Rule in ancient Egypt was always a top-down affair. Absolute power lay absolutely in the hands of the divine Pharaohs seen as gods on earth. The demise of the New Kingdom with its assortment of Ramses (I and II during the Nineteenth Dynasty and III through IX with the Twentieth) eventually led to foreign invasions bringing in foreigners to rule the Land of the Two Kingdoms. Most successful were the Greeks in the form of one of the favorite generals of Alexander, Ptolemy I.  They would rule Egypt for 300 years before the Romans would take their own turn. Here, on the east bank of the Nile, about fifteen miles downstream from Aswan in southern Egypt, at the town of Kom Ombo, a temple exists in good, restored condition showing off a bit of how the Greeks were able to successfully pull off leadership of the country for three centuries.

RELIGION AND POWER

Egyptian and Greek religions both based themselves on polytheistic programs. Attempts to bring in Greek gods quickly discovered by the Ptolemies as a no go. Taping into the Egyptian belief in divine leadership, the Ptolemies successfully substituted themselves, by association with Alexander to provide Egypt with a new line of divinely ordered set of pharaohs to unify the country.

Most successfully, the Ptolemies replaced local pharaohs as divine gods on earth scrupulously observing Egypt’s native gods and, importantly, like any good pharaoh, they established a new set of temple buildings from Philae at the First Cataract all the way north to the Delta and the new capital of Alexandria. One of those new temples, the double temple at Kom Ombo established atop an older New Kingdom temple atop a sandy hill overlooking the Nile.

Egypt ran afoul of its own failure to provide leadership which led to a loss of maat or stable order for the country. Other former foreign foes – seen normally being “smitten” by the ancient pharaohs – Libyans, Nubians – even stepped in to establish their own dynastical leadership in the form of the Twenty-Fifth and Twenty-Sixth Dynasties. Civil wars, weak leadership left Egypt open for foreign invasion which came in the form first of Assyrian invasion, then Persian and finally Macedonian. With the death of Alexander in 323 BC, power in Egypt fell to one of his important generals, Ptolemy. The one thing Egyptians desired most in life was maat and that is what the Greeks brought.

PTOLEMAIC REFLECTIONS

The Ptolemaic Dynasty – here we have Ptolemy I through XV with a few Cleopatras thrown in – used the old power described best by Karl Marx, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Or Karl’s successor, Leon Trotsky, “The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.” And that “end” for the Greeks, as well as most Egyptians, simply the continuation of maat in the place of isfet, chaos. The “means” used was religion.

The originator of the Ptolemaic temple here at Kom Ombo rested with Ptolemy VI Philometor with construction running between 180 to 145 BC. Egypt under Ptolemy IV and V had been riven by civil war. Ptolemy rule squeezed revenue and taxation in as many means as they could. Ptolemaic Egypt became the wealthiest of all of the successor states of Alexander. But while the Ptolemies tried to post themselves as divine authority, their benevolence did not gain universal understanding. The economic policies, while good for the Ptolemies definitely did not go over well with the general population.

EARLY PTOLEMAIC PROBLEMS

After winning a decisive battle at Raphia – today’s Rafah in the Gaza Strip – over the army of the Seleucids on 22 June 217 BC, a victory securing the province of Coele-Syria in large part because of his well equipped and trained phalanx. Phalanxes made up the heart of all of the successor armies. On the Seleucid side, about 20,000 Macedonians served while on the Ptolemaic side, 25,000 Macedonians fought alongside another 20,000 Egyptians who had trained to fight as phalangites. By training the Egyptians, Ptolemy solved a manpower problem he previously suffered.

But be careful of what you wish for. With confidence gained in battle, Egyptians rebelled and civil war raged throughout the Ptolemaic lands. Unrest in Lower Egypt spread to the south centered in Thebes where the idea of rule from the north never seemed a popular idea. For twenty years the rebellion flared in both the north and the south. Ptolemy IV and later Ptolemy V slowly ground the rebels down, but the experience rattled the Ptolemaic mind severely. Ptolemy V and Ptolemy VI both came to power at the age of six. Regencies for both resembled soap operas with brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, priests, eunuchs and, of course, the odd general all roiled for power. Ptolemy VI died on another one of those never-ending battlefields with the Seleucids. Out of the succession came Ptolemy VIII.

