Tebtunis

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Temple of Sobek in Tebtunis, el-Fayyum, Egypt UmmBurigatSobekTemple2.jpg
Temple of Sobek in Tebtunis, el-Fayyum, Egypt

Tebtunis was a city and later town in Lower Egypt. The settlement was founded in approximately 1800 BCE by the Twelfth Dynasty king Amenemhat III. It was located in what is now the village of Tell Umm el-Baragat in the Faiyum Governorate. In Tebtunis there were many Greek and Roman buildings. It was a rich town and was a very important regional center during the Ptolemaic period.

Contents

It is possible that Tebtunis was identical with a town called Theodosiopolis (from Koinē Greek : ΘεοδοσιούπολιςTheodosioúpolis), which is only attested since late antiquity. [1]

In Coptic, it became Toutōn (Arabic Tuṯun). In the Middle Ages, Toutōn was a major centre of Coptic manuscript copying. At least thirteen existing manuscripts were copied there between AD 861 and 940. [2] The present village of Tuṯun is located about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) south of Umm el-Baragat. [2]

The Tebtunis Papyri

Tebtunis flourished during the Ptolemaic Kingdom and is famous for the many papyri in Demotic and Greek found there. These papyri give information about how people in Tebtunis lived from day to day. For example, one papyrus was found that gave 'minutes' of a meeting of a group of priests. On this papyrus were the names of the priests, what the meeting was about, and a date – indicating that it was written during the Ptolemaic period.

On the basis of documentary papyri, it is possible to gain interesting insights into the life of the priests of local main god, Soknebtunis. For instance, a key text for understanding a major land reform in Egypt at the beginning of Roman rule stems from Tebtunis: The priests of the Soknebtunis temple negotiated with the prefect of Egypt in 24-22 BC that part of the temple's land holdings would be converted into state land. In return, the priests and their descendants were to receive the privilege of leasing a specific portion of this former temple land. These issues were outlined in a petition from 71/72 AD, which the priests of Soknebtunis addressed to the prefect because they were in dispute with a local official over the taxation of these plots. [3] Another group of papyri reveales that in the 120s AD the acting prophet of the Soknebtunis temple (qua office the leader of the rites of the temple) held simultaneously the prophecy of a Sobek sanctuary in the Middle Egyptian town Akoris - a good 100 km away from Tebtunis. [4]

Among the Tebtunis papyri are also preserved many Egyptian astronomical and astrological texts, including several copies of what now is called the Book of Nut , [5] which originally was entitled, "The Fundamentals of the Course of the Stars", and it explicates the concept of sunrise as mythological rebirth. [6]

Local Mythology: Cronus alias Geb

A distinctive feature of the local mythology in Greco-Roman times was the equation of the Greek god Cronus with the Egyptian god Geb, which was expressed on the one hand in the local iconography of the gods, in which Geb was depicted as a man with attributes of Cronus or Cronus with attributes of Geb. [7] On the other hand, the priests of the local main temple identified themselves in Egyptian texts as priests of "Soknebtunis-Geb", but in Greek texts as priests of "Soknebtunis-Cronus". Accordingly, Egyptian names formed with the name of the god Geb were just as popular among local villagers as Greek names derived from Cronus, especially the name "Kronion. [8]

Manuscripts

Papyri

Parchments

Related Research Articles

Sobek was an ancient Egyptian deity with a complex and fluid nature. He is associated with the Nile crocodile or the West African crocodile and is represented either in its form or as a human with a crocodile head. Sobek was also associated with pharaonic power, fertility, and military prowess, but served additionally as a protective deity with apotropaic qualities, invoked particularly for protection against the dangers presented by the Nile.

Taweret Ancient Egyptian goddess

In Ancient Egyptian religion, Taweret is the protective ancient Egyptian goddess of childbirth and fertility. The name "Taweret" (Tȝ-wrt) means "she who is great" or simply "great one", a common pacificatory address to dangerous deities. The deity is typically depicted as a bipedal female hippopotamus with feline attributes, pendulous female human breasts, the limbs and paws of a lion, and the back and tail of a Nile crocodile. She commonly bears the epithets "Lady of Heaven", "Mistress of the Horizon", "She Who Removes Water", "Mistress of Pure Water", and "Lady of the Birth House".

