Kom el-Hisn

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Coordinates: 31 ° 18 ′ 12 ″  N , 30 ° 5 ′ 0 ″  E

Map: Egypt
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Kom el-Hisn​
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Egypt

Kom el-Hisn ("ring wall, hill of the ring wall" in Arabic , also called Ymau or Imau in ancient times ) is an archaeological site today. In ancient Egypt , Kom el-Hisn was the capital of Imentet , one of the 20 sub-Egyptian districts . The goddess Hathor was worshiped in this district . On April 15, 1866, the canopic decree was rediscovered during excavations in this site by Richard Lepsius .

Kom el-Hisn is located near the western edge of the Nile Delta, halfway between Cairo and Alexandria and about ten kilometers west of Rosette . The site is now surrounded by cultivated land. In modern times, a village has been built over parts of the old town.

Several excavations have confirmed that this place was already settled during the Old Kingdom and there is evidence of extensive development. A group of statues of Amenemhet III comes from the Middle Kingdom . and the grave of Khesuwer. The place was also populated during the New Kingdom and also during the 26th Dynasty . There is a written reference to the place from this last period. The fact that the local temple paid its taxes is recorded on the Nitokris stele , among other things .

Kom el-Hisn was one of the places discovered during the construction of the Khafre pyramid around 2550 BC. Delivered food to the construction site. The inhabitants of Kom el-Hisn raised cattle for this, but ate little beef themselves. Only the bones of old suckler cows and sick calves were found in the archaeological sites. Most of the meat consumed by the villagers came from pigs . The ratio of found cattle bones to found pig bones is 1:25, that is, for each cattle bone found, 25 pig bones are found. It is now believed that pigs were herded in Kom El-Hisn and found forage in the marshes of the Nile Delta and the waste of the village. The fact that the village had to deliver cattle but was allowed to keep its pigs is due to the specific nature of this domestic animal. Cattle, as well as goats and sheep, could be driven over the distance to Giza , the place where the Khafre pyramid was built. They were able to find sufficient food on the way south in the arid region. Pigs, on the other hand, would have found neither food nor the shade they rely on on this route.

The historian Mark Essig sees the different meanings of different domestic animals in Kom el-Hisn as an example that stands for the entire Middle East. Pork was a food that was mostly eaten by the poor. Because the pig did not fit into the complex structure of food supply developed by bureaucrats in the various Egyptian dynasties, it became a food for the marginalized, and this in turn made this meat taboo for parts of the population. Vinegar sees this as the origin of the dietary laws of Judaism and Islam , both of which prohibit the consumption of pork.

literature

  • Mark Essig: Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig. Basic Books, New York 2015, ISBN 978-0-465-05274-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. Tape ? John Rylands Library , Manchester University Press, Manchester 1972, p. 498.
  2. ^ Anthony J. Cagle, The Spatial Structure of Kom el-Hisn: An Old Kingdom Town in the Western Nile Delta, Egypt. Dissertation, University of Washington, 2001.
  3. ↑ F. GOMAA: . The colonization of Egypt during the Middle Kingdom, II Lower Egypt and the adjacent areas , Wiesbaden 1987 ISBN 3-88226-280-X , pp 80-81
  4. ^ JH Breasted: Ancient records of Egypt: historical documents from the earliest times to the Persian conquest. Volume 4: The twentieth to the twenty-sixth dynasties. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1906, § 956.
  5. ↑ Mark Essig: Lesser Beasts . Chapter 2: The Pig is umpure. Ebook position 596.
  6. ↑ Mark Essig: Lesser Beasts . Chapter 2: The Pig is umpure. Ebook position 602.
  7. ↑ a b Mark Essig: Lesser Beasts . Chapter 2: The Pig is umpure. Ebook position 609.
  8. ↑ Mark Essig: Lesser Beasts . Chapter 2: The Pig is umpure. Ebook position 617.