Kom Ombo
| Kom Ombo in hieroglyphics | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nubet / Nubyt Nbyt The golden one |
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| Greek | Ὄμβοι Omboi | ||||||
| Coptic | Embo | ||||||
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Kom Ombo ( Arabic كوم أمبو, DMG Kūm Umbū ; Coptic ⲉⲙⲃⲱ Embo ) is an industrial city on the banks of the Nile in Upper Egypt , about 40 kilometers north of Aswan and 150 kilometers south of Luxor . The town, with over 75,000 inhabitants (calculation: 2010), is located, like many of the Upper Egyptian settlements, on the east side of the Nile.
The area around Kom Ombo is characterized by agriculture , which also contributed to the development of large sugar factories through the cultivation of sugar cane . Kom Ombo ( kom , actually hardly , Arabic for hill ) is known for the largest camel market in Egypt, 8 kilometers south in the village of Darau (Daraw) , and the ruins of the ancient Egyptian double temple right on the banks of the Nile.
Kom Ombo had different names in ancient times. First known under the ancient Egyptian form of the name Nbyt (pronounced “Nubet” or “Nubyt”), the place was called Omboi ( Greek Ὄμβοι) or Ombos (Ὀμβος) in Ptolemaic times . The name Ombi was derived from this in the Roman era . But the Latin ambo has also been handed down from this period, to which the subsequent Coptic form Embo referred.
location
 
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Location in Egypt |
Kom Ombo is located in the southern part of Egypt on the Nile, 55 kilometers north of Lake Nasser, in the middle of a fertile plain on both sides of the river, which has a north-south extension of about 25 kilometers and an east-west extension of up to 30 kilometers. It is artificially irrigated and used for agriculture on approximately 12,000 hectares by the waters of the Nile. This is followed by the Arabian Desert in the east and the Libyan Desert in the west .
The place belongs administratively to the Aswan Governorate (Aswan) . The Sudanese border in the south is around 270 kilometers away, and the Red Sea in the northeast is 200 kilometers away. Kom Ombo is connected to Aswan and Luxor along the Nile by a railway line that runs east of the main town. The center of the village is three kilometers northeast of a bend in the river Nile, which here turns five kilometers westwards downstream.
A road runs from Kom Ombo to the governorate capital Aswan, which leads south on the east bank of the Nile. The nearest airport, Aswan International, is also located there . The most important traffic artery for Kom Ombo, however, is the Nile, on which the river cruise ships, which are important for tourism, operate from Luxor to Aswan and freight traffic to Lower Egypt is handled. The landing stage for the cruise ships operating on the Nile is right next to the double temple, about 70 meters west of the temple complex.
history
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Kom Ombo, under the ancient Egyptian name of Nbyt, was part and capital of the fifth Upper Egyptian district of Netjerui . The place was first recorded under this name in the First Intermediate Period . Very few remains, such as a decorated burial chamber, come from the Middle Kingdom . In the Ptolemaic epoch of Egypt from 304 to 31 BC At that time the Omboi (also Ombos ) remained next to Elephantine the administrative center of the district. On the bank of the Nile, the double temple, which can still be visited south of the actual place today, was built, which served to worship the two deities Sobek, the crocodile god, and the falcon-headed Haroeris.
The ruins of the double temple of Kom Ombo were for a long time more than half covered by sand. They were only uncovered and restored in 1893 under Jacques de Morgan . In front of the temple there was a large mammisi ("birthplace") of Ptolemy VIII. Euergetes II until the 19th century . However, a flood of the Nile about two meters above the average destroyed most of the building including the western part of the surrounding wall.
In addition to tourism, the residents of Kom Ombo make their living from growing sugar cane and cotton . Despite its relatively high population, the place with its unpaved roads gives the impression of a large village rather than a city. Between 1963 and 1965, 60,000 Nubians were settled in 34 villages in the area, who had to leave their home on the Nile south of Aswan because of the rising waters of Lake Nasser after the construction of the Aswan High Dam . Overall, the number of new settlers amounts to over 100,000 people. Many newly built villages were given the names of the villages of origin that were submerged in Lake Nasser, such as Kalabsha , Amada and Abu Simbel .
The temple complexes are now almost completely exposed (as of early 2020) and can be visited. In addition to the temple buildings, a deep well and mummies of crocodiles were found. The latter can be seen in a small museum that opened in 2012.
A replica of a historic Nile ship made for the film Death on the Nile has moored on the bank of the Nile ; it can be visited.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: World Gazetteer - Egypt: The most important places with statistics on their population
- ^ A b Hans-Günter Semsek: Egypt. The classic Nile trip. DuMont-Reiseverlag, Ostfildern 2007, ISBN 3-7701-5841-5 , p. 183.
- ↑ Ὄμβοι / Ὀμβος (www.trismegistos.org)
- ↑ Farouk Gomaa: The Settlement of Egypt during the Middle Kingdom, I. Upper Egypt and the Fayyum. Reichert, Wiesbaden 1986, ISBN 3-88226-279-6 , pp. 29-39.
- ↑ Kom Ombo . On: aeggypturlaub.org ; last accessed on June 26, 2014.
- ↑ Kom Ombo (on www.chufu.de). Archived from the original on April 26, 2004 ; Retrieved July 6, 2012 .
- ↑ In the years 1829 and 1841 the maximum of the Nile flood in Elephantine reached a height of about 95 meters above sea level. In the 19th century, the average flood height of the Nile was at the level of the Old Kingdom .
- ^ Giovanna Magi: A trip on the Nile. The temples of Nubia, Esna · Edfu · Kom Ombo. Casa Editrice Bonechi, Florence 2008, ISBN 978-88-7009-246-2 , pp. 43-44.
- ↑ Kom Ombo Crocodile Museum , accessed May 28, 2020.
Coordinates: 24 ° 29 ' N , 32 ° 57' E