page_title: Soknopaiou Nesos
section_title: The temenos and the main temple
hierarchical_section_title: Soknopaiou Nesos / Description of the site / The temenos and the main temple
caption_attribution_description: English: Soknopaiou Nesos: the temenos walls from South East
context_page_description: Soknopaiou Nesos was an ancient settlement in the Faiyum Oasis, located a few kilometers north of Lake Qarun.
  The settlement - known nowadays as Dimeh es-Seba, possibly meaning «Dimeh of the lions» - was an important religious center with an imposing temple dedicated to the god Soknopaios, an oracular god in shape of a crocodile with falcon head, from which the toponym of the town itself derived.
  According to papyrological evidence Soknopaiou Nesos was founded in the 3rd century BCE, during the land reclamation project of the Faiyum carried out by the first Ptolemies, and was abandoned in mid 3rd century CE. The archaeological evidence instead, releases new data about a late reoccupation of the site, concentrated especially inside the area of the main temple of the town, during the 4th-5th centuries until the end of the Byzantine period.
context_section_description: The most important building is the main temple, located in the middle of the temenos, which hosted beside Soknopaios the synnaoi theoi, like Isis Nepherses and Soknopiais.
  The temple is formed by two, contiguous sanctuaries built on the same North-South axis, aligned with the dromos. The two buildings formed one temple in the Roman period and were connected by an open-air courtyard. The former, to the South, is pretty well preserved and is built with brown limestone irregular stones and mud bricks; it has been interpreted as the earliest temple built at the beginning of the Hellenistic period. The latter, to the North, was badly dismantled since the end of Byzantine period and is preserved for only 1.60 m in height. It is built in regular yellow limestone blocks and is thought to be a late Ptolemaic or early Roman addition and became the sanctuary for the worship of the gods, while the building to the South became a sort of propylon. The North temple was restored probably in the first half of the 2nd century CE. A monumental contra-temple was built against its rear wall during the 1st century CE and then remodeled in the 2nd century. A remarkable, stone architectural model of the contra-temple in scale 1:20 was found inside it.
  Within the temenos area are several mud-brick structures: priests’ houses, workshops, administrative buildings, small temples and chapels.
  Outside of the temenos, to the North, East and West of it, several buildings in mud brick and rough local stones are still visible.
caption: The temenos walls from South East
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