As rich the land is in its commercial affairs , the history of Aswan is more affluent and mysterious. The ancient Aswan was known as the Swen. People believed it to be not only the end of the world but also the consecrated genesis of the Blue Nile. The city , full of granite temples , for over a few centuries acted as the doorway to Africa and Nubian lands.
The present day name of the city is derived from ‘Souan’, which means ‘trade’. The nearby Elephantine Islands which is a part of Aswan was previously called the Yeb islands. The Yeb was one of the foremost commercial centers of Egypt. Ivory, gold, camels and caravans had made the island famous throughout Egypt. Yeb in Nubian means elephant and thus the Greeks began to call it as the Elephantine islands. The location of Aswan is very strategic for which it was chosen as the capital of Upper Egypt in the ancient era. The Ptolemies made the city act as their base in order to stretch out to Central, Sudan and Nubia. The series of exquisite granite temples are still in the city as memoirs of the Ptolemic rule. The Temple of Philae is the most prominent instance of the immaculate architectural expertise of the Ptolemies. The ancient Swan or Aswan was also famous for its granite quarries. Thousands of Egyptian statutues , obelisks, shrines and even pyramids are constructed out of the Syenite granite mined in Aswan. The city of Aswan was also a crucial military base of the ancient Egypt. Whenever the reign of the land passed on to a new dynasty security of the city was tightened the more. Aswan was always a garrison town. Mention of Aswan can be found in the writings of Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny and Ptolemy.
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