Egypt Guide
The Nile Valley
The Nubia Museum
Opening time: Daily: summer 6am–10pm; winter 9am–1pm & 5–9pm; Ramadan 9am–3pm
Price: £E35
Aswan's Nubia Museum has been widely acclaimed, delighting its sponsors, UNESCO, and posthumously crowning the career of its architect, the late Mohammed al-Hakim. Opened in 1998 after fifteen years on the drawing board, it's housed in an impressive modern building, loosely based on traditional Nubian architecture and faced in limestone, surrounded by landscaped grounds. It displays some 5000 artefacts, excellently organized and clearly labelled in English, making it a "must see" introduction to the history and culture of the Nubians; for a preview check out 
www.numibia.net/nubia .
At the entrance to the main hall, a scale model of the Nile Valley shows the magnitude of the Nilotic civilizations and their architectural achievements. The exhibits lead you from prehistory through the kingdoms of Kush and Meröe into Christian and Islamic eras, until the drowning of Nubia beneath Lake Nasser and the salvage of its ancient monuments by UNESCO. Among the highlights are a quartzite statue of a Kushite priest of Amun, an eight-metre-high Ramses II, horse-armour from the Ballana tombs and frescoes from the Coptic churches of Nubia. There are also life-size models of traditional Nubian houses and photographs of the mud-brick fortresses, churches and cemeteries that were abandoned to the rising waters of Lake Nasser as the temples were moved to higher land.
In the grounds are further monuments and exhibits, including the mausoleum of 77 wali (sheikhs), a traditional Nubian house, and a cave containing prehistoric rock art removed from now inundated areas. An artificial watercourse runs through the corner of the grounds nearest the main road, attractively spotlit at night.
The museum is about 500m uphill beyond the Old Cataract, about thirty minutes' walk from the town centre (£E10 by taxi).