Abstract EN:

Our study concerns the first nome of Upper Egypt during the Ptolemaic and Roman Period. This frontier nome which represents the southern gate of Egypt since the highest antiquity, and the entrance of the Nile valley from the south, although its long and important history, does not achieve the place it deserves in the Egyptian civilisation context. We tried in the first part "The geographical study" to retrace the Nile course with all the monuments that have been erected around and also to delimitate the physical and geographical aspects of this first nome frontier. The northern frontier fixed at Gebel Silsileh since the Old Kingdom did not change. On the contrary, the southern one suffered from many modifications during the ptolemaic period: Takompso represented the further limit of Egypt; it changed only during the reign of Ptolemy VI, by his leader Boetos, when it became Premis (Qasr Ibrim). During the Roman period this frontier was sometimes represented by Takompso, other times by Premis, Philae or Syene that is why Strabo mentioned one cohorte there. In 295-297, Diocletian reorganised the military installations in this critical region and Philae became the official southern limit of Egypt. Constantin (306-337) achieved the reform of the defensive system. Few years later, Justinian, responsable of none of the military act in the region, ordered the shutting of Isis temple, ending so the cult of the most famous goddess in Egypt. With the help of our fourty one documents, extracted mostly from what the egyptological tradition called "geographical processions" or "geographical lists", we tried to set in order all what we disposed from recent evidences, and we learned several new facts among which we can mention tsyt, one of the different designations of Aswan during this period, was the religious name of the region although rarely used. We deduct then that this toponym acquired its mythological importance only in greco-roman period, this was probably the reason of the rarety of the archaeological sites known up till now. The temple of Domitian is one of the most significant examples: it was dedicated like the ptolemaic one lying on the same bank to Isis, the divine mother, the lady of Abaton and the sovereign of the Two Lands down to Hierasykaminos (Maharraqa), the ultimate point of the extraordinary development of the goddess cult which superseded the one of the local triad presided by Khnum and superseded also other famous deities in this period like Soukhos. Otherwise we noticed many changements in popular cult like the appearance of local form: for example Petensenis in Senis (Bigga), Petensetis in Setis (Sehel) and Patempamentes.