Überblick
Located on the east bank of the Nile, just below the First Cataract, the modern city of Aswan and the nearby island of Elephantine marked Egypt’s traditional southern frontier for most of its history.
They lie at the centre of a political, economic and cultural region which extends along the Nile from the High Dam Sadd el-Ali, built between 1960 and 1971, to the mouth of Wadi Qubbaniye and covers an area of about 140 km². Since the beginning of its colonization more than 5000 years ago, the region of Aswan has always been a border area with mixed population, an important military base, a place of extensive granite and diorite quarries and a rich centre of trade between Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Its landscape is defined to a major extent by the red granite dominant in the immediate vicinity, is the site of a considerable number of rock inscriptions.
These texts, many thousands of which can be found throughout the whole city, are in some cases severely threatened by the city’s expansion and the resulting increase of building activities. In 2010, a cooperation project was therefore initiated between the DAI Cairo and the Ministry of State for Antiquities with the aim of recording, documenting, and publishing the Pharaonic rock inscriptions and rock art in the Aswan region.