Soknopaiou Nesos — Local services in Faiyum

Visited on 12 October 2022

Soknopaiou Nesos was an ancient Ptolemaic settlement which is known by Dimeh es-Seba today. Soknopaiou Nesos means The Island of Soknopaios. Soknopaios is the Greek name for the Egyptian God Sobek the crocodile God.

Unfortunately on the day we visited the site itself was off limits as there was an archaeological mission doing work there so we only got to walk around the perimeter but this was just as good as the imposing walls of the settlement are amazing. You can see the individual mud bricks that the walls are constructed with. Other sites which use the same materials can often be degraded so you are unable to see the exquisite detail.

The walls themselves are part of a temenos, a Greek word, meaning it is a piece of land cut off and assigned as an official domain. In this case it was for the priests as in the centre of the site is the remains of a temple. Leading up to that area is a dromos another Greek word meaning an entrance passage or avenue leading to a building.

The best part of our visit there was being able to access one of the submerged buildings in the sand and crawling inside with the roof being just above us and not knowing how much sand lay beneath us to the ground!

If you do walk around the area note all the shards of pottery that lay around the area. It almost feels wrong to be walking on them knowing they are the ancient homewares and vessels the population used to eat with and carry goods.

Allow at least one to two hours to completely walk around the site and take it in. Note there are no kiosks or toilets here so be prepared. Make sure you have plenty of water, good walking shoes and a hat as it was quite warm...

The height of the walls is unbelievable! It seems like there is a whole village that you can only see a glimpse of through the small part that is at the surface. We couldn’t go through the whole place, you can see ruins as far as your eyes can reach. The guide told us this was a town on the trade road. You can see remains of what seems like shops in the center. Also the remains of what seems to be a worship place, it had rectangular enclaves on both sides of the room and indicator of a display. A beautiful and unique place...

Dal 2003 la Missione Archeologica dell'Università del Salento (Lecce, Italia) conduce campagne di scavo annuali allo scopo di ricostruire attraverso le testimonianze papirologiche ed archeologiche la vita quotidiana di una cittadina di epoca greco-romana, l'antica Soknopaiou Nesos. Da settembre 2024, è stata realizzata una piccola sala di accoglienza turistica, al di fuori dell'area archeologica con pannelli esplicativi in inglese,...