Toponymy at Hermopolis: Districts and Streets
A brief overview of the toponyms attested in the Hermopolite documents reveals a corpus significantly smaller and less varied than that known from sites like Oxyrhynchus and Arsinoe.27 Throughout the Roman and late antique periods, the city was divided into four amphoda or districts: East City (άμφόδον Πόλεως Άπηλιώτου (e.g.
CPR V 8.8-9, ad 320)), West City (άμφόδον Πόλεως Λιβός (e.g. P. Lips. I 3.2, ad 256)), East Citadel (άμφόδον Φρουρίου Άπηλιώτου (e.g. CPR XXIV 10.12, ad 475)), and West Citadel (άμφόδον Φρουρίου Λιβός (e.g. BGU XII 2162.12, ad 491)).28 Unlike the district names known from Oxyrhynchus and Arsinoe, which suggest the organic development of neighbourhoods centred on temples, marketplaces and ethnic enclaves, but which typically indicate little or nothing about the physical location of those quarters within the city, the Hermopolite district names reflect the physical division of the city into two major areas, Citadel to the north and City to the south, each of which was further split into an eastern and a western sector. The very tidiness of this fourfold division suggests that it represents a bureaucratic imposition, perhaps introduced in the early Roman period (the earliest known examples of this usage date to the mid-late first century ad) and certainly in common use by the second century ad.29As other commentators have noted, with the city divided into only four districts, the resulting urban quarters must have been quite large; this suggests that an additional system of organization existed which allowed residents (and the municipal administration) to negotiate the city's complex topog- raphy.30 Various proposals have been made concerning possible subdivisions of the four principal amphoda; these include a Jewish Quarter (Ιουδ(αικης) λαύρα (P.Amh.
II 98.9, after ad 211))31 and districts named for the Blue and Green circus factions.32 On the other hand, the text of P.Oxy. XXXIV 2719 (third century ad), directions for the delivery of a letter, probably within the city of Hermopolis, suggests that even if such urban subdivisions did exist, individuals still relied heavily on physical landmarks for navigational purposes.33Although the evidence for subdivisions of the Hermopolite town-quarters remains limited, the documents do preserve a number of street names, which presumably aided in the effort of urban navigation. The city's main East-West artery, which ran along the southern edge of the Thoth temple's temenos wall and served as the physical boundary between the Citadel and City sectors, is known from the second century ad onward as Antinoe Street (Άντινοιτική πλατεία (e.g. SPP V 119 R I, Fr. 4, lines 12-13, ad 266/7)), probably in reference to the Hadrianic foundation of Antinoopolis across the river, towards which it was oriented.34 The original name of this colonnaded avenue - retained in later periods for its western sector only - may have been Serapis Street (Σαραπιακή πλατεία (P.Amh. II 98.3, second/third century ad)), perhaps so-called in reference to the temple of Serapis which lay to the west in the cemetery area of Tuna el-Gebel.35
Antinoe Street was bisected by the city's main North-South route, the processional way of the great Thoth temple complex, which separated the eastern and western halves of the Citadel and City districts. This thoroughfare was constructed during the Ptolemaic period, and the British excavators of the city centre postulate that the street originated in the southern part of the city and ran through the centre of the Late Period Thoth temple complex to the north gate of the temenos wall.36 At least by the late Ptolemaic period, the street was referred to as the Dromos of Hermes (δρόμος του Έρμου (e.g.
