The Temple of Horus in Edfu (also known as the Temple of Edfu) is considered the best-preserved cult temple in Egypt. This partly because it was built later than most: in the Ptolemaic era from 237 to 57 BC.

Gebel Silsila is the name given to a rocky gorge between Kom Ombo and Edfu where the River Nile narrows and high sandstone cliffs come right down to the water’s edge. There was probably a series of rapids here in ancient times, dangerous to navigate, which naturally formed a frontier between the regions of Elephantine (Aswan) and Edfu. In Pharaonic times the river here was known as Khennui, the ‘place of rowing’.

The Ptolemies have constructed the Temple of Kom Ombo for the worship of two gods, Sobek; the Crocodile god, and Horus, the falcon god. This is why the complex mainly consists of two parallel temples with all the traditional components of such ancient Egyptian religious structures are present in the two temples.

Aswan is the smallest of the three major tourist cities on the Nile. Being the furthest south of the three, it has a large population of Nubian people, mostly resettled from their homeland in the area flooded by Lake Nasser. Aswan is the home of many granite quarries from which most of the Obelisks seen in Luxor were sourced. Aswan was the ancient Egyptians’ gateway to Africa.

The modern Egyptian village of Esna, which was ancient Iunyt or Ta-senet (from which the Coptic Sne and Arabic Isna derive), was built in the area of ancient Latopolis and is the site of a major temple dedicated to the god Khnum. Under the Greeks and Romans, the city became the capital of the Third Nome of Upper Egypt. Besides Khnum, the temple was dedicated to several other deities, the most prominent of whom were Neith and Heka.
Esna is located about fifty kilometers south of Luxor. The temple now stands in the middle of the modern town at a level about nine meters below that of the surrounding grounds. Some blocks of the earlier 18th Dynasty structure are preserved. The present structure dates to the Greek and Roman period and is one of the latest temples to have been built by the ancient Egyptians.