Old Kingdom of Egypt
The site goes back to the Early Dynastic Period or the Old Kingdom of Egypt. The precise founding date of Herakleopolis is not known, but an entry on the Palermo Stone reporting king Den's visit to the sacred lake of Heryshef at Nenj-neswt, suggests that the town had already been founded by the 1st Dynasty. The site was called "nn-nswt" in Demotic which was pronounced "ǝhnes" in Coptic, Heracleopolis (Magna) during the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire and Ihnasiyya in Egyptian Arabic.