Al-Bahnasā

Bahnasa stands west of the Nile in Middle Egypt, on the site of ancient Oxyrhynchus. The Greek name referred to a sharp-nosed fish honoured in a local Egyptian cult; the earlier Egyptian name was Per-Medjed. The city flourished under Greek and Roman rule, and its dry surroundings preserved an extraordinary quantity of documents written on papyrus, from literary works to the records of everyday life.

After the Arab conquest, the town became known as al-Bahnasa. It remained a centre of the region and was remembered in Islamic accounts of the Arab conquest of Egypt. The old city had been home to Christian churches and monastic communities, while the later settlement continued among the cultivated lands fed by the Nile's western waterways.