Reinscribing the Urban Landscape: The ‘Citadel' of Hermes
Although the corpus of toponyms referring to pagan cult places at Hermopolis is rather limited in comparison with the wider range of theophoric place names known from other sites, one of the toponyms encountered most frequently in the Hermopolite documentation from all periods refers directly to the centrepiece of the city's pagan monumental landscape - the Late Period temple complex of Thoth-Hermes.
The toponym in question is το Φρούριον, the phrourion, or ‘Citadel' of Hermopolis. Although the name suggests a purpose-built military installation, the Hermopolite Citadel is to be identified with the massive Late Period temenos wall of the Thoth temple, an architectural feature that dominated the northern half of the city and gave its name to the amphoda of East Citadel and West Citadel.42 This usage is paralleled by the application of the same term to the enclosure wall of the Ramesside temple of Medinet Habu (Jeme) during the Ptolemaic period; so, for example, the property being ceded in P.Berl.Dem. II 3104 (103 bc) is said to be located ‘[in] the interior of the wall [of Jeme]' (‘(n) p> hn p> sbt [Dm>]’), whereas in the Greek subscription to that document (UPZ II 182.3) the same property is described as ‘inside the citadel’ (‘έντ[ο]ς του φρουρίου’).43 At Hermopolis, the word ‘citadel’ was being used to refer to the Thoth temple’s enclosure wall by at least the late Ptolemaic period; BGU III 1002.6-7 (55 bc) concerns the sale of property described as ‘inside the Citadel of the Great Hermaion’ (‘έντος φρουρίου μεγάλου Ερμαίου’), and P.Lond. III 1168 RII.5 (first century ad) deals with real estate located ‘inside the Citadel in Hermopolis’ (‘έ[ντ]ος του έν'Ερμουπόλει φρουρ[ί]ου’). As noted above, the designation of the eastern and western halves of the Citadel as amphoda is first attested in the documentation from the middle of the first century ad, and this usage persisted through the late antique period.44Interestingly, BGU III 1002 is the only known text from the Greco-Roman period that explicitly associates the Citadel with the god Thoth-Hermes, whose temple the wall was originally built to enclose. In that document, ‘the Citadel of the Great Hermaion’ is qualified by the additional description, ‘now the Citadel of the King’ (‘νυν! φρουρίου βασιλέως’). It is not clear what this apparent act of renaming reveals about the Ptolemaic interpretation of the temenos wall and the area that it enclosed. Alston’s suggestion that the epithet ‘of the king’ may signify ‘some restoration work or a dedication within the complex’ carried out by the ruler at the time (Ptolemy XII) is possible but difficult to substantiate.45 The Thoth temple seems to have been in use at least until the late fourth century ad, so the phrase ‘now the Citadel of the King’ cannot necessarily be taken as an indication that the sacred precinct was being desacralized already in the mid-first century bc.46 On the other hand, the fact that the text concerns the sale of property within the temple temenos does suggest that at least part of the area had by that point been turned over to secular use. Certainly by the middle of the first century ad, the Citadel was recognized not only as the site of the Thoth temple, but also as a residential quarter, and by the mid-second century ad, property in - and individuals from - the amphoda of East Citadel and West Citadel appear in everything from inheritance settlements to epikrisis-reports. These later attestations of the Citadel are shorn of references to its former titular deity, and by the time it appears in the late antique papyri, there seems to be little memory preserved of the Citadel's connection to the temple it was originally built to enclose. As in the case of the dromos of Hermes, discussed above, as the function of the Citadel shifted over time from sacred precinct to residential quarter, the toponymy applied to the area changed as well, from ‘Citadel of the Great Hermaion' to ‘Citadel of the King' to simply ‘Citadel'. Ultimately, the precinct was wholly desacralized; Bailey notes that part of the enclosure wall was cut down already in the second century ad to allow for new construction on the north side of Antinoe Street, and rubbish deposits began to collect in the eastern part of temple enclosure by the end of the fourth century, with rapid infilling of the sacred precinct taking place during the fifth and sixth centuries.47