Bookshop field note

Obelisk Bookstore

A very small bookshop beside the Unfinished Obelisk in Aswan, occupying a corridor of wall between other shops and stocking Egyptian history, Nubian culture, travel, and illustrated books on pharaonic art, along with vintage photographs. The only location in the record outside the United States.

Where: Dr Abd Al Rady Hanafe', Sheyakhah Oula, Aswan, Aswan Governorate 1241771, Egypt
Neighbourhood: Sheyakhah Oula, Aswan
What it is: Bookstall

The quick read

Is it your kind of place?

Go if

you are visiting the Unfinished Obelisk or Philae Temple and want your souvenir to be a good one.

Go elsewhere if

you are looking for a destination bookshop, because this is a stop, and a very good one.

Read the full visit from 8 July 2026

The complete review, raw reviewer words and all twenty scores live there.

02 / Photographs

Inside the bookshop

Looking out from inside the shop, under the same OBELISK BOOKSTORE fascia. Racks of postcards and guidebooks stand either side of a central aisle, a spinner of American University in Cairo Press titles fills the right of the frame, and a customer in a blue shirt browses at the back. — Inside

A cream-painted display stand headed OBELISK BOOKSTORE ASWAN in red capitals, tiered with books on Egyptology and Egyptian history: Religion and the Invisible World, Ancient Egyptian Romances, The Moses from Akhenaten, Rediscovering Rural Egypt. — Staff picks

A wall of dark wooden pigeonholes from floor to ceiling, every compartment stacked and bundled with books and wrapped parcels. Small red cards mark the sections: EGYPTOLOGY, RELIGIOUS STUDIES, SPIRITUAL SCIENCE, ART & ARCHITECTURE. A customer in a white cap stands at the left reading, and tables of stock fill the foreground. — What makes it itself

Frames we do not have:

Somewhere to sit: We did not photograph a place to sit here, and we would rather leave the gap than show you somebody else's chairs.