Ombos was the first city below Syene at which the remarkable remains of antiquity occur. The Nile, in fact, this part of its course, was ill-suited to a dense population in antiquity. It
runs between the narrow and steep banks of sandstone, and deposits, but
some of its fertilization drooling over the sad and barren shores. There are two temples Ombos built of stone obtained from nearby quarries Hajar-Selseleh. The
most magnificent of two stands on the top of a sand hill and appears to
have been a kind of Pantheon, since, according to existing entries, it
was dedicated to Aroeres (Apollo) and other deities of the nome Ombite
by soldiers quartered there. The small temple northwest was sacred to Isis. Both, in fact, is an imposing architecture, while maintaining the bright colors with which their builders adorned them. They are, however, of the Ptolemaic age, except for a door of sandstone, integrated in a brick wall. This was part of a temple built by Tuthmosis III in honor of the crocodile-headed god Sobek. The
monarch is represented on the trees, door jambs, holding reed and
chisel extent, the emblems of the building and in the act to dedicate
the temple. The Ptolemaic parts of the larger temple are an exception to an almost universal rule in Egyptian architecture. He
did not propylon or dromos in front of him, and the portico has an odd
number of columns within fifteen arranged in a triple row. Of these thirteen columns are still standing. Since
there are two main entrances, the temple seems to be united in two,
strengthening the assumption that it was the Pantheon of the nome
Ombite. On
a ledge above the door of one of the shrines is a Greek inscription
recording the erection, or perhaps restore sekos by Ptolemy VI and his
sister-wife Cleopatra II, 180-145 av. The
hill on which stand the Ombite temples has been significantly widened
at its base by the river, which slopes sharply to the bank here in
Arabia.
Temple of Kom OmboIn ancient times, the city was in Thebes, the capital of the Nomos Ombites, on the east bank of the Nile; latitude 24 ° 6'north. Ombos was a garrison town in all the dynasties of Egypt, Pharaonic,
Macedonian and Roman, and was celebrated for the magnificence of its
temples and its hereditary fief with people Tentyra.Sobek at Kom Ombo Temple
Kom Ombo is the result of the unification of two adjacent
temples, each dedicated to a distinct divinity: the crocodile-headed
Sobek, god of fertility and creator of the world, and the ancient
falcon-headed Horus , the solar war god.
This was why the temple has two names “House of the Crocodile”
and “Castle of the Falcon”. An imaginary line divides the temple
longitudinally into two parts, each with its entrance, hypostyle halls,
chapels, etc. The right part of the temple was consecrated to Sobek, the
left to Haroeris, whose winged disk that protects from all evils is
depicted over all the entrance portals. This temple, too, was the work
of the Ptolemies who built it on the site of a much older and smaller
sanctuary of which little remains.