Buhen was the southernmost major garrison of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, built on the west bank of the Nile just north of the Second Cataract, directly across the river from Wadi Halfa. The remains of the mud-brick walls are now mostly underwater, but the site marks one of the greatest losses of ancient Nubian archaeology caused by the construction of the Aswan High Dam.
The fortress enclosed a civilian town and a temple to Horus. Excavations in the 1960s, undertaken urgently before the dam's completion, revealed the sophistication of the fortifications and the layers of later occupation by Kushite and Meroitic peoples. The relocated temple can be seen in Khartoum, but visiting the original site — a faint silhouette visible in the shallows in dry years — gives a sense of what Nubia lost to the reservoir.