Road station

Telmi

bei Ezbet

Telmi is a puzzle: it may be Ptolemais Euergetis, the chief town of the Fayum. In pharaonic times the place was Crocodilopolis, the city of crocodiles, with a famous shrine of the crocodile god Sobek. Strabo knew it as Arsinoe, after the deified sister and wife of Ptolemy the Second, who also gave her name to the whole district. A Jewish community lived here, and a tax list from AD 72 or 73 names its members by age and sex. It should not be confused with the nearby harbour town of Ptolemais Hormou, which the map probably shows as well.

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