Egypt's sunniest city — Nubian villages, Abu Simbel, and the dam that moved temples
Aswan is Egypt's southernmost major city — a quieter, warmer, and more distinctly African city than Cairo or Luxor, where the Nile narrows between granite boulders and Nubian villages of blue-painted houses cluster on Elephantine Island. Abu Simbel, Ramses II's colossal rock temples 280km south, were famously dismantled and moved to higher ground block by block to save them from Lake Nasser when the High Dam was built in 1970.
Aswan (ancient Syene) was Egypt's southern border garrison — the first city past the First Cataract where the Nile became impassable to boats. It was also the source of the pink Aswan granite used in virtually every Egyptian obelisk and pharaonic statue. The Aswan High Dam, completed in 1970 with Soviet assistance after Britain and the US withdrew funding (triggering the Suez Crisis in 1956), created Lake Nasser and required the resettlement of 100,000 Nubian people whose ancestral villages were flooded.