". 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 8 September 2008, 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 in antiquity was the frontier town of Ancient Egypt to the south. Swenet is supposed to have derived its name from an Egyptian goddess with the same name. This goddess later was identified as Eileithyia by the Greeks and Ilithya by the Romans during their occupation of Ancient Egypt because of the similar association of their goddesses with childbirth, and of which the import is "the opener". The ancient name of the city also is said to be derived from the Egyptian symbol for trade.

Because the Ancient Egyptians oriented toward the origin of the life-giving waters of the Nile in the south, Swenet was the first town in the country, and Egypt always was conceived to "open" or begin at Swenet. The city 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. Navigation to the delta was possible from this location without encountering a barrier.

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 that 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, four miles in length, was cut beside them from Syene to Philae.

Swenet was as equally important as a military station as that of 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 also is mentioned in the Book of Isaiah from the Scriptures (ref. Isaiah 49:12).

The latitude of the 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 noon. 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 attempted 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 the river 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.

Education

South Valley University is located in Aswan. It has two faculties of engineering named as Faculty of Engineering and Technology and Faculty of Engineering and Energy. It has also a faculty of science and faculties of humanities.