Hermopolis Magna
The city of Hermopolis Magna (ancient Hmnw, Coptic ^MOYN, modern el-Ashmunein) was an administrative and religious centre of great antiquity and regional importance which saw extensive urban development under Ptolemaic and Roman rule.
Hermopolis has been the subject of systematic archaeological excavations since the early twentieth century, and this work has brought to light architectural remains from many different building phases in the city’s long history.17 This architectural material is paralleled by a substantial corpus of texts dating primarily to the Roman and late antique periods. Some of these documents were found in the course of scientific excavation, but many more were brought to light in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the activities of sebbakhin, diggers who despoiled numerous archaeological sites in order to extract the mineral-rich earth (sebakh) which results from the decomposition of organic material and crumbled mud brick.18 Although the documentary record for Hermopolis does not equal that of, for example, Oxyrhynchus, it is quite extensive and has the advantage of including a significant amount of material in Coptic, which allows for a more linguistically-balanced exploration of the city’s toponymy than is currently possible for most other sites.19 This confluence of late antique archaeological and documentary material from Hermopolis makes the city an excellent case study for evaluating the changing role(s) of temples and civic monuments within the mental and physical landscapes of late antique Egypt.Situated between the Nile and the Bahr Yusuf approximately 250 kilometres south of modern Cairo, Hermopolis is attested both as the principal cult site of the god Thoth and as the capital of the fifteenth Upper Egyptian nome as early as the Old Kingdom.20 The city retained its cultic and political significance for more than two millennia, and major renovations to the city centre were carried out several times during the course of that long period, including the wholesale reconstruction of the Thoth temple beginning in the Thirtieth Dynasty and the construction of a large, centrally-located cult complex during the early Ptolemaic period.21 The cult of Thoth, assimilated to the Greek god Hermes and worshipped in Hellenized circles as ‘Hermes Trismegistos’, continued to dominate the Hermopolite religious scene into the Roman period, and the Late-Period Thoth temple remained in use at least until the late fourth century ad, perhaps into the early fifth.22
Under Roman imperial rule, Hermopolis remained politically significant, serving as the metropolis of the Hermopolite nome until the reforms of Diocletian and his successors transformed Egypt's traditional administrative structure.23 During the first two centuries ad, the city centre was once again the site of major building activity, including the erection of a Tychaeion and a festival hall (komasterion) in the south-east quadrant of the city and a monumental tetrastylon at the intersection of the city's main thoroughfares.24 The result of this ongoing process of refurbishment was a cityscape which has been called one of the finest examples of the interaction of classical urban planning and architectural forms with the architecture and layout of a traditional Egyptian city. 25 Perhaps as early as the mid-third century ad, Hermopolis was the seat of a Christian bishop, and late antique alterations to the landscape include the construction of numerous churches, among them one of the largest basilicas known from any city in Egypt, built on the site of a major Ptolemaic cult complex.26 Excavations in and around the city centre have revealed the complexity of the city's changing topography in the late antique period and the strong stamp left by Christian institutions there; the discussion which follows will explore the ways in which this nearly-constant reinvention of the urban landscape made its mark on the city's toponymy as well.
A brief overview of Hermopolite toponyms will be followed by a consideration of the various reinterpretations of a major feature of the city's built environment, the Late Period enclosure wall of the Thoth temple, and the discussion will close with an examination of an intriguing group of toponyms which appear to commemorate the transformation of pagan temples into Christian places of worship.