The Elephantine island in the middle of Aswan was the original site for the city of Abu, the ancient Aswan. On the stones here you can see hieroglyphs in the stone. Two of these are the name of a Pharaoh in the late period, the Egyptian renaissance of ancient Egypt during the 26th Dynasty.

His name is Pharaoh Psamtic II and he lived for some 2500 years ago. While the first cataract in the Nile was located ancient Abu, he went all the way south to the third cataract to stop the Nubian threat to the kingdom (as he saw it).

It's same Psamtic II whom the legendary Greek historian Herodotus tells a very special story about. He took namely two newborns and isolated them, as he would find out what the original language of humans was if they did grew up without any other language around them. When the children eventually started to make sounds, Psamtic II said that they spoke Phrygian (an Indo European language).

Later Frederick II of Prussia (also known as Frederick the Great) heard about this and wanted to copy the experiment, but unfortunately in his case the children died before they uttered understandable speech.

Next page >>
Aswan map page

Map page for Aswan

Contact us
tours - hotels - expeditions
www.egyptmyway.com/contactforms.html

MyWay Travel a.s. Tel. Egypt: +2 012 7739149 Tel. Norway: +47 45661608 Epost: post@egyptmyway.com Org. number: NO 987 180 633 Send a Post Card

 To the Top
 Hotels in Aswan
 Hotels in Egypt
 Map of Aswan
 List of Egypt maps
 Egypt Article List
 Egyptian Photo serials
 Printer Friendly version
 Email this Photo page