Kom Ombo



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.
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