Buto ( grc, Βουτώ, ar, بوتو, ''Butu''), Bouto, Butus ( grc, links=no, Βοῦτος, ''Boutos'')
[ Herodotus ii. 59, 63, 155.] or Butosus was a city that the Ancient Egyptians called Per-Wadjet. It was located 95 km east of
Alexandria
Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...
in the
Nile Delta of
Egypt. What in classical times the Greeks called Buto, stood about midway between the Taly (
Bolbitine) and Thermuthiac (
Sebennytic
The Nile Delta ( ar, دلتا النيل, or simply , is the delta formed in Lower Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the world's largest river deltas—from Alexandria in the west to Po ...
) branches of the Nile, a few kilometers north of the east-west Butic River and on the southern shore of the Butic Lake ( el, Βουτικὴ λίμνη, ''Boutikē limnē'').
Today, it is called Tell El Fara'in ("Hill of the Pharaohs"), near the villages of Ibtu (or Abtu), Kom Butu, and the city of
Desouk
Desouk ( ar, دسوق, ) is a city in northern Egypt. Located 80 km east of Alexandria, in the Kafr El Sheikh Governorate and had a population of 137,660 inhabitants as of 2011. It is bordered to the west by the Beheira Governorate.
Desouk ...
( ar, دسوق).
History
Buto was a sacred site in dedication to the goddess
Wadjet
Wadjet (; egy, wꜢḏyt "Green One"), known to the Greek world as Uto (; grc-koi, Οὐτώ) or Buto (; ) among other renderings including Wedjat, Uadjet, and Udjo, was originally the ancient local goddess of the city of Dep. It became part ...
and was an important cultural site during
prehistoric Egypt, from the
Paleolithic to 3100 BC.
Buto-Maadi culture
Prehistoric Egypt and Predynastic Egypt span the period from the earliest human settlement to the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period around 3100 BC, starting with the first Pharaoh, Narmer for some Egyptologists, Hor-Aha for others, with th ...
was the most important
Lower Egyptian prehistoric culture, dating from 4000 - 3500, and contemporary with
Naqada
Naqada ( Egyptian Arabic: ; Coptic language: ; Ancient Greek: ) is a town on the west bank of the Nile in Qena Governorate, Egypt, situated ca. 20 km north of Luxor. It includes the villages of Tukh, Khatara, Danfiq, and Zawayda. Ac ...
I and II phases in
Upper Egypt. The culture was best known from the site
Maadi near Cairo,
[Maadi.](_blank)
University College London but was also attested in many other places in the Delta to the Faiyum region. This culture was marked by development in architecture and technology.
Archaeological evidence seems to show that Upper Egyptian Naqada culture replaced Buto-Maadi culture (also known as the ''Lower Egyptian Cultural Complex''), perhaps after a conquest. But, more recently, scholars have expressed reservations about this; they pointed out that, at the delta, there was a considerable transitional phase.
The unification of
Lower Egypt and
Upper Egypt into one entity is now considered to be a more complex process than previously thought.
Earliest texts
In the earliest records about the region, it contained two cities, Pe and Dep. Eventually, they merged into one city that the Ancient Egyptians named Per-Wadjet.
The goddess
Wadjet
Wadjet (; egy, wꜢḏyt "Green One"), known to the Greek world as Uto (; grc-koi, Οὐτώ) or Buto (; ) among other renderings including Wedjat, Uadjet, and Udjo, was originally the ancient local goddess of the city of Dep. It became part ...
was the patron deity of Lower Egypt and her
oracle was located in her renowned temple in this area. An annual festival was held there that celebrated Wadjet. The area also contained sanctuaries of
Horus and
Bast, and much later, the city became associated with
Isis.
At that time, many deities had parallel identities and roles, yet merged into a unified pantheon of deities due to the great similarities. That was not the case with patron deities, however. The patron deity of Lower Egypt,
Wadjet
Wadjet (; egy, wꜢḏyt "Green One"), known to the Greek world as Uto (; grc-koi, Οὐτώ) or Buto (; ) among other renderings including Wedjat, Uadjet, and Udjo, was originally the ancient local goddess of the city of Dep. It became part ...
, was represented as a
cobra. The patron deity of Upper Egypt,
Nekhbet
Nekhbet (; also spelt Nekhebit) is an early predynastic local goddess in Egyptian mythology, who was the patron of the city of Nekheb (her name meaning ''of Nekheb''). Ultimately, she became the patron of Upper Egypt and one of the two patron ...
, was represented as a
white vulture
The white-rumped vulture (''Gyps bengalensis'') is an Old World vulture native to South and Southeast Asia. It has been listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2000, as the population severely declined. White-rumped vultures d ...
