Kom Ombo and Nile

Following images along the Nile we arrived in Kom Ombo, another magnificent archaeological site along the Nile river.
When the boat stopped by the light was still too strong, but not bad at all. I loved use the wide angle over there taking photos and losing myself behind columns or bas-reliefs.
As you can see in the photos the crocodile was held in especial honor by the people of Kom Ombo; and in the adjacent catacombs are occasionally found mummies of crocodiles and other sacred animal.

Decimus Junius Juvenalis, in his 15th satire, has given a lively description of a fight, of which he was an eye-witness, between the Kom Ombo people and the inhabitants of Tentyra, who were hunters of the crocodile.
On this occasion the men of Kom Ombo had the worst of it; and one of their numbers, having stumbled in his flight, was caught and eaten by the Tentyrites.
The satirist, however, has represented Kom Ombo as nearer to Tentyra than it actually is, these towns, in fact, being nearly 100 miles from each other. The Roman coins of Kom Ombo exhibit the crocodile and the effigy of the crocodile-headed god Sobek.
In antiquity the city was in the Thebaid, the capital of the Kom Ombo, upon the east bank of the Nile.

Ombos was a garrison town under every dynasty of Egypt, Pharaonic, Macedonian, and Roman, and was celebrated for the magnificence of its temples. Kom Ombo was the first city below Syene at which any remarkable remains of antiquity occur.
The Nile, indeed, at this portion of its course, was ill-suited to a dense population in antiquity. It runs between steep and narrow banks of sandstone, and deposits but little of its fertilizing slime upon shores.

There are two temples at Kom Ombo, constructed of the stone obtained from the neighboring quarries of Hadjar-selseleh.
The more magnificent of two stands upon the top of a sandy hill, and appears to have been a species of Pantheon, since, according to extant inscriptions, it was dedicated to Apollo and the other, the smaller temple to the northwest, was sacred to Isis.

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