Sehel Island and the Famine Stela

Sehel Island lies in the Nile about three kilometres south of Aswan, close to the first cataract. The rocky island is covered in ancient inscriptions — over 250 have been recorded, left by officials, priests, and merchants who passed through the cataract on their way to and from Nubia over a span of more than two thousand years. The Famine Stela, a Ptolemaic inscription carved on a large boulder, is the most significant of these.

The island is reached by motorboat from Aswan. It has a small Nubian village whose inhabitants will guide you to the main inscriptions and the stela. The granite landscape is beautiful — orange and grey boulders, acacia trees, and the sound of the cataract water below. It is a quieter alternative to the major monuments and gives a sense of the ancient boundary that Aswan represented for thousands of years.

things to do sight
A story
The Famine Stela on Sehel Island records a seven-year drought during the reign of Djoser, around 2650 BCE. The inscription, written much later in the Ptolemaic period, has the god Khnum speak to the pharaoh and promise to end the famine. Scholars debate whether it records a real event or was written as a justification for the priesthood's land claims — but the story it tells, of a civilization facing catastrophic drought, resonates across the millennia.

Other places in Things to Do