Hawara Village in Faiyum Governorate, Egypt

Hawara is an archaeological site of Ancient Egypt, south of the site of Crocodilopolis at the entrance to the depression of the Fayyum oasis. It is the site of a pyramid built by the Pharaoh Amenemhat III in the 19th century BC.

Faiyum Place in Egypt

Faiyum is a city in Middle Egypt. Located 100 kilometres southwest of Cairo, in the Faiyum Oasis, it is the capital of the modern Faiyum Governorate. Originally called Shedet in Egyptian, the Greeks called it Koinē Greek: Κροκοδειλόπολις, romanized: Krokodilópolis, and later Byzantine Greek: Ἀρσινόη, romanized: Arsinoë. It is one of Egypt's oldest cities due to its strategic location.

Akoris, Egypt Place in Minya, Egypt

Akoris ; Egyptian: Mer-nefer(et), Per-Imen-mat-khent(j), or Dehenet is the Greek name for the modern Egyptian village of Ṭihnā al-Ǧabal, located about 12 km north of Al Minya. The ancient site is situated in the southeast of the modern village.

Oxyrhynchus City in Ptolemaic/Roman Egypt

Oxyrhynchus is a city in Middle Egypt located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo in Minya Governorate. It is also an archaeological site, considered one of the most important ever discovered. Since the late 19th century, the area around Oxyrhynchus has been excavated almost continually, yielding an enormous collection of papyrus texts dating from the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Roman Egypt. Among the texts discovered at Oxyrhynchus are plays of Menander, fragments from the Gospel of Thomas, and fragments from Euclid's Elements. They also include a few vellum manuscripts, and more recent Arabic manuscripts on paper.

Karanis Archaeological site in the Egyptian depression of el-Faiyum

Karanis, located in what is now Kom Oshim, was an agricultural town in the Ptolemaic Kingdom, located in the northeast corner of the Faiyum.

The Tebtunis Papyri Archive of Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley is the largest collection of texts on papyrus in the Americas. The phrase Tebtunis archive (uncapitalized) may also be used for the papyri from family archives found at Tebtunis.

Faiyum Oasis

The Faiyum Oasis is a depression or basin in the desert immediately to the west of the Nile south of Cairo in Egypt. The extent of the basin area is estimated at between 1,270 km2 (490 mi2) and 1700 km2 (656 mi2). The basin floor comprises fields watered by a channel of the Nile, the Bahr Yussef, as it drains into a desert hollow to the west of the Nile Valley. The Bahr Yussef veers west through a narrow neck of land north of Ihnasya, between the archaeological sites of El Lahun and Gurob near Hawara; it then branches out, providing rich agricultural land in the Faiyum basin, draining into the large saltwater Lake Moeris. The lake was freshwater in prehistory but is today a saltwater lake. It is a source for tilapia and other fish for the local area.

Medinet Madi

Medinet Madi is a site in the southwestern Faiyum region of Egypt with the remains of a Greco-Roman town where a temple of the cobra-goddess Renenutet was founded during the reigns of Amenemhat III and Amenemhat IV. It was later expanded and embellished during the Greco-Roman period. In the Middle Kingdom the town was called Dja, in the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods it was called Narmuthis.

Cronus Ruler of the Titans in Ancient Greek mythology

In Greek mythology, Cronus, Cronos, or Kronos was the leader and youngest of the first generation of Titans, the divine descendants of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth. He overthrew his father and ruled during the mythological Golden Age, until he was overthrown by his own son Zeus and imprisoned in Tartarus. According to Plato, however, the deities Phorcys, Cronus, and Rhea were the eldest children of Oceanus and Tethys.

Geb Ancient Egyptian god of the Earth

Geb was the Egyptian god of the earth and a mythological member of the Ennead of Heliopolis. he could also be considered a father of snakes. It was believed in ancient Egypt that Geb's laughter created earthquakes and that he allowed crops to grow.

