Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Ombus

Titular see and suffragan of Ptolemais in Thebais Secunda. The city is located by Ptolemy (IV, v, 32) in the nomos of Thebes. It is mentioned by the "Itinerarium Antonini" (165); Juvenal (XV, 35); the "Notitia dignitatum"; Hierocles (Synecdemus) etc. As late as the Ptolemaic epoch it was only a small garrison town built on a high plateau to protect the lower course of the Nile. It became afterwards the capital of the nomos Ombitos, then of the southern province of Egypt instead of Elephantine (see in "Ptolemæi Geographia", ed. Müller, I, 725, note 4, the epigraphic texts relating to this nome). Ombus was situated 30 miles north of Syene. Its history is unknown. Le Quien ("Oriens christ.", II, 613) mentions two of its bishops: Silvanus and Verres, contemporaries of the patriarch Theophilus. Another is noted in an inscription of the seventh century (Lefebvre, "Recueil des inscriptions grecques chrétiennes d'Egypte", Cairo, 1907, n. 561). The city was discovered in the ruins of Kom Ombo. A temple of the Ptolemaic epoch could be seen there but it was destroyed in 1893; it had replaced a sanctuary of the epoch of Thothmes III.

Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, II, 491; Hamilton, Ægyptiaca, 34; Champollion, L'Egypte sous les Pharaons, II, 167-69; Amélineau, La géographie de l'Egypte à l'epoque copte (Paris, 1893), 287.

S. VAILHÉ