Kawm Umbū

▪ Egypt

also spelled  Kum Ombu, or Kôm Ombo,  

      town and valley of Upper Egypt, situated about 30 miles (48 km) north of the Aswān High Dam in Aswān muḥāfaẓah (governorate). The town, an agricultural marketplace and a sugarcane-processing and cotton-ginning centre, lies on the east bank of the Nile River between the main valley highway and the Cairo-Aswān Railway.

      Just to the east, the Nile gorge opens up into a valley up to 10 miles (16 km) wide and 20 miles (32 km) long from north to south. With the construction of the Aswān High Dam (1959–70) and the creation of Lake Nasser, more than 60,000 Nubian Egyptians were resettled from their flooded homes in villages and model towns around the valley on lands reclaimed from the desert. They now raise sugarcane and other cash crops irrigated by the dam to supplement their traditional wheat and corn (maize) subsistence farming. Historically the Nile River valley south of Kawm Umbū was populated largely by ethnic Nubians or mixed Egypto-Nubians.

      A short distance south-southwest of modern Kawm Umbū (Arabic: “Hill of Umbū”) lies ancient Ombos. It is known for its unique double temple of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, which is dedicated to Sebek (Suchos), the crocodile god, and to Horus, the falcon-headed god. Parts of the temple's pylon and court have been eroded away by the river. Ombos probably owed its foundation to the site's strategic location, commanding both the Nile River and the routes from Nubia northward to the Nile River valley. The ancient town was especially prosperous under the Hellenistic Ptolemaic dynasty (304–30 BC), when it was the capital of the separate nome (province) of Ombos. Pop. (1986) 52,506.

* * *