A NEW TEMPLE

Ptolemy VI previously established the temple here at Koh Ombo – Ombos, the Ptolemaic administrative capital of Upper Egypt’s furthest northern province. The temple became dedicated to the twin gods Horwera (another aspect or version of Horus, the falcon-headed god) and Sobek (a local crocodile deity worshipped in the area. The two gods became associated with further deities from the creation myth. Horwerra equaled the god of light and air – Shu, while Sobek became associated with Geb, god of earth. New theology went hand-in-hand with the story of the creation of Osiris by Shu and Geb. The Ptolemies thought of themselves as kindred spirits of Dionysos who the Greeks, in general identified with Osiris. Thus, Ptolemaic divine births linked to creation, itself. This belief underscored Ptolemaic legitimacy in the eyes of Egyptians.

Those divine origins stand celebrated on wall after wall here at Kom Ombo with different mother goddesses and child gods converging on a single mother and child – Ptolemy VI and his mother. Ther are reportedly fifty inscriptions describing the myths, cultic rites and general nature of heaven and earth on the walls here.

EXPANSIONS ON A THEME

Ptolemy XII – Neos Dionysos (the New Dionysos) – hoped, at a time of dwindling Ptolemaic options, to insert himself into the dream of the Greek-speaking population that he was the second coming, “a new Dionysos on earth”. Keeping close in thought and heart to the local priesthoods of Egypt, he lavished monies his state was quickly running out of (the result of more wars with the Seleucids) on temples and one of those was here. Most of the temple decoration became finished with some of those monies. The inner and outer hypostyles halls come from his renovations.

Later, Cleopatra VII would have a relief carved showing her preforming offerings though she spent most of her energies on the nearby temple of Hathor at Tantyris – Dendera.

THE DOUBLE TEMPLE

Double temple because the temple dedicated itself to two gods (three gods if you include the mammisi with Ptolemy VII) and not just one. Courts, halls, sanctuaries became duplicated. The southern half of the temple dedicated to Sobek, the crocodile god, god of fertility (but also another form of Seth who was anything but a good god) and along with Hathor and Khonsu, one of the gods of creation. The north half fell to Haroeris – Horus the Elder – along with Tasenetnofret – the Good Sister, a form of Hathor – and Panebtawy – Lord of the Two Lands and son of Haroeris and Tasenetofret making up one of those important religious triads. A mammisi (birth house for the divine Ptolemy VII) stood outside the entrance to the forecourt on the left.

There was a previous temple to Sobek here at the Kom Ombo site built by 18th Dynasty pharaoh Thutmose III (1479–1425 B.C.) to honor Sobek, but that temple had largely gone away by the time Ptolemy embarked on his ambitious double-temple project.

INTO THE FORECOURT

As you pass into the forecourt, reliefs divide between the two gods with a double altar in the center of the court for both gods. Beyond lie shared inner and outer hypostyle halls with 10 columns. Inside the outer hypostyle hall on the left is a relief showing Ptolemy XII Neos Dionysos presented to Horwera by Isis and the lion-headed goddess Raettawy, with Thoth looking on. The walls to the right show the crowning of Ptolemy XII by Nekhbet (vulture-goddess representing Upper Egypt) and Wadjet (the snake-goddess representing Lower Egypt) with the dual crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, symbolizing the unification of Egypt.

Reliefs in the inner hypostyle hall of the temple her at Kom Ombo show Horwera presenting Ptolemy VIII Euergetes with a curved weapon, representing the sword of victory. Behind Ptolemy is his sister-wife and co-ruler Cleopatra II.

RELIEFS SHOW NEW PTOLEMAIC THEOLOGY

Next, three antechambers, each with double entrances, lead to the sanctuaries of Sobek and Horwera. The now-ruined chambers on either side were to store priests’ vestments and liturgical papyri. The walls of the sanctuaries are now one or two courses high, allowing you to see the secret passage enabling priests to give the gods a ‘voice’ to answer the petitions of pilgrims.

