Hermopolis[1] (Ancient Greek: ἙρμούπολιςHermoúpolis "the City of Hermes", also Hermopolis Magna, Ἑρμοῦ πόλις μεγάληHermoû pólis megálẽ,[2]Ancient Egyptian: ḫmnwχaˈmaːnaw, Egyptological pronunciation: "Khemenu"; Coptic: ϢⲙⲟⲩⲛShmun, and thus Arabic: الأشمونين, romanized: al-Ashmunayn, lit. 'The Two Shmun') was a major city in antiquity, located near the boundary between Lower and Upper Egypt. Its name is derived from the Ogdoad, eight associated deities residing in Hermopolis.
Khemenu (Ḫmnw), the Egyptian language name of the city,[5] means "Eight-Town", after the Ogdoad, a group of eight "primordial" deities whose cult was situated there. The name survived as Coptic ϢⲙⲟⲩⲛShmun, from which the modern name el Ashmunein (Arabic: الأشمونين) is derived.[3]
InKoine Greek, the city was called "The City of Hermes" since the Greeks identified Hermes with Thoth, because the city was the main cult centre of Thoth, the Pharaonic god of magic, healing, and wisdom and the patron of scribes. Thoth was associated in the same way with the Phoenician deity Eshmun. Inscriptions at the temple call the god "The Lord of Eshmun".[6]
Objects from the tomb of Djehutynakht, a nomarch during the Middle Kingdom era of Egypt.
The city was the capital of the Hare nome (the fifteenth nomeofUpper Egypt) in the Heptanomis. Hermopolis stood on the borders of Upper and Lower Egypt, and, for many ages, the Thebaid or upper country extended much further to the north than in more recent periods. As the border town, Hermopolis was a place of great resort and opulence, ranking second to Thebes alone. A little to south of the city was the castle of Hermopolis, at which point rivercraft from the Thebaid paid tolls (Ἑρμοπολιτάνη φυλακή,[7] the Bahr YussefinArabic). The grottos of Beni Hasan, near Antinoöpolis on the opposite bank of the Nile, were the common cemeteries of the Hermopolitans because although the river divided the city from its necropolis, from the wide curve of the western hills at this point, it was easier to ferry the dead over the water than to transport them by land to the hills.
The principal Egyptian deities worshipped at Hermopolis were Typhon (Set) and Thoth. Typhon was represented by a hippopotamus, on which sat a hawk fighting with a serpent.[8] Thoth, whom the ancient Greeks associated with Hermes because they were both gods of magic and writing, was represented by the ibis.
The city was a titular diocese in the Roman Catholic Church,[9] and still is (?) in the Coptic Orthodox Church.
The diocese was nominally restored in the 18th century as Latin Titular bishopricofHermopolis Maior (Latin; 1925-1929 renamed Hermopolis Magna) / Ermopoli Maggiore (Curiate Italian)
Its territory was reassigned in 1849 to the Coptic Catholic Eparchy of Mina, as a restoration of Hermopolis (as its Latin title attests).
In 1949 the titular see was suppressed, having had the following incumbents, all of the fitting Episcopal (lowest) rank :
Luigi Antonio Valdina Cremona (1729.03.23 – death 1758.10.24) (Italian) no actual prelature recorded
Bishop-elect? Bernardo Maria Serio (1802.08.09 – death ?) as Auxiliary Bishop of Archdiocese of Palermo (Sicily, Italy) (1802.08.09 – ?)
