ASOUAN AND THE ISLAND OF ELEPHANTINE. 
Asouan was the ancient Syene; in the Coptic language it signified an opening, derived 
from the sudden widening of the Nile below the Cataracts. There are few ruins 
of the ancient city remaining, and nothing of the Pharaonic or Ptolemaic periods. 
It was an important station under the Romans, and the names of Nero and Domitian 
are preserved upon the ruins of a small temple. To this place Juvenal was banished 
for having satirised a favourite of Hadrian. 
The most interesting objects in the neighbourhood of Asouan are the syenite 
and granite quarries, which supplied the vast demand of Egypt, in ancient times, 
for obelisks, columns, and other massive requisites for their temples. The principal 
quarries lie on the south-east, and the rocks about Asouan bear evidence of extensive 
quarrying, in the marks of the wedges used and the forms of the quarried rocks; 
and numerous inscriptions on tablets at Asouan and Elephantine announce the removal 
of large masses in the reigns of the Pharaohs by whose orders they were hewn, 
and many of them are of dates previous, as well as subsequent, to the eighteenth dynasty; 
others bear the names of monarchs of the twenty-sixth, immediately before the Persian 
invasion. The mode adopted for quarrying the obelisks is shown by one lying on 
the spot where it was separated, but not removed; ninety feet of its length is in 
sight, and above twenty more is said to be concealed by the sand. The process 
for obtaining such a block was by making a line of holes, with a channel connecting 
them for water; into these holes dry wooden wedges were driven, which, absorbing 
the water by the energy of capillary attraction, accumulated force enough to rend 
the rock in the line of the wedges, and separate the mass chosen for excavation. 
The block which lies here was discovei’ed to be unsound and unfit for removal; 
it still remains to excite the wonder of travellers, where many as large, and even 
larger, had been quarried and removed. 
Elephantine, or, as it was sometimes called, the Island of Flowers, lies on the 
Nile off the miserable town of Asouan, and not far from the Cataracts, which form 
the limit to Egypt on the borders of Nubia; the passage up the Nile appears between 
the island and the deserted town of Asouan; the modern town lies lower down 
the river. The island, even during the occupation of Egypt by the French, was 
covered by many magnificent structures, delineated in Denon’s “ Egypt; ” of these 
little now remains, and the sand is fast covering the southern end of the island. Its 
principal ruins are a granite gateway of the time of Alexander, and near to it, on 
the north, a small temple of the ram-headed deity Ivneph, who presided over the 
inundation of the Nile, and was particularly adored in the neighbourhood of the 
Cataracts. The Temple was erected by Amunoph III., the eighth Pharaoh of the 
eighteenth dynasty, in the fifteenth century b.c. ; he is represented in the interior 
