Aswan - Aswan Museum

South of the Nilometer, opposite the Cataract Hotel, is a massive ancient embankment, many of the stones in which were taken from older buildings and bear inscriptions. There are also many inscriptions on the rocks along the water's edge, including some large inscriptions in the name of Psammetichus.

In the entrance hall is a mummy of a sacred ram in a gilded sarcophagus; Egyptian, Greek and Coptic gravestones; votive tablets, including one with a Meroitic inscription.

Room 4 (Late Period, after 1500 B.C.): mummies of the Ptolemaic period with cases of painted cartonnage, including those of a priest and priestess of Isis of Philae; bronze vessels and lance heads; heavy bronze bracelets; Meroitic glass flasks with incised designs; Nubian pottery of the Late Roman period (C. A.D. 400); strings of beads; a pottery censer and a small bronze incense vessel from a Christian church at El-Madiq in Lower Nubia (now submerged by Lake Nasser).

Now through the entrance hall to Room 3 (Middle and New Kingdoms, 2100-1500 B.C.): pottery, notably red and black burnished ware with incised patterns lined in white; bracelets of quartz; crude figures of women and cattle; alabaster vessels; cosmetic caskets; small painted plaster masks placed over the wrappings of mummies; faience; Mycenaean stirrup jar; board game of blue faience; mirrors, daggers and knives of copper and bronze; chains, rings, amulets; a small steatite memorial stone depicting Amun as a ram; scarabs.

Room 1 (reached from Room 2; prehistoric material, 4000-3200 B.C.): burnished red vessels with a black rim, light colored jugs with dark red painted decoration (ships, human figures, animals), hand made stone vessels; cosmetic palettes, combs, awls and needles made of bone; chains, amulets, cylinder seals; flint mace heads, knives and arrowheads.

In the Colonnade are statues, stelae and architectural fragments, including the torso of a woman and a terracotta sarcophagus of the Roman period.

Room 2 (Old Kingdom, 3200-2100 B.C.): pottery; copper weapons and implements; pear-shaped mace-heads; a skull with a healed fracture; pottery doll; ostrich eggs with incised figures of animals; porphyry bowl; strings of beads and bracelets.