Elephantine Island

The island of Elephantine sits midstream in the Nile, just above the first cataract, by modern Aswan. Anciently the capital of the 1st Upper Egyptian nome, the site was a true border between Egypt and the areas to the south and represented a point of primary strategic and commercial importance. But the region was also an area of considerable religious importance for the deities associated with the Nile and with the desert regions.

The main town and temple of area of Elephantine was located at the southern end of the island, and excavations by German archaeological team have found that this area was inhabited almost continuously from the Early Dynastic period. Many temple doubtless stood here over the millennia, and the existence of several is known, though none of these structures remains intact today. Some have vanished in only recent times, and a small temple of Amenophis III was virtually intact as late as 1820, as was a structure of Thutmosis III.

The main temple site of which anything can be seen is that of the temple of Khnum, ram-headed lord of Elephantine, which was oriented east to west from the direction of the Roman era quay near the southeast corner of the island. The surviving pavement of the front section of this structure was actually added in the late antiquity and built around the earlier columns of Ramesses II. Today only fragmentary examples of these survive, along with some altars, several of which are inscribed in Greek. The inner part of the temple is marked by a granite gateway which represents the only standing element of substance (most of the limestone of the walls having been burnt for lime), and the area beyond this is one of tangled remains with few recognizable features other than a large granite shrine begun in the 30th dynasty by Nectanebo II but never fully completed.

A little to the north, behind the Antiquities Museum, is the site of the temple of Satis, consort of Khnum. The New Kingdom temple of Thutmosis III has undergone reconstruction by the German Archaeological Institute in recent years, and this small site is of particular importance. Due to the restrictions in the topography of the site, the ancient builders sealed, under multiple floors, previous temples built on the same spot. First, beneath the 18th dynasty floor was found the remains of a structure of the 12th dynasty and another of the 11th dynasty. An Old Kingdom temple dating to the 6th dynasty them emerged. Beneath all these ancient structures the level of an even earlier shrine of the Early Dynastic period was eventually reached.

This structure represents one of the earliest temples to be found in Egypt and consisted of a small sanctuary area utilizing a natural niche in the surrounding rock and expanding from there through several small rooms from which many small votive objects were recovered. These artifacts do not make clear what deity or deities were worshipped here at this early period, but by the time of the 11th dynasty structure the three principal deities of the area, Khnum, Satis and Anuket, are all attested.

Behind the Satis temple site is that of a small Middle Kingdom chapel of Hekayib, the deified governor of the region, and near the southern tip of the island is a small Ptolemaic chapel which has been reconstructed from blocks built into the Roman temple of Kalabsha and only revealed when that structure was dismantled for relocation in the 20th century. The chapel is of historical interest as it received decoration of the Nubian ‘pharaoh’ Arkamani who ruled that region in the 3rd century BC. On the outer walls Caesar Augustus is depicted, showing that the Roman completed the decoration of the chapel before deciding to dismantle it.