EGYPTIAN SITES - CAIRO

CAIRO
There seems to have been two or three separate Egyptian sites in the general area of modern Cairo. Cairo's urban expansion has swallowed up what litle remained of Heliopolis to the north (which wasnt much since like other sites it had been treated as a public stone quarry for centuries). A riverport town (the Nile's course was further east in ancient times) underlies modern Midan Rameses or Bab-el-Hadid. The old Coptic area of "Babylon", once a Roman fort, was originally probably a workers' camp or farming estate belonging to a temple possibly called *Per-hapi-en-on, which the Greek changed to Babylon. Why? Well before the Roman fort was built in late antiquity the area seems to have been an encampment in the Late period for mecenaries from Semitic countries. The Greeks never could resist punning on names and nationalities! The fort became a focus for a Coptic Christian town and a nearby Jewish settlement. After the Arab conquest the Core settelement further north called Fustat continually expanded (like the process in which villages outside London's walls became suburbs) becoming Al-Qatai then Al-Qahira, city of Victory - CAIRO.