Sais (Ancient Greek: Σάϊς, Coptic: Ⲥⲁⲓ) was an ancient Egyptian city in the Western Nile Delta on the Canopic branch of the Nile, known by the ancient Egyptians as Sꜣw. It was the provincial capital of Sap-Meh, the fifth nome of Lower Egypt. It became the seat of power during the Twenty-fourth Dynasty of Egypt (c. 732–720 BC) and the Saite Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt (664–525 BC) during the Late Period. On its ruins today stands the town of Sa el-Hagar (Arabic: صا الحجر) or Sa El Hajar.
Location of Sais
Sais was an ancient Egyptian town in the Western Nile Delta on the Canopic branch of the Nile River. It served as the provincial capital of Sap-Meh, the fifth nome of Lower Egypt, and became a capital during the Twenty-fourth Dynasty (ca. 732–720 BC) and the Late Period. Herodotus claimed that Osiris was buried at Sais. Other Greek authors, including Plato, maintained a connection between Sais and the goddess Athena.
Neolithic period
A Neolithic settlement has been identified at Sais recently (1999), dating to 5000 BC. Agriculture appears here during this period and at another site, Merimde Beni Salama, located about 80km south of Sais.
The Neolithic period at Sais consists of three phases. Early Neolithic (Sais I) and Late Neolithic (Sais II) are the earliest phases. During the Early Neolithic, the site started as a fishing camp, but agriculturalists later settled it to cultivate the floodplain in the Middle to Late Neolithic Period.
The evolution of activity from fish processing to a settled hunting and agricultural phase may be connected to gradual changes in climatic conditions from 4600 BC onwards. It is believed that the Middle Holocene Moist phase started at that time.
Antiquity
Herodotus wrote that Sais is where the grave of Osiris was located and that the god’s sufferings were displayed as a mystery by night on an adjacent lake.
The city’s patron goddess was Neith, whose cult was attested as early as the First Dynasty of Egypt (c. 3100–3050 BC). The Greeks, such as Herodotus, Plato, and Diodorus Siculus, identified her with Athena and postulated a primordial link to Athens. Diodorus recounts that Athenians built Sais before the deluge. While all Greek cities were destroyed during that cataclysm, Athens, Sais, and the other Egyptian cities survived.
There are no surviving traces of this town before the Late New Kingdom (c. 1100 BC) due to the extensive destruction of the city by sebakhin (farmers removing mudbrick deposits for fertilizer), leaving only a few relief blocks in situ.
Though the proposed Sa El Hagar site has little evidence of this city, Obelisks in Piazza della Minerva and Urbino Italy are claimed to originate from Sais.
According to John of Egypt, a battle was fought at Sais between the Rashidun Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire during the Islamic conquest of Nikiû. It remained a panarchy and Christian bishopric until the early 700s. Medieval writers like Yaqut al-Hamawi, al-Maqrizi, and al-Qalqashandi attributed the city’s foundation to one “Sā ibn Misr”; Ibn Iyas called the founder “Sā ibn Marqunus”. The site was used as a stone quarry during this period. By the time of Ibn Iyas, the city had fallen almost entirely into ruin.
The 1885 Census of Egypt recorded Sa el-Hagar as a nahiyah under the district of Kafr az-Zayyat in Gharbia Governorate; at that time, the town’s population was 4,474 (2,250 men and 2,224 women).
Medical school
Like many ancient Egyptian temples, the Temple of Sais had a medical school. An inscription from the period that survives at Sais reads, “I have come from the school of medicine at Heliopolis and have studied at the woman’s school at Sais, where the divine mothers have taught me how to cure diseases”. The medical school at Sais had many female students and women faculty, mainly in gynaecology and obstetrics.
Cultural depictions
In Plato’s Timaeus and Critias (around 395 BC, 200 years after the visit by the Greek legislator Solon), Sais is the city in which Solon receives the story of Atlantis, its military aggression against Greece and Egypt, its eventual defeat and destruction by gods-punishing catastrophe, from an Egyptian priest. Plato also notes the city as the birthplace of the pharaoh Amasis II. Solon visited Egypt in 590 BC.
Plutarch said that the shrine of Athena, which he identifies with Isis, in Sais carried the inscription “I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be, and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised.”
Hector Berlioz’ L’enfance du Christ (“The Childhood of Christ”), in part Three, has Sais as the setting for the youth of Jesus until age 10, after his parents leave their homeland to escape the Massacre of the Innocents by Herod the Great.
Sais is depicted in the video game Assassin’s Creed Origins. Here, it is shown as under the control of a member of the Order of the Ancients named “The Scarab”.