P.Ryl. II 68.7-8, 89 bc)). In some documents, this toponym might be further elaborated, as in the case of P.Amh. II 98.2 (late second/early third century ad), which deals with property ‘near the stone-paved Dromos of Hermes the thrice-great god' (‘προς [τω λιθ]οστρώτω δρ[όμωΈρμ]οΰ θεου τρισμ[εγιστου]'), and this description corresponds well with the archaeological evidence for the dromos, which includes limestone paving slabs.37 Unfortunately, it is difficult to know the later fate of this striking theophoric toponym. The latest attestation of the dromos of Hermes Trismegistos in the Greek papyri from Hermopolis dates to ad 269 (P.Flor. I 50.97), and the term does not, to my knowledge, appear at all in the Coptic sources. Spencer notes that, although a path following the general line of the dromos seems to have been maintained even after the closure of the Thoth temple, ‘the fine limestone pavement soon became hidden by dirt and fill once the sacred nature of the street had lapsed... the original street was fast becoming a dirt-track, and its route began to diverge from that of the former processional way to suit the changes in topography caused by the erection of new buildings’.38 Just as the limestone of the ‘stone-paved dromos' came to be obscured by generations of accumulated dirt and trash, the toponym itself disappears from the documentary record, and it is not clear how the late antique inhabitants of Hermopolis referred to the ‘dirt-track’ that had taken the place of their once- grand thoroughfare, or whether they still recognized it as the successor of the ancient processional route.Other Hermopolite street-names preserved in the documents seem to reflect the same consciousness of the city’s sacred landscapes and social/ professional groups as may be observed in the district-names known from Oxyrhynchus and Arsinoe.
Thus, in the attestations of the Dromos of Isis (δρόμος ’Ίσιδος (SB VIII 9870, col. II.12, second century ad)), Serapis Street (Σαραπιακη πλατεία (P.Amh. II 98.3, late second/early third century ad)), and the ‘so-called public street of Asklepios’ (‘[ρύμη δημοσία κα]λουμένη του Ασκληπιού’ (P.Vind.Sal. 12.3, ad 334)), we can see likely references to temples of Isis, Serapis and Asklepios. The ‘street of the women’s baths’ (‘ρύμη βαλανείου γυναικών’ (P.Brem. 23.4 = P.Flor. III 333.4, ad 116)) presumably led to (or passed by) that establishment, and the ‘so-called street of the basketweavers’ (‘ρύμη καλουμένη καλαθοπλόκων’ (P.Flor. I 47.7, ad 217)) suggests a craftsmen’s enclave, as does the ‘street of the weavers of Tarsian fabrics’ (‘ρύμη τών Ταρσικαρίων’ (P.Flor. I 13.9, sixth/seventh century ad)). The Street of the Archangel Gabriel (2PYMH ΠΧρχ(ΧΓΓβλΟθ) ΓΧΒρίΗλ (CPR IV 115.8, seventh century ad)) probably refers to a Christian church dedicated to that figure; similarly, P.Lond. III 1028 (seventh century ad) mentions streets (ρύμη) ‘of the great Saint Euphemia’ (‘τη(ς) άγί(ας) μεγά(λης) Εύφη[μίας]’, line 19) and ‘of Saint Menas’ (‘τού άγί(ου) Μηνά’, line 24), again likely in reference to religious establishments located on those streets.39The fact that most of the references to Hermopolite street names in the papyri are unique attestations makes it very difficult to trace diachronic changes in the local toponymy and to associate those changes with alterations in the city's urban fabric.
However, given the overall similarities between Hermopolite and Oxyrhynchite toponyms, it seems likely that, in the late antique and early Islamic periods, Hermopolite toponymy followed a similar trajectory to that documented for the city of Oxyrhynchus. In the material from Oxyrhynchus dating from the fifth to the eighth centuries, there seems to be a shift away from naming streets and districts after major religious or civic monuments and an increase in newly-coined place names based upon domestic ‘monuments' such as private homes. This pattern of naming is exemplified by, for example, the ‘Quarter of the House of John Ar - ' (‘άμφόδον της οικίας Ίωάννου Άρ[. ]. ου' (POxy. XVI 1889.15-16, ad 496)) and the ‘Quarter of the Alley-way of Aollus's Guesthouse' (‘άμφόδον ρυμίου του ξενοδοχείου Άόλλου' (P.Oxy. L 3600.12-13, ad 502)), and it may reflect a reorientation of the city's topography and toponymy away from the structures of the classical metropolis and towards a more personal experience of the urban landscape.40 At Hermopolis, the corpus of late antique toponyms is not extensive enough to trace such a transition in much detail, but a similar pattern seems to be reflected in the place names attested in Arabic papyri from the early Islamic period. Although these do show some streets and districts named for mosques and churches, we also find streets taking their names from anonymous ‘monuments', bath-houses and even private individuals.41