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1 is a papyrus fragment of the logia of Jesus written in Greek. It was among the first of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri discovered by Grenfell and Hunt. It was discovered on the second day of excavation, 12 January 1897, in the garbage mounds in the Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus. The fragment is dated to the early half of the 3rd century. Grenfell and Hunt originally dated the fragment between 150-300, but "probably not written much later than the year 200." It was later discovered to be the oldest manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas.

Neferkasokar

Neferkasokar was an Ancient Egyptian king (pharaoh) who may have ruled in Egypt during the 2nd Dynasty. Very little is known about him, since no contemporary records about him have been found. Rather his name has been found in later sources.

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 655

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 655 is a papyrus fragment of the logia of Jesus written in Greek. It is one of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri discovered by Grenfell and Hunt between 1897 and 1904 in the Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus. The fragment is dated to the early 3rd century. It is one of only three Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of Thomas.

The Book of the Faiyum is an ancient Egyptian "local monograph" celebrating the Faiyum region of Egypt and its patron deity, the crocodile god Sobek. It has also been classified generically as a "cult topographical priestly manual." The text is known from multiple sources dating to Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. It primarily functioned as a mythologized map of the Faiyum.

The Book of Nut is a collection of ancient Egyptian astronomical texts, also covering various mythological subjects. These texts focus on the cycles of the stars of the decans, the movements of the moon, the sun, and the planets, on the sundials, and related matters.

Dominic William Rathbone is professor of ancient history at King's College London. He is a specialist in Greek and Roman Egypt, particularly as recorded on papyri, and is president of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.

Ptolemaic cult of Alexander the Great

The Ptolemaic cult of Alexander the Great was an imperial cult in ancient Egypt in the Hellenistic period, promoted by the Ptolemaic dynasty. The core of the cult was the worship of the deified conqueror-king Alexander the Great, which eventually formed the basis for the ruler cult of the Ptolemies themselves. The head priest of the cult was the chief priest in the Ptolemaic Kingdom, and years were dated after the incumbents.

Soknopaiou Nesos

Soknopaiou Nesos was an ancient settlement in the Faiyum Oasis (Egypt), located a few kilometers north of Lake Qarun.

References

  1. ↑ Hickey, Todd M. (2007). Lippert, Sandra; Schentuleit, Maren (eds.). Down and Out in Late Antique Tebtunis?. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. pp. 136–138. ISBN   978-3-447-05782-0.
  2. 1 2 René-Georges Coquin, "Tuṯun", The Coptic Encyclopedia (Macmillan, 1991), 7: 2283a–2283b.
  3. ↑ Monson, Andrew (2012). From the Ptolemies to the Romans. Political and Economic Change in Roman Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. pp. 136–141. ISBN   978-1-107-01441-1.
  4. ↑ Wegner, Wolfgang. "Ein bislang unerkannter Beleg für eine Personalunion der Prophetenstellen der Tempel von Tebtynis und Akoris". Studi di Egittologia e di Papirologia: rivista internazionale. 8: 113–118.
  5. ↑ König, Jason; Oikonomopoulou, Katerina; Woolf, Greg (2013). Ancient Libraries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 30. ISBN   9781107012561.
  6. ↑ Alexandra von Lieven, Translating the Fundamentals of the Course of the Stars. in Annette Imhausen, Tanja Pommerening, eds, Writings of Early Scholars in the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Rome, and Greece: Translating Ancient Scientific Texts. Volume 286 of Beiträge zur Altertumskunde. Walter de Gruyter, 2010 ISBN   3110229935
  7. ↑ Rondot, Vincent (2013). Derniers visages des dieux dʼÉgypte. Iconographies, panthéons et cultes dans le Fayoum hellénisé des IIe–IIIe siècles de notre ère. Paris: Presses de lʼuniversité Paris-Sorbonne; Éditions du Louvre. pp. 75–80, 122–127, 241–246.
  8. ↑ Sippel, Benjamin (2020). Gottesdiener und Kamelzüchter: Das Alltags- und Sozialleben der Sobek-Priester im kaiserzeitlichen Fayum. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. pp. 73–78. ISBN   978-3-447-11485-1.

Further reading

Coordinates: 29°07′N30°45′E / 29.117°N 30.750°E / 29.117; 30.750

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