Has wonderful gardens and is a good place to spend some leisure time wandering through the Nubian village where the people are friendly and the houses are often very colorful. The houses often have paintings or carved with a crocodile at the bottom, a fish in the middle and a man on top, with a woman's hand made of brass as a door knocker between the fish and man. Elephantine is Greek for elephant.

The town has also been referenced as Kom, after it's principle god of the island, Khnum (Khnemu). It is believed that the island received it's name because it was a major ivory trading centre, though in fact it was a major trading post of many commodities.

There are large boulders in the river near the island which resembled bathing elephants, and this too has been suggested as a reason for the island's name.

The island is very beautiful, and there is a considerable amount to see. One of the main attractions is a Nilometer which was used to measure the water level of the Nile as late as the nineteenth century. There has been an ongoing excavation at the town for many years by the German Archaeological Institute and some of the finds along with many other island artefact, including a mummified ram of Khnum, are located in the Elephantine Museum.
Another major attraction is the ruins of the Temple of Khnum. Elephantine Island was considered to be home of this important Egyptian god, and while this structure dates back to the Queen Hatshepsut of the 18th Dynasty, there are references to a Temple of Khnum on the island as early as the 3rd Dynasty. There are also ruins of a Temple of Satet, who was Khnum's female counterpart (the three local deities were foremost Khnum, but also Satet and a local Nubian goddess Anqet. These gods were worshipped here since the earliest dynasties), also build by Queen Hatshepsut, a shrine to Hekayib from the 6th Dynasty, a local governor who was deified after his death. His cult flourished during the middle kingdom, and some fine statues from the shrine are now in the museum. You will also find a 3rd Dynasty granite step pyramid which is now just visible, and to the north, the mud-brick vaults of the late period which housed the bodies of the royal rams. On the south end of the island is a small one room Ptolemaic temple which was constructed from materials removed from the Kalabsha Temple

The Philae island is at a distance of 3 km. at the south of Aswan Dam, and it comprises a group of religious temples and buildings of various eras; they are: Nkhtenbo Temple, west Arches, East Arches Arsniofis Temple, Emhotop Temple, Isis Great Temple, Churches, Hathor Temple, and Keshk Tragan or Bed of pharaoh. After the set up of the High Dam, the water overswept the island, and because of the significance of its temples, UNESCO in cooperation with Egypt rescued the temple and moved them to a next island called "Egilco"; which is a rock island at a height of 30 metres above the sea level. The project began in 1973 and ended in 1980 and the tourists can enjoy the show of the Sound and Light program with different languages supported.