Denis-Antoine-Luc de Frayssinous (French) (1822.04.19 – death 1841.12.12) no actual prelature recorded
Antoni Melchior Fijałkowski (1842.01.27 – 1856.09.18) as Apostolic AdministratorofArchdiocese of Warszawa (Warschau, Poland) (1844 – 1856.09.18); later succeeded as Metropolitan Archbishop of Warszawa (1856.09.18 – 1861.10.05)
Father Jan Ignacy Korytkowski (1888.04.27 – 1888.05.14) as Auxiliary bishop of Archdiocese of Gniezno (Gnesen, Poland) (1888.04.27 – 1888.05.14)
Raphael Valenza (1889.05.24 – death 1897.12.22) as Auxiliary Bishop of Archdiocese of Chieti (Italy) (1889.05.24 – 1897.12.22)
Robert Brindle (1899.01.29 – 1901.12.06) as Auxiliary Bishop of Archdiocese of Westminster (England, UK) (1899.01.29 – 1901.12.06); later Bishop of Nottingham (England) (1901.12.06 – 1915.06.01), emeritus as Titular Bishop of Tacapæ (1915.06.01 – death 1916.06.27)
John Jeremiah Lawler (1910.02.08 – 1916.01.29) as Auxiliary Bishop of Archdiocese of Saint Paul (USA) (1910.02.08 – 1916.01.29); later Bishop of Lead (1916.01.29 – 1930.08.01), Bishop of Rapid City (USA) (1930.08.01 – death 1948.03.11)
Giorgio Glosauer (1917.07.07 – death 1926.06.09) as Auxiliary Bishop of Archdiocese of Praha (Prague, Czech Republic) (1917.07.07 – 1926.06.09)
Francesco Fulgenzio Lazzati, O.F.M. (born Italy) (1931.07.14 – 1932.05.24) as Apostolic VicarofMogadishu (then Italian Somalia) (1931.07.14 – 1932.05.24).
Hermopolis comparatively escaped the frequent wars which, in the decline both of the Pharaonic and Roman eras, devastated the Heptanomis; but, on the other hand, its structures have undergone severe changes under its Muslim rulers, who have burned its stones for lime or carried them away for building materials.[10] A surviving Oxyrhynchus Papyrus of the 3rd century AD indicates that high-rise buildings with seven stories existed in the town.[11] The collection of Arabic papyri in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, contains many documents referring to Hermopolis (Ushmun); they date from the 2nd to 4th centuries AH.[12]
The Ibis-headed god Thoth was, with his accompanying emblems, the Ibis and the Cynocephalus monkey, the most conspicuous among the sculptures upon the great portico of the temple of Hermopolis. His designation in inscriptions was "The Lord of Eshmoon". This portico was a work of the Pharaonic era, but the erections of the Ptolemies at Hermopolis were on a scale of great extent and magnificence and, although raised by Greek monarchs, are essentially Egyptian in their conception and execution. The portico, the only remnant of the temple, consists of a double row of pillars, six in each row. The architraves are formed of five stones; each passes from the centre of one pillar to that of the next, according to a well-known usage with Egyptian builders. The intercolumnation of the centre pillars is wider than that of the others; and the stone over the centre is twenty-five feet and six inches long. These columns were painted yellow, red and blue in alternate bands. There is also a peculiarity in the pillars of the Hermopolitan portico peculiar to themselves, or at least discovered only again in the temple of Gournou. (Dénon, L'Egypte, plate 41.) Instead of being formed of large masses placed horizontally above each other, they are composed of irregular pieces, so artfully adjusted that it is difficult to detect the lines of junction. The bases of these columns represent the lower leaves of the lotus; next come a number of concentric rings, like the hoops of a cask; and above these the pillars appear like bunches of reeds held together by horizontal bonds. Including the capital, each column is about 40 feet high; the greatest circumference is about 281⁄2 feet, about five feet from the ground, for they diminish in thickness both towards the base and towards the capital. The widest part of the intercolumnation is 17 feet; the other pillars are 13 feet apart.
Currently there is a small open-air museum in which stand two massive statues of Thoth as a baboon worshipping the sun, and a few carved blocks of masonry.
^ abG. Mussies in: Matthieu Sybrand Huibert, Gerard Heerma van Voss (eds.), Studies in Egyptian Religion: Dedicated to Professor Jan Zandee (1982), p. 92.
Sayed Hemeda, Abdulrahman Fahmy, Abbas Moustafa, Mahmoud Abd El Hafez,The Early Basilica Church, El-Ashmonein Archaeological Site, Minia, Egypt: Geo-Environmental Analysis and Engineering Characterization of the Building Materials, Open Journal of Geology 09/03 (2019)
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Hermopolis Magna". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
