Welcome to 'Baba Dool' the Nubian House, Elephantine Island. |
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The Nubian HouseElephantine Island, Aswan, Egypt Mr Hassan Abdel Shokour |
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Between the banks of the River Nile in upper Egypt, a small house nests on the island of Elephantine. Built with handmade mud bricks in the traditional Nubian style with sand floors and a flat roof, and boasting one of the best views on the Nile, its terrace is a spectacular spot to watch the sun setting over the sand dunes of the west bank. Your hosts, Mustafa and Hassan will be pleased to make you welcome. They serve drinks and meals, provide basic accommodation, and will arrange sightseeing or relaxing trips if you should wish. From their beach you can take a felucca boat trip along the Nile to Edfu or cross over to the Tombs of the Nobles on the west bank then walk or go by camel to St. Simoen Monastery and the Aga Khan's Mausoleum. If you wish your boatman will wait to take you upstream to the First Cataracts and onto Kitchener's Island to enjoy the lush botanical gardens. Or you may prefer to while away some hours watching the feluccas glide by and spotting birds on the river while sipping a cup of sweet tea or strong ginger coffee on the terrace. How
to get there: Accommodation Women Bird
Watching Excursions He can be contacted at the Nubian House or mobile phone 0020 106209477. Suggested
excursions: Elephantine Island has wonderful gardens and is a good place to spend some leisure time wandering through the Nubian village where the people are friendly and the houses are often very colourful. The houses often have paintings or carved with a crocodile at the bottom, a fish in the middle and a man on top, with a woman's hand made of brass as a door knocker between the fish and man. Elephantine is Greek for elephant. The town has also been referenced as Kom, after it's principle god of the island, Khnum (Khnemu). It is believed that the island received it's name because it was a major ivory trading centre, though in fact it was a major trading post of many commodities. There are large boulders in the river near the island which resembled bathing elephants, and this too has been suggested as a reason for the island's name. The island is very beautiful, and there is a considerable amount to see. One of the main attractions is a Nilometer which was used to measure the water level of the Nile as late as the nineteenth century. There has been an ongoing excavation at the town for many years by the German Archaeological Institute and some of the finds along with many other island artefact, including a mummified ram of Khnum, are located in the Elephantine Museum. Another major attraction is the ruins of the Temple of Khnum. Elephantine Island was considered to be home of this important Egyptian god, and while this structure dates back to the Queen Hatshepsut of the 18th Dynasty, there are references to a Temple of Khnum on the island as early as the 3rd Dynasty. There are also ruins of a Temple of Satet, who was Khnum's female counterpart (the three local deities were foremost Khnum, but also Satet and a local Nubian goddess Anqet. These gods were worshipped here since the earliest dynasties), also build by Queen Hatshepsut, a shrine to Hekayib from the 6th Dynasty, a local governor who was deified after his death. His cult flourished during the middle kingdom, and some fine statues from the shrine are now in the museum. You will also find a 3rd Dynasty granite step pyramid which is now just visible, and to the north, the mud-brick vaults of the late period which housed the bodies of the royal rams. On the south end of the island is a small one room Ptolemaic temple which was constructed from materials removed from the Kalabsha Temple.
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The Nubian HouseElephantine
Island, Aswan, Egypt |
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