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Elephantine Island - opposite modern Aswan in the Nile - has been settled since time immemorial, and its fortress-town of Yebu (or Abu) became the border post between Egypt and Nubia early in the Old Kingdom. Local governors, known as the "Guardians of the Southern Gates", were responsible for border security and trade with Nubia, for huge quarries for fine red granite, and mining in the desert hinterland of amethysts, quartzite, copper, tin and malachite. Military outposts further south could summon help from the Yebu garrison by signal fires and an Egyptian fleet patrolled the river between the First and Second Cataracts.

Besides this, Yebu was an important cult centre, for the Egyptians believed that the Nile welled up from subterranean caverns at the First Cataract , just upriver. Its local deities were Hapy and Satet, god of the Nile flood and goddess of its fertility, though the region's largest temple honoured Khnum, the provincial deity (see Esna section).

During settled periods, the vast trade in ivory, slaves, gold, silver, incense, exotic animal skins and feathers spawned a market town on the east bank (slightly south of modern Aswan, its linear descendant), but the island remained paramount throughout classical times, when it was known by its Greek appellation, Seyene. In the Ptolemaic era, the Alexandrian geographer Eratosthenes (276-196 BC) heard of a local well into which the sun's rays fell perpendicularly at midday on the summer solstice, leaving no shadow; from this he deduced that Seyene lay on the Tropic of Cancer, concluded that the world was round and calculated its diameter with nearly modern accuracy - being only 80km out. (Since that time, the Tropic of Cancer has moved further south.)

The potency of the cult of Isis at nearby Philae made this one of the last parts of Egypt to be affected by Christianity , but once converted it became a stronghold of the faith. From their desert Monastery of St Simeon, monks made forays into Nubia, eventually converting the local Nobatae, who returned the favour by helping them to resist Islamic rule through Fatimid times, until finally subjugated by Salah al-Din. However, Bedouin raiders persisted through to 1517, when Sultan Selim garrisoned an entire army here, by which time the town's name had changed from Coptic Sawan to its present form, and the population had embraced Islam .

From the early nineteenth century onwards, Aswan was the base for the conquest of the Sudan and the defeat of the Mahadist Uprising (1881-98) by Anglo-Egyptian forces. As British influence grew, it also became the favourite winter resort of rich, ailing Europeans, who flocked to Aswan for its dry heat and therapeutic hot sands, luxurious hotels and stunning scenery, spiced with the thrill of being "at the edge of civilization". Its final transformation into the Aswan of today owes to the building of the High Dam , 15km upriver, which flooded Nubia, compelling its inhabitants to settle in new villages built around Kom Ombo and Aswan itself, which is now predominantly Nubian.

To assert its identity, the city has undertaken two projects: an Africa University for the study of African science and culture, and a Nubia Museum tracing the Nubians' history. The relationship between the Egyptian and Sudanese governments has been somewhat fragile, however, and the weekly ferry between Aswan and Wadi Halfa was suspended for a time during the mid-1990s because of political tensions. At the time of writing, the ferry is running and relations between the two governments seem relatively stable.