Saft el-Hinna (also Saft el-Hinneh, Saft el-Henna, Saft el-Henneh) is a village and an archaeological site in Egypt. It is located in the modern Al Sharqia Governorate, in the Nile Delta, about 7 km southeast of Zagazig.
The 1885 Census of Egypt recorded Saft el-Hinna as a nahiyah (A nāḥiyah (Arabic: نَاحَيِة [ˈnaːħijah], plural nawāḥī نَوَاحِي [ˈwaːħiː]), or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of several villages or sometimes smaller towns. It can constitute a division of a qadaa, mintaqah or other such district-type division and is sometimes translated as “subdistrict” Tajikistan is a second-level division, while in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Xinjiang, and the former Ottoman Empire, where it was also called a bucak, it is a third-level or lower division.) in the district of Bilbeis in Sharqia Governorate; at that time, the town’s population was 664 (306 men and 358 women).
Location of Saft el Hinna
Saft el-Hinna is located in the eastern Delta, at the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, east of modern Zagazig. Its ancient name was Per-Sopdu/Per Soped, “The Domain of Sopd”, also known in the Late Period as Kes and in Greek as Phacusa, and was the capital of the 20 th Lower Egyptian nome. A modern town is located on top of the ancient ruins, and the mudbrick has been used as agricultural fertilizer.
Etymology
The modern village of Saft el-Hinna lies in the ancient Egyptian town of Per-Sopdu or Pi-Sopt, meaning “House of Sopdu”, the capital of the 20th nome of Lower Egypt and one of the most important cult centres during the Late Period of ancient Egypt. As the ancient name implies, the town was consecrated to Sopdu, god of the eastern borders of Egypt.
During the late Third Intermediate Period, Per-Sopdu – called Pishaptu or Pisapti, in Akkadian, by the Neo-Assyrian invaders – was the seat of one of the four Great chiefdoms of the Meshwesh, along with Mendes, Sebennytos and Busiris.
The medieval name of the city was Tiarabya (Coptic: ϯⲁⲣⲁⲃⲓⲁ, Arabic: طرابية) as it was a significant city in the eastern part of the Nile Delta which bore the same name.
Excavations
In December 1884, Swiss Egyptologist Édouard Naville was performing a survey in the Wadi Tumilat on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund. He went to Saft el-Hinna, a village of Hinna farmers, and there he found traces of the ancient city under the modern settlement. He believed he had seen the ancient city of Phacusa in the Biblical Land of Goshen, although it is nowadays assumed that Phacusa lies under the modern town of Faqus. Even though the archaeological site was threatened by urban development and the expansion of crops, Naville discovered several monuments of Pharaoh Nectanebo I of the 30th Dynasty, the perimeter walls of a temple, and other attestations dating to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Unfortunately, he never published a comprehensive excavation report.
Among the findings dated to Pharaoh Nectanebo I, Naville found a naos dedicated to Sopdu. It was later discovered that the naos was one of four that were meant to be in the temple whose walls were found by Naville under Saft el-Hinna. The other three naoi were discovered as well, though in different places in the Delta and not in situ. One was dedicated to Shu; parts of it were found at Abukir, commonly called the “Naos of the Decades”. Another was devoted to Tefnut, and a poorly preserved one was discovered at Arish. All but the last (due to its poor conservation) are thought to be attributable to Nectanebo I.
In 1906, Flinders Petrie went to Saft el-Hinna to conduct an excavation aimed at discovering evidence of a Hebrew presence in ancient Egypt. He soon found that the condition of the site was even worse than at the time of Naville. He dug in two undisturbed neighbouring areas, Kafr Sheikh Zikr and Suwa, two ancient necropolises of Per-Sopdu. However, like Naville before him, Petrie never published a comprehensive report of these excavations.
Saft el-Hinna was involved in two surface surveys, the Wadi Tumilat Project began in 1977, and the Liverpool University Delta Survey (1983–85). The latter was led by Steven Snape, who commented that almost nothing was left of the ruins described by Naville a century earlier.
By combining archaeological and philological evidence, it is now known that the sacred area of Per-Sopdu was divided into two parts, called Hut-nebes and Iat-nebes, which were connected by a dromos.
