Per Hapi

Per Hapi ( Per-hapi , house of the flooded Nile ) is the ancient Egyptian name of a place in Lower Egypt . The name was derived from the mythological notion that the Nilometer occupied there, as the Lower Egyptian source of the Nile, represented the counterpart of the Upper Egyptian city of Elephantine .

The Nilometer Per Hapi was located near Athar el-Nabi ( Cairo region ) and, alongside Elephantine and Tell el-Balamun, was the third Nile height measuring station in the Middle Kingdom . Sesostris I (around 1975 to 1965 BC) designed the "geographical model of the Nilometer" in order to obtain reliable information on all regions in ancient Egypt in connection with the Nile flood and the associated tax levies .

White chapel in the open air museum of Karnak .

Sesostris I had several details about this model inscribed on the base of the White Chapel . From a tax point of view, a flood of the Nile with an average height of 19 cubits (10 meters), two meters above the average lowest Nile level, was considered the minimum for tax purposes.

After the minimum tax mark had been reached, the Nile dams were torn down to supply the agricultural fields with Nile water. If the Nile remained below the minimum mark, the farmers would not receive a direct fresh water supply through the Nile.

literature

Rainer Hannig: Large Concise Dictionary Egyptian-German: (2800-950 BC) . von Zabern, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3-8053-1771-9 , p. 1143.
David Jeffreys: Helwan . In: Kathryn A. Bard: Encyclopedia of the archeology of Ancient Egypt . Routledge, London 1999, ISBN 0-415-18589-0 , p. 441.
Stephan Seidlmayer: The measurement of the Nile in ancient Egypt . Free University of Berlin 2004

30 31.2275Coordinates: 30 ° 0 ′ 0 ″ N , 31 ° 13 ′ 39 ″ E