Nome (Egypt)

A nome (Greek: district) is a subnational administrative division of Ancient Egypt. The use of the Greek name rather than the Egyptians' own results partly from Egypt's long Greek occupation. In addition, the Greeks were fascinated with Egypt, and left many historical records of the country.

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The division of Ancient Egypt into nomes can be traced back to the Predynastic Period (before 3100 BC). These nomes originally existed as autonomous city-states, but later began to unify. The final conquest was completed by a certain Menes.

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The nomes not only remained in place for more than three millennia, the area of the individual nomes and their order of numbering remained remarkably stable. Some, like Xois in the Delta or Khent in Upper Egypt, first appear in the Palermo stone which was inscribed in the Fifth dynasty; a few, like the nome of Bubastis, appear no earlier than the inscriptions of the New Kingdom. Under the system that prevailed for most of pharaonic Egypt's history, the country was divided into 42 nomes.

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Lower Egypt, from the Old Kingdom capital Memphis to the Mediterranean Sea, comprised 20 nomes. The first was based around Memphis, Saqqara, and Giza, in the area occupied by modern-day Cairo. The numbering system then spread out in a more or less ordered fashion through the Nile delta, first covering the territory on the west before continuing with the higher numbers to the east. Thus, Alexandria was in the Third Nome, Bubastis in the Eighteenth.

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Upper Egypt was divided into 22 nomes. The first of these was centered around Elephantine and Egypt's border with Nubia at the First Cataract – the area of modern-day Aswan. From there the numbering progressed downriver in an orderly fashion along the narrow fertile strip of land that was the Nile valley. Waset (ancient Thebes or contemporary Luxor) was in the Fourth Nome, Amarna in the Fourteenth, and Meidum in the Twenty-First.

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Ancient Egypt: Ancient Egypt as a general historical term broadly refers to the civilization of the Lower Nile Valley, between the First Cataract and the mouths of the Nile Delta, from circa 3200 BC until the conquest of Alexander the Great in 332 BC. As a civilization based on irrigation, it is the quintessential...

Predynastic Period: REDIRECT Predynastic Egypt...

3100 BC: REDIRECT 31st century BC...

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