Tebtunis

Tebtunis was a city and later town in Lower Egypt. It was located in what is now the village of Tell Umm el-Baragat in the Faiyum Governorate. The town was known in Latin as Theodosiopolis (from Koinē Greek: Θεοδοσιούπολις Theodosioúpolis). In Coptic, it became Toutōn (Arabic Tuṯun). The present village of Tuṯun is located about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) south of Umm el-Baragat.[1]

Temple of Sobek in Tebtunis, el-Fayyum, Egypt

Tebtunis was founded in approximately 1800 BCE by the Twelfth Dynasty king Amenemhat III. The town flourished during the Ptolemaic Kingdom and is famous for the many papyri in Demotic and Greek found there. These papyri give information about how people in Tebtunis lived from day to day. For example, one papyrus was found that gave 'minutes' of a meeting of a group of priests. On this papyrus were the names of the priests, what the meeting was about, and a date – indicating that it was written during the Ptolemaic period. In Tebtunis there were many Greek and Roman buildings. It was a rich town and was a very important regional center during the Ptolemaic period.

Among the Tebtunis papyri are preserved many Egyptian astronomical and astrological texts, including several copies of what now is called the Book of Nut,[2] which originally was entitled, "The Fundamentals of the Course of the Stars", and it explicates the concept of sunrise as mythological rebirth.[3]

In the Middle Ages, Toutōn was a major centre of Coptic manuscript copying. At least thirteen existing manuscripts were copied there between AD 861 and 940.[1]