Oxyrhynchus

Oxyrhynchus

Location of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt
Shown within Egypt
Location	Egypt
Region	Minya Governorate
Coordinates	28°31′52″N 30°38′49″E / 28.531°N 30.647°E / 28.531; 30.647Coordinates: 28°31′52″N 30°38′49″E / 28.531°N 30.647°E / 28.531; 30.647

Oxyrhynchus (/ɒksɪˈrɪŋkəs/; Greek: Ὀξύρρυγχος Oxýrrhynkhos; "sharp-nosed"; ancient Egyptian Pr-Medjed; Coptic Pemdje; modern Egyptian Arabic El Bahnasa) is a city in Middle Egypt, located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo, in the governorate of Al Minya. It is also an archaeological site, considered one of the most important ever discovered. For the past century, the area around Oxyrhynchus has been continually excavated, yielding an enormous collection of papyrus texts dating from the time of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods of Egyptian history. Among the texts discovered at Oxyrhynchus are plays of Menander, fragments from the Gospel of Thomas, and fragments from Euclid's Elements.

Oxyrhynchus lies west of the main course of the Nile, on the Bahr Yussef (Canal of Joseph), a branch of the Nile that terminates in Lake Moeris and the Fayum oasis. In ancient Egyptian times, there was a city on the site called Per-Medjed, named after the medjed, a species of elephantfish of the Nile River worshipped there as the fish that ate the penis of Osiris. It was the capital of the 19th Upper Egyptian Nome. After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 BC, the city was reestablished as a Greek town, called Oxyrrhynkhoupolis (Οξυρρύγχου Πόλις - "town of the sharp-snouted fish").