Road station

Hormucopto

Kuft (Miller) · Qift (Barrington)

Hormucopto seems to fuse two towns into one name: Coptos, at Qift, and Hormu, probably Hermonthis near Thebes. Coptos was the starting point of the trade routes across the desert to the Red Sea harbours, and Strabo, who calls it a trading town, notes that rest stations with wells on the road to Berenike spared travellers from carrying their own water. The map draws that road to Berenike, with stations and distances close to those of the Roman register of routes, but sets the town on the wrong side of the Nile, seemingly far out in the western desert.

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