Philadelphia (Egypt)
 
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Philadelphia was an ancient city in the Fayum in Egypt . The ruins are now known as Kom el-Kharaba el-Qebir , Kom el-Hammam , Darb Girza , Kom Darb Gerza or er-Rubayyat and are located about 40 kilometers northeast of Madinat al-Fayyum .
The ruins of the city cover an area of approximately 1000 × 500 m. The place is a Ptolemaic foundation. It is unknown whether there was a predecessor site from the time of the Pharaohs . The city was the target of excavations several times around 1900, with the primary aim of finding papyri , while little attention was paid to the actual city and its architecture . There are also numerous portraits of mummies from the city's necropolis .
Old aerial photos and a sketchy plan by Ludwig Borchardt from 1924 show that the city was laid out with right-angled road crossings. In the south of the city there was an Egyptian-style temple.
Zenon of Kaunos lived in the village , the archive of which was found. The texts are an important source of Hellenistic economic history.
literature
- P. Davoli: L'archeologia urbana nel Fayyum di eta ellenistica e romana , Naples 1998, pp. 139-148.
- Terry G. Wilfong: Fayum, Graeco-Roman sites. In: Kathryn A. Bard (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Archeology of Ancient Egypt. Routledge, London 1999, ISBN 0-415-18589-0 , p. 311.
Web links
Coordinates: 29 ° 27 ′ 2 ″ N , 31 ° 5 ′ 3 ″ E