The Temple of Kom-Ombo Location:
Kom Ombo, Egypt
How to get there:
From outside Egypt
International flights to Cairo, or via Cairo and Luxor to Aswan and Abu Simbel. Contact your travel agent for details.
By rail
Wagons-lits and other trains depart from Ramses Station. For air-conditioned express trains with a restaurant car, contact Wagons-Iits. Tel: +20-2-3492365.
Overland by bus or service taxi from the Ahmed Helmi terminal, near Ramses Station.
Tel: +20-2-3646658.
Cruises down the Nile, with accommodation en route, can be arranged through your travel agent.
Description
Located in the town of Kom-Ombo, about 28 miles north of Aswan, the Temple, dating to the Ptolemies, is built on a high dune overlooking the Nile. The actual temple was started by Ptolemy VI Philometor in the early second century BC. Ptolemy XIII built the outer and inner hypostyle halls. The outer enclosure wall and part of the court were built by Augustus sometime after 30 BC, and are mostly gone. There are also tombs from the Old Kingdom in the vicinity of Kom-Ombo village.
The Temple known as Kom Ombo is actually two temples consisting of a Temple to Sobek and a Temple of Haroeris. In ancient times, sacred crocodiles basked in the sun on the river bank near here. The Temple has scant remains, due first to the changing Nile, then the Copts who once used it as a church, and finally by builders who used the stones for new buildings.
Everything is duplicated along the main axis. There are two entrances, two courts, two colonades, two hypostyle halls and two sanctuaries. There were probably even two sets of priests. The left, or northern side is dedicated to Haroeris (sometimes called Harer, Horus the Elder) who was the falcon headed sky god and the right to Sobek (the corcodile headed god). The two gods are accompanied by their families. They include Haroeris' wife named Tesentnefert, meaning the good sister and his son, Panebtawy. Sobeck likewise is accompanied by his consort, Hathor and son, Khonsu.
Foundations are all that are left of the original Pylon. Beyond the Pylon, there was once a staircase in the court that lead to a roof terrace. The court has a columned portico and central altar. There is a scene of the King leaving his palace escorted by standards. Near the sanctuary is a purification scene. On either side of the door to the pronaos are columns inscribed with icons of the lotus (south) and papyrus (north), symbolizing the 'two lands' of Egypt.
In the southwest corner of the pronaos is the one column that does not echo the duality of the temples. Here, there are scenes depicting purification of the King, his coronation and his consecration of the Temple. The ceiling has astronomical images.
The hypostyle hall has papyrus capitals on the columns. Here, there is an inventory of the scared places of Egypt, the gods of the main towns and the local and national festivals.
In the anti chamber, there are scenes depicting the goddess Seshat launching the building of the temple, followed by a scene of the completed temple with the king throwing natron in a purification ceremony. The staircase leading to the roof is all that remains of the offering hall.
Statues to the gods and the builders of the temple once occupied the net room just before the sanctuaries. The ceiling of the pure place to the north still remains with an image of Nut. There is little left of the sanctuaries. Main article:
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]In antiquity the city was in the
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط], the capital of the
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط], upon the east bank of the Nile; latitude 24° 6′north. Ombos was a garrison town under every dynasty of Egypt, Pharaonic,
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط], and
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط], and was celebrated for the magnificence of its temples and its hereditary feud with the people of.
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] at the
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]Ombos was the first city below Syene at which any remarkable remains of antiquity occur. The Nile, indeed, at this portion of its course, was ill-suited to a dense population in antiquity. It runs between steep and narrow banks of sandstone, and deposits but little of its fertilizing slime upon the dreary and barren shores. There are two temples at Ombos, constructed of the stone obtained from the neighboring quarries of Hadjar-selseleh. The more magnificent of two stands upon the top of a sandy hill, and appears to have been a species of Pantheon, since, according to extant inscriptions, it was dedicated to
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] (
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]) and the other deities of the Ombite nome by the soldiers quartered there. The smaller temple to the northwest was sacred to
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]. Both, indeed, are of an imposing architecture, and still retain the brilliant colors with which their builders adorned them. They are, however, of the
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] age, with the exception of a doorway of sandstone, built into a wall of brick. This was part of a temple built by
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] in honor of the crocodile-headed god
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]. 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 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
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] and his sister-wife
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط], 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.
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] image at the Temple of Kom Ombo
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
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط], 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
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط], including
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط],
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط],
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط],
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط],
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] and medicine bottles dating from the days of the
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط].
At this site there is another
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] used to measure the level of the river waters. On the opposite side of the Nile was a suburb of Ombos, called Contra-Ombos.
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]A painting from the ceiling of the temple at Kom Ombo
The city was a
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] before the
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] conquest, and Ombos was a
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] of the
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط], Ombi; which has been vacant since 1966. Karol Wojtyła (the future
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]) was titular bishop of Ombi from 1958 until 1963, when he was appointed Archbishop of
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط].
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط][[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]] Current conditionsToday, irrigated
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] and
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] account for most of the agricultural industry
[[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]].
Most of the 60,000 villagers are native Egyptians although there is a large population of
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] who were displaced from their land upon the creation of
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط].
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