Canopus, Egypt

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This article is about the ancient Egyptian seaport. For other uses, see Canopus.

Canopus (also: Canobus) was an Ancient Egyptian coastal town, located in the Nile Delta. Its site is in the eastern outskirts of modern-day Alexandria, around 25 kilometres from the centre of that city.

Canopus stood on the western bank at the mouth of the westernmost branch of the River Nile – known as the Canopic or Heracleotic branch. It was the principal port in Egypt for Greek trade before the foundation of Alexandria. Early Egyptological excavations some 2 or 3 km from the area known today as Abu Qir have revealed extensive traces of the city with its quays, and granite monuments with the name of Ramesses II, but they may have been brought in for the adornment of the place at a later date.

The exact date of the foundation of Canopus is unknown, but Herodotus refers to it as an ancient port. Homeric myth claims that it was founded by Menelaus, and named after Canopus, the pilot of his ship, who died there after being bitten by a serpent. Homer describes how Menelaus built a monument to his memory on the shore, around which the town later grew up.

In the 9th regnal year of Ptolemy III Euergetes (239 BC) a great assembly of priests at Canopus passed an honorific decree (the "Decree of Canopus") that, inter alia, conferred various new titles on the king and his consort, Berenice. Two examples of this decree are known, inscribed in hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek, and they were second only to the more famous Rosetta Stone in providing the key to decyphering the ancient Egyptian language.

A temple to Osiris was built by Ptolemy Euergetes, but, according to Herodotus, very near to Canopus was an older shrine, a temple of Heracles that served as an asylum for fugitive slaves (the Decree shows that Heracles here stands for Amun). Osiris was worshipped at Canopus under a peculiar form: that of a vase with a human head. Through an old misunderstanding, the name "canopic jars" was applied by early Egyptologists to the vases with human and animal heads in which the internal organs were placed by the Egyptians after embalming.

In Roman times, the town was notorious for its dissoluteness. Juvenal, in his Satire VI, referred to the "debauchery" that prevailed there.

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