Elephantine

Elephantine is the capital city of Upper Khemit and is located north of the first cataract of the Stygian River. It was also the royal capital during the 26th and 27th Dynasties, and again during the 36th Dynasty when pharaohs of Nubiar ancestry had the throne.
The city is built partly on a wide island in the Stygian and partly on the eastern bank of the river. The name of the city is thought to refer to a group of large gray stones on the island, which from a distance look vaguely like a herd of elephants. Legend says they were such creatures at one time, but they were too costly to feed so the great sorcerer who owned them turned them to stone until he had need of them again.
While various deities are honored with temples on the mainland, the island has one major temple to the god Khnemu, deity of creation and invention. Near his temple stands a clever ancient invention: a stygometer used to measure the height of the river at flood season. It is a stone corridor into which the river can flow; stone steps go down to low-water level with each calculated step numbered with both Khemitian and Hyperborean numbers. Elephantine also has a large university. While it gives the usual teaching in subjects helpful to Khemitian civil servants, its faculty includes instructors from the former area of Nubara, Meroë, and other parts of central Libynos. This means its philosophies and methods can be very different than universities in Thybos and northern areas of the country.

Settlement

Elephantine, Metropolis of

Ruler

High Administrator Intef Bakenamon

Government

bureaucracy

Population

162,368 (mostly Khemitite)

Type

Metropolis

Owning Organization

Khemit