Egyptian Monuments: Ansena

Ansena

History

During the New Kingdom, the city was the location of Ramesses II's great temple, dedicated to the gods of Khmun and Heliopolis. The city of Antinopolis exhibited the Graeco-Roman architecture of Trajan's age in immediate contrast with the Egyptian style. The city was the center of the official cult of Antinous. It first belonged to the Heptanomis, but under Diocletian (286 A.D.) Antinopolis became the capital of the nome of the Thebaid. As a cultural center, it was the native city of the fourth-century mathematician Serenus of Antinopolis. Antinopolis was still a "most illustrious' city in a surviving divorce decree of 569 A.D. The city was abandoned around the 10th century A.D. It continued to host a massive Greco-Roman temple until the 19th century, when it was destroyed.

Modern Village of Sheikh 'Ibada

There are ruins of a Roman town near the modern village of Sheikh ‘Ibada (Sheikh Abada), on the east bank of the Nile about 10km north-east of Mallawi. We are told that the town, named Antinopolis, was founded by the Emperor Hadrian in AD 130 in memory of his friend Antinous who was drowned in the Nile. By the time of the Roman era it had become fairly common for cults to be established for those who were drowned and the deceased were often deified. In the tragic legend attached to the town, Antinous was a handsome young servant boy, a favourite of Hadrian, who was drowned while touring Egypt with his master. The Emperor was said to have been so devastated that he commissioned hundreds of sculpted statues and busts portraying the handsome features of the boy (said to have been his lover) as well as founding the town in his name. Many of the busts of Antinous can be seen in European museums.

Almost nothing remains of Antinopolis now, but when it was visited by the Napoleonic Expedition in the late 18th century there were still extensive ruins of a Roman portico which was subsequently illustrated in ‘Description l’Egypte’. Napoleon’s savants recorded the existance of large parts of the city walls which enclosed columned streets, a monumental gate, two temples and a theatre. A hippodrome, presumably used for chariot races, lay further east in the desert. A large temple built during the Graeco-Roman period was destroyed during the 19th century.

There were earlier structures near this site which was on a caravan route connecting the Nile to the centres of commerce on the Red Sea. The largest remains of these monuments, to the west of the Roman town, is a temple decorated by Rameses II, dedicated to Thoth and the gods of el-Ashmunein (across the river) and the gods of Heliopolis. Parts of a columned courtyard, hypostyle hall and sanctuary still survive.

Antinopolis (Antinoöpolis) (Coptic Ansena, modern Sheikh 'Ibada) was a city founded at an older Egyptian village by the Roman emperor Hadrian to commemorate his deified young beloved, Antinous, on the east bank of the Nile, not far from the site in Upper Egypt where Antinous drowned in 130 A.D. Antinopolis was a little to the south of the Egyptian village of Besa (Βῆσσα), named after the goddess and oracle of Besa, which was consulted occasionally even as late as the age of Constantine I. Antinopolis was built at the foot of the hill upon which Besa was seated. The city is located nearly opposite of Hermopolis Magna.

Relevance to Christian History

The city of Antinopolis, known in Coptic as Ansena, has a particular relevance to the Christians of Egypt. Christian historians assert that the location of the city was blessed by the visit of the Holy Family while in Egypt. A well, known as The Well of the Cloud is said to have sprung from the ground when baby Jesus wanted to drink. The well is still found today, and it is the only fresh-water well in a region where all other wells produce salty water.

Ansena is also important in Egyptian Christian history, because was in front of the city's governors that hundreds of thousands of Christians were tortured and killed in the third and fourth centuries, in an attempt to contain the rapid spread of Christianity in Egypt. In fact, Christians were brought to the city from every place in the Roman Empire for the renowned brutality of its governors. Some of the Christian martyrs killed in Ansena include Saint Dasya and Saint Arianus.

In the reign of Valens (364-378 A.D.), Antinopolis became the seat of rival bishoprics, one Orthodox and one Arian.

Structure and Organization

The city of Antinopolis was governed by its own senate and prytaneus or president. The senate was chosen from the members of the wards (φυλαί), of which we learn the name of one – Ἀθηναί̈ς – from inscriptions (Orelli, No. 4705); and its decrees, as well as those of the prytaneus, were not, as usual, subject to the revision of the nomarch, but to that of the prefect (ἐπιστράτηγος) of the Thebaid. Divine honours were paid in the Antinoeion to Antinous as a local deity, and games and chariot-races were annually exhibited in commemoration of his death and of Hadrian's sorrow. (Dictionary of Antiquities, s. v. Ἀντινόεια.)

Archeological Finds

The earliest finds at the site date to the New Kingdom, when Bes and Hathor were important deities (ref. Princeton). A grotto, once inhabited by Christian anchorites, probably marks the seat of the shrine and oracle, and Grecian tombs with inscriptions point to the necropolis of Antinopolis. The ruins of Antinopolis attest, by the area which they fill, the ancient grandeur of the city. The direction of the principal streets may still be traced. One at least of them, which ran from north to south, had on either side of it a corridor supported by columns for the convenience of foot-passengers. The walls of the theatre near the southern gate, and those of the hippodrome without the walls to the east, are still extant. At the north-western extremity of the city was a portico, of which four columns remain, inscribed to Good Fortune, and bearing the date of the 14th and last year of the reign of Alexander Severus, 235.

As far as can be ascertained from the space covered with mounds of masonry, Antinopolis was about a mile and a half in length, and nearly half a mile broad. Near the Hippodrome are a well and tanks appertaining to an ancient road, which leads from the eastern gate to a valley behind the town, ascends the mountains, and, passing through the desert by the Wádee Tarfa, joins the roads to the quarries of the Mons Porphyrites. (Wilkinson, Topography of Thebes, p. 382.)

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Napoleonic surveys were made, a theater, many temples, a triumphal arch, two streets with double colonnades, illustrated in Description de l'Egypte, a circus, and a hippodrome nearby were still to be seen. Today there is little left: blocks of stone were rebuilt into the new sugar factories at El-Rodah (ref. Princeton). Some excavations wrere undertaken by the University of Rome, 1965-68. Papyri from the site were edited and translated by J. W. B. Barns and H. Zilliacus.

Wikipedia - Antinopolis (Ansena)

Egyptian Monuments - Sheikh 'Ibada

Antinopolis (Sheikh-'Ibada) Egypt by Richard Stillwell, ed. Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites

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