. Their separate cultural statures were such important features that they never were merged when the two cultures unified into one, as were so many deities with similar roles or natures from religious beliefs of the two unified regions. The two goddesses became known euphemistically as the '
Two Ladies
In Ancient Egyptian texts, the "Two Ladies" ( egy, nbtj, sometimes anglicized ''Nebty'') was a religious epithet for the goddesses Wadjet and Nekhbet, two deities who were patrons of the ancient Egyptians and worshiped by all after the unificati ...
', who together, remained the patrons of unified Egypt throughout the remainder of its ancient history. The image of Nekhbet joined Wadjet on the
Uraeus that would encircle the crown of the kings who ruled Ancient Egypt thereafter.
Ptolemaic period
During foreign occupation of Egypt under the
Ptolemaic Kingdom, a dynasty that ruled from 305 to 30 BC, the classical Greeks coined the toponym ''Buto'' for the city. It served as the capital, or according to Herodian, merely the principal village of the Nile Delta. Herodotus styled it the
Chemmite nome,
Ptolemy knew it as the Phthenothite
nome (), and
Pliny the Elder as Ptenetha.
Greek historians recorded that Buto was celebrated for its monolithite temple and the oracle of the
goddess Wadjet (Buto), and that a yearly festival was held there in honour of the goddess. While writing about Egyptian culture, the classical Greeks attempted to associate the more ancient Egyptian deities with their own. They wrote about them as essentially the same deities, but with different names in the Greek culture. For Wadjet the parallel identification was made with the Greek
Leto or
Latona. They also noted that at Buto there was a sanctuary of
Horus (whom the
ancient Greeks
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...
associated with
Apollo
Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...
) and a sanctuary of
Bast (whom the Greeks associated with
Artemis
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Artemis (; grc-gre, Ἄρτεμις) is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children, and chastity. She was heavily identified with Sel ...
).
Writing during that Graeco-Roman period,
Plutarch reported that Isis had entrusted the baby Horus to "Leto" (Wadjet) to raise at Buto while Isis searched for the body of her murdered husband
Osiris. According to these same late sources, the
shrew
Shrews (family Soricidae) are small mole-like mammals classified in the order Eulipotyphla. True shrews are not to be confused with treeshrews, otter shrews, elephant shrews, West Indies shrews, or marsupial shrews, which belong to differen ...
(sometimes associated with Horus) was worshiped at Buto as well.
Archeological findings
A palace building dating to the Second Dynasty is considered one of the most important discoveries within Buto. Archaeological excavations were undertaken at Buto by the
Egypt Exploration Society
The Egypt Exploration Society (EES) is a British non-profit organization. The society was founded in 1882 by Amelia Edwards and Reginald Stuart Poole in order to examine and excavate in the areas of Egypt and Sudan. The intent was to study and an ...
from 1964–1969, under the direction of
Veronica Seton-Williams
Veronica Seton-Williams (20 April 1910 – 29 May 1992) FSA, was a British-Australian archaeologist who excavated in Egypt and the Near East, as well as in Britain. She studied history and political science at the University of Melbourne and t ...
and later, by
Dorothy Charlesworth. The German Archaeological Institute, Cairo has been excavating at Buto since the early 1980s. Six Greek bathhouses also were excavated by different missions in Buto.
In 2022, excavations over an area of 6.5m x 4.5m uncovered the remains of an ancient hall lined with pillars within the larger temple structure. The hall contained the remains of three surviving columns, aligned on a north-south axis at the southwestern end of the temple. A number of stone fragments decorated with engravings where found, as well as numerous ceramics and pottery associated with ritual activity.
[ In a press release issued by the ]Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
The Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities is the Egyptian government organization which serves to protect and preserve the heritage and ancient history of Egypt. In December 2019 it was merged into the Ministry of Tourism with Khaled al-Anani retai ...
, archaeologists also found a limestone painting with the representation of a bird’s head wearing a white crown surrounded by feathers.
See also
* List of ancient Egyptian towns and cities
* Diocese of Buto for ecclesiastical history and current titular sees
* Kafr El Sheikh Governorate
Kafr El Sheikh Governorate is one of the governorates of Egypt. It lies in the northern part of the country, along the western branch of the Nile in the Nile Delta. Its capital is the city of Kafr El Sheikh.
Kafr El Sheikh is the first nationwi ...
* Sais, Egypt
References
External links
*
*{{Commons category-inline
Ptolemaic colonies
Archaeological sites in Egypt
Ruins in Egypt
Former populated places in Egypt
Nile Delta
Tells (archaeology)
Desouk
Cities in ancient Egypt
Former capitals of Egypt
Egyptian mythology
Egyptology
Archaeological discoveries with year of discovery missing
Wadjet