El-Kab

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During the New Kingdom, El-Kab or El Kab was one of the most important city in ancient Egypt, and when El-Kab became important early in ancient Egyptian history, the vulture soon became a heraldic creature for all of Upper Egypt. That mean the vulture was typically associated with the goddess Nekhebet who was the patroness of the city of El-Kab in Upper Egypt.

Location of EL-Kab

In general, this area is called El Kab but it is really the two ancient cities of Nekheb El Kab on the east bank of the Nile River and the older Nekhen, now known as Kom el Ahmar (the Red Mound) on the opposite bank. Before the discoveries at El Kab, it was thought that Paleolithic artifacts, even those dating to the Epipaleolithic, would not be found on the floodplain of the Nile, simply because of the action of the inundation.

The necropolis of El Kab provides the first information of importance about the beginnings of the 18th Dynasty. El Kab is indeed the symbolic city of royalty of the South, its tutelary goddess Nekhbet being the counterpart of the goddess Uadjit, representing the North. At the time when Egypt was not yet unified, the ritual of crowning of the king of the South was certainly done in the original temple of El Kab. The goddess of El Kab often carries the title of "lady of the valley" or of "the double valley".

The rocky hills in the north area are divided in the middle of the El Kab district, and you can meet successively two massifs having resisted all the forces of erosion. Most of the information from this era comes from the site of El Kab, nestled between the eastern bank of the Nile and the Red Sea Hills.

The temple is the most distant monument from the main surrounding wall of El Kab, since it is at a distance of about 3. The tomb belonged to Sobeknakht, a Governor of El Kab, an important provincial capital during the latter part of the 17th Dynasty, about 1575-1550BC.

El Kab was the birthplace of the nobles of the Middle Empire who retook Egypt from the Hyksos invasion. (2507' N 3248'E) Important settlement and cemetery site in Upper Egypt with remains of all periods.

Journey to El Kab:

The camps at El Kab were most likely occupied only during spring and summer. El Kab, whose necropolis houses some important rock-tombs of the provincial governors of El-Kab in the New Kingdom, and shows the early history of the 18th Dynasty and the reunification of Egypt. This complex is home to the tombs of Ahmose, son of Ibana, an admiral in the wars of liberation against the Hyksos, and Sobeknakht II, who saved the Theban 16th or 17th Dynasty from destruction by Kushite forces.