City

Pernicide portum

Bender el-Kebir · Medinet el-Haras (Barrington)

Pernicide portum is the map's garbled form of the harbour of Berenice, a port on the Red Sea coast of Egypt near Medinet el-Haras. King Ptolemy the Second founded it and named it after his mother. Goods moved through it to and from India, and the Ptolemies used it as a base for hunting elephants. The Greek geographer Strabo describes a road with rest stations crossing the desert to it from Koptos on the Nile. Excavations show the harbour in use from the mid third century BC into the sixth century AD. Nearby, a legend on the map announces that dog-heads are born here, probably a kind of ape.

Fully based on scientific information from TP-Online (KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt). More on Wikipedia.

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