Akhmim

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Akhmim

Akhmim (Arabic اخميم) is a town of Upper Egypt, on the right bank of the Nile, 67 mi by river south of Asyut, and 4 mi above Suhaj, on the opposite side of the river where there is railway communication with Cairo and Aswan. It is the largest town on the east side of the Nile in Upper Egypt, having a population in 1907 of 23,795, of whom about a third were Copts. Akhmim has several mosques and two Coptic churches, maintains a weekly market, and manufactures cotton goods, notably the blue shirts and check shawls with silk fringes worn by the poorer classes of Egypt. Outside the walls are the scanty ruins of two ancient temples.

In the 13th century CE a very imposing temple still stood here. Akhmim was the Egyptian Apu, or Khen-min (in Coptic, Shmin) known to the Greeks as Chemmis or Panopolis, capital of the Chemmite nome of Upper Egypt. The ithyphallic Min (whom the Greeks identified with Pan) was worshipped here as "the strong Horus." Herodotus mentions the temple dedicated to Perseus and asserts that Chemmis was remarkable for the celebration of games in honor of that hero, after the manner of the Greeks, at which prizes were given; as a matter of fact some representations are known of Nubians and people of Punt (southern coastal Sudan and the Eritrean coast) clambering up poles before the god Min. Min was especially a god of the desert routes on the east of Egypt, and the trading tribes are likely to have gathered to his festivals for business and pleasure, at Coptos (which was really near to Neapolis, Qina) even more than at Akhmim. Herodotus perhaps confused Coptos with Chemmis. Strabo mentions linen-weaving as an ancient industry of Panopolis, and it is not altogether a coincidence that the cemetery of Akhmim is one of the chief sources of the beautiful textiles of Roman and Coptic age that are brought from Egypt.

Monasteries abounded in this neighborhood from a very early date; Shenouda (died 451) (Sinuthius), the fiery apostle and prophet of the Coptic Orthodox Church, was a monk of Atrepe (now Suhaj) and led the populace to the destruction of the pagan edifices. Some years earlier Nestorius, the ex-patriarch, had succumbed perhaps to his persecution and to old age in the neighborhood of Akhmim. Nonnus, the Greek poet, was born at Panopolis at the end of the 4th century.

Akhmim once had a reputation as being home of the greatest magicians in Egypt. A supernatural being that was said to dwell there, the Serpent of Akhmim, was supposedly regarded as an angel by Muslims and as an incarnation of the demon Asmodeus by Christians.

It is also a suggested hometown for the official of Tuthmosis IV and Amenhotep III, Yuya.