Mark Twain declared that the Indian city of Varanasi was ‘older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend’. He was, of course, wrong. So which exactly is the world’s most ancient continuously inhabited city?There was once a city called Crocodilopolis, where they worshiped the crocodile god Sobek. The people of Crocodilopolis paid devotion to an earthly representative of Sobek, a living crocodile they called Petsuchos and covered in gold and gems and kept in a temple, though it is unclear how they did this without loss of life or limb. When one Petsuchos died, they simply replaced him with another, like a fairground goldfish. Crocodilopolis was established on the Nile, southwest of Memphis, about 4,000BC. The Egyptians called it Shedet (it was the Greeks who, wise to the city’s USP, gave it its snappy name), and it was possibly the most ancient city in ancient Egypt. It is now part of the modern city of Faiyum – which makes Faiyum possibly the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Continue reading...
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