Temple of Kom-Ombo,
Aswan, Egypt -
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Kom Ombo is an agricultural town in Egypt famous for the
Temple of Kom Ombo. It was originally an
Egyptian city called
Nubt, meaning
City of Gold (not to be confused with the city north of
Naqada that was also called Nubt/
Ombos). It became a
Greek settlement during the Greco-Roman
Period.
The town's location on the
Nile 50 km north of
Aswan (
Syene) gave it some control over trade routes from
Nubia to the
Nile Valley, but its main rise to prominence came with the erection of the temple in the
2nd century BC.
History Temple of Kom Ombo
In antiquity the city was in the Thebaid, the capital of the
Nomos Ombites, upon the east bank of the Nile; latitude 24° 6′north. Ombos was a garrison town under every dynasty of Egypt,
Pharaonic,
Macedonian, and
Roman, and was celebrated for the magnificence of its temples and its hereditary feud with the people of
Tentyra. are, however, of the Ptolemaic age, with the exception of a doorway of sandstone, built into a wall of brick. This was part of a temple built by
Tuthmosis III in honor of the crocodile-headed god Sobek. The monarch is represented on tress, the door-jambs, holding the measuring reed and chisel, the emblems of construction, and in the act of dedicating the temple. The Ptolemaic portions of the larger temple present an exception to an almost universal rule in
Egyptian architecture. It has no propylon or dromos in front of it, and the portico has an uneven number of columns, in all fifteen, arranged in a triple row. Of these columns thirteen are still erect. As there are two principal entrances, the temple would seem to be two united in one, strengthening the supposition that it was the
Pantheon of the Ombite nome. On a cornice above the doorway of one of the adyta is a
Greek inscription, recording the erection, or perhaps the restoration of the sekos by
Ptolemy VI Philometor and his sister-wife
Cleopatra II, 180-145 BC. The hill on which the Ombite temples stand has been considerably excavated at its base by the river, which here strongly inclines to the
Arabian bank
The crocodile was held in especial honor by the people of Ombos; and in the adjacent catacombs are occasionally found mummies of the sacred animal.
Juvenal, in his 15th satire, has given a lively description of a fight, of which he was an eye-witness, between the Ombitae and the inhabitants of Tentyra, who were hunters of the crocodile. On this occasion the men of Ombos had the worst of it; and one of their number, having stumbled in his flight, was caught and eaten by the Tentyrites. The satirist, however, has represented Ombos as nearer to Tentyra than it actually is, these towns, in fact, being nearly
100 miles from each other. The
Roman coins of the Ombite nome exhibit the crocodile and the effigy of the crocodile-headed god Sobek.
In Kom Ombo there is a rare engraved image of what is thought to be the first representation of medical instruments for performing surgery, including scalpels, curettes, forceps, dilator, scissors and medicine bottles dating from the days of
Roman Egypt.
Medical instruments image at the Temple of Kom Ombo, showing also prescriptions and two goddesses sitting on birthing chairs.
At this site there is another Nilometer used to measure the level of the river waters. On the opposite side of the Nile was a suburb of Ombos, called Contra-Ombos.
A painting from the ceiling of the temple at Kom Ombo
The city was a bishopric before the
Muslim conquest, and under the name
Ombi is included in the
Catholic Church's list of titular sees.
Karol Wojtyła (the future
Pope John Paul II) was titular bishop of Ombi from
1958 until
1963, when he was appointed
Archbishop of Kraków.
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- published: 07 Apr 2014
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