South Temple
From Nero's reign.
Roland Unger — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Roland Unger — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Roland Unger — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Roland Unger — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Einsamer Schütze — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Einsamer Schütze — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Einsamer Schütze — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Einsamer Schütze — CC BY-SA 4.0
The ruins of a Ptolemaic and Roman farming town at the north-eastern edge of the Fayoum depression, founded in the third century BC under Ptolemy II; it flourished when the emperor Augustus had the irrigation canals repaired and stayed inhabited until about the seventh century AD. The town spreads over about sixty hectares, and you wander among its mud-brick houses, streets, granaries and a public bath, and two large limestone temples, the better known being the South Temple, dedicated to two crocodile-linked gods and dating from the reign of Nero. Major excavations began in 1924 under a University of Michigan mission, which found thousands of papyri and everyday objects that reveal the life of rural Egyptians under Rome; some are shown in the small Kom Aushim Museum at the site entrance. A foreign visitor pays about a hundred and fifty Egyptian pounds for the site and about a hundred for the museum according to the ministry list; the site opens from eight to five and the museum until three. It lies on the Cairo road, so it makes a good first or last stop on a Fayoum trip.
From Nero's reign.
Roman rural life.
Finds from the site.
Kom Aushim, on the Cairo-Fayoum road at the northern entrance to Fayoum
Yes for history lovers: it is one of Egypt's clearest examples of a Roman country town, and it sits right on the road, so no detour is needed.