The outer passage running around the temple walls in the left-hand (northern) corner of the temple’s back wall presents a collection of ‘surgical instruments’. These accoutrements could have been used during the temple’s daily rituals, though the temple was certainly a place of healing, the nearest thing to an ancient hospital.

NEW GODS ARE BORN

Near the Ptolemaic gateway on the southeast corner of the complex is a small shrine to Hathor, while a small mammisi (birth house) standing in the southwest corner. The birth house was for Ptolemy VII, showing his birth as a god. Beyond this to the north you will find the deep well supplying the temple with water and serving to measure the level of the Nile River – a Nilometer. Close by lay a small pool in which crocodiles, Sobek’s sacred animal, grew.

Much of the temple has been destroyed by floods of the Nile, earthquakes, and later builders who used its stones for other projects. Some of the reliefs inside, defaced by Copts, who once used the temple as a church. All the Kom Ombo temple buildings in the southern part of the plateau became cleared of debris and restored by Jacques de Morgan in 1893.

FESTIVALS AND RIVALRIES

Kom Ombo-Ombos was infamous for its rivalry with the nearby city of Tantyris. People of Tantyris saw crocodiles as evil while for Ombos, Sobek was one of the main gods. The rivalry is best known from the writings of the Roman poet Juvenal in his Satires. In Satire XV, Juvenal describes a violent clash between Ombos and Tentyris, where the inhabitants of Tentyris attacked the Ombos people with sticks and stones. The attack so fierce with the Ombos’ defenders overwhelmed. The victors even consumed some of the remains of the fallen.

Juvenal’s account is both satirical and vivid, portraying the conflict as a matter of sacred pride and religious purity. This rivalry reflects the broader pattern of inter-village feuds in ancient Egypt, with religious identity and local pride often fueled hostility.

The Ombos–Tentyris conflict is notable because it was so intense that it became a literary trope, later referenced by other ancient writers like Strabo, who noted that Tentyris’ people avoided crocodiles while Ombos’ people revered them. “Tentyra, where the crocodile is held in peculiar abhorrence, and is regarded as the most odious of all animals. Other Egyptians, though acquainted with its mischievous disposition and hostility towards mankind, yet worship it and abstain from harming it. But the people of Tentyra track and destroy it in every way. … The people of Tentyra have a dislike to crocodiles, yet suffer no injury from them, but dive and cross the river when no other person ventures to do so.”

CROCODILE MUSEUM

The museum displays 22 mummified crocodiles of various sizes out of forty unearthed a couple of kilometers away at El-Shatb. The crocodiles lie arrayed on a sand hill inside a large glass showcase, allowing visitors to see how crocodiles lived their days in ancient Egypt.

A collection of crocodile coffins and wooden sarcophagi, along with crocodile fetuses and eggs, are also on display, in addition to stelae and statues depicting the crocodile-god Sobek, bearing a human body and the head of a crocodile. Replicas of Sobek’s original tombs and niches are also on display.

Egyptians believed the gods sent physical manifestations of themselves in the form of their totemic animals. At temples dedicated to Sobek – here and in the Fayum – live crocodiles recognizable by their markings, were thought to contain a spark of the god within. They were worshipped and cared for by priests during their lifetimes. After their death, the spirit transferred to another crocodile while the body of the dead would be mummified and ceremoniously buried in a special cemetery.

Crocodiles are linked mythologically to Isis and the dead body of Osiris killed by his brother Seth. The crocodiles protected the body of Osiris away from further harm to the banks of the Nile. Sobek thus became a divine protector of the pharaohs.

The crocodile museum becomes the third museum inaugurated in Egypt recently, after the Imhotep Museum at the Saqqara Necropolis and the Meneptah Museum on Luxor’s west bank.

VISITING

Most visitors come by way of river cruises. The boats tie up very close to the temple, only a short walk. If you are not on a cruise, there is a train station for Kom Ombo on the Cairo-Aswan line a few minutes away, as well. Ticket costs run at 450 Egyptian pounds with a visit to the Crocodile Museum sitting just below the temple on the north side included.

FURTHER

Toby Wilkinson’s The Nile, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt and The Last Dynasty are all great sources to start from. There is also Garry Shaw’s Egyptian Mythology; A Traveler’s Guide from Aswan to Alexandria.