Damanhur and surroundings
Counting almost 200 thousand. Damanhur residents are the capital of the province of Al-Buhrajn, which stretches over the Turat al-Mahmudiyya canal, between the western arm of the Nile and the Western Desert (Libyan). Few tourists visit them.
In antiquity it was the center of the cult of Horus of Behdet and the city of Behdet, also called Time-en-Hor ("City of Horus"), where does the name today come from. In Roman times they were known as Hermopolis Parva – then it served as the capital 15. nomu dolnoegipskiego. There are no ancient ruins in the city.
A great attraction is the mulid in late October and November in honor of Sheikh Abu Rish, when the turban-clad dervishes perform the zikr and munshid rites. The festivities start one week after the Disuk festival. For another festival, associated with the 19th-century Jewish mystic Abu Chaceira (Father of the Dead), Few Egyptian Jews come to Damanhur.
Between Damanhur and Tanta Naukratis
About 23 km from Damanhuru, near the main route, a small road leads to the village of al-Niqrash with the remains of Naukratis (in Egyptian Nikraj), the first Greek city in the time of the pharaohs. Today the hill is called Kom Gi'eif. Before the founding of Alexandria, the center was the most important point of contact between Pharaoh Egypt and the Greek world.
A city on the canopic arm of the Nile, only 16 km od Sais, capital city for the XXVI Dynasty, founded by the colonists of Miletus. Pharaoh Amazis (570-526 p.n.e.) he gathered almost all the Greeks from the territory, which he ruled and gave them the privilege of trading with Egypt. Herodotus in the 5th century. p.n.e. he described them as inhabited by Greek merchants. Naukratis was settled in the mid-7th century. p.n.e.; it played an important role in the region during the Sait and Persian periods. When Alexandria was founded, most of the Greeks moved to the new Ptolemaic capital.
At the southern end of the site, the remains of three temples dedicated to the Dioscors were found, Apollinowi i Herze, built in the Greek style (early. VI w. p.n.e.). Discovered, among others. Ionic columns from the Temple of Apollo. Hellenium stood in the east, and to the south, a small temple of Aphrodite. Houses from the Ptolemaic period rose in the center. The most important monument of Naukratis is the stele of Nektanebo I. (XXX dynastia) discovered in 1899 r. (now at the Cairo History Museum) with a royal decree, ordering the transfer of the temple of Neit in Sais to some taxes.