Antinoopolis

Antinous, a young Bithynian in Hadrian's entourage, drowned in the Nile in 130 AD, and the emperor responded by founding a Greek city on the east bank at the spot and by having Antinous declared a god, with a cult that spread widely across the empire. The city was laid out on a grid with colonnaded streets, a theatre, a hippodrome and temples, and it functioned into the Islamic period. Nineteenth-century travellers described substantial standing remains, and then a sugar factory and lime burners took the stone, so what is left is a large field of foundations, brick, column drums and cemeteries under and around the modern village of Sheikh Ibada. Italian excavations continue, and the site has produced large numbers of late antique textiles and portrait panels.

History

Long before Hadrian, the site was the town of Hir-we, where in the New Kingdom Ramesses II built a great temple to the gods of Khmun and Heliopolis. The emperor founded Antinoöpolis there in AD 130 as the cult centre of the deified Antinoüs, at the foot of the hill of the village of Besa, named after the god and oracle Bes, and joined it to the Red Sea port of Berenice by the Via Hadriana; the modern village on the site is Sheikh Ibada (Wikipedia, Antinoöpolis).

Highlights

• The street grid - the outline of a planned Roman Greek city.
• Column drums and foundations - what the lime burners left.
• Late antique cemeteries - the burial grounds that produced textiles and portraits.
• The riverbank setting - the stretch of Nile where Antinous drowned.

When to go

October to April. Two hours. Mornings are best. The site is genuinely obscure and receives almost no visitors; local guidance is needed to find the main areas.

Things to know

Very little stands and nineteenth-century engravings show far more than survives, which makes the visit an exercise in imagination. The modern village overlies much of it. Access to excavation areas is restricted. There is no signage and no facilities.

Nearby

Hermopolis and Tuna el-Gebel are across the river; Tell el-Amarna is south.

Key facts