Medinet Madi

Medinet Madi (Arabic: مدينة ماضي), also known simply as Madi or Maadi (ماضي) in Arabic, is a site in the southwestern Faiyum region of Egypt with the remains of a Greco-Roman town where a temple of the cobra-goddess Renenutet (a harvest deity) was founded during the reigns of Amenemhat III and Amenemhat IV (1855–1799 BC).

'the ones of Renenutet'), Narmouthis (Ancient Greek: Ναρμουθις) and Narmuda (Arabic: نرموده).

The town was still occupied after the Muslim conquest of Egypt, but was abandoned after the ninth century.

[5] The dark sandstone inner part of the temple consists of a small papyrus-columned hall leading to a sanctuary comprising three chapels, each containing statues of deities.

The reliefs in the first hall are not well preserved, but they include a scene showing a king and the goddess Seshat, founding the temple.

On the South side there is a scene showing Amenemhat III in front of Renenutet.

[9] The Ptolemaic parts of the temple comprise a paved processional way passing through an eight-columned kiosk leading to a portico and transverse vestibule.

It has been suggested that the unusually good preservation of this temple complex, excavated by a team of archaeologists from the University of Milan in the 1930s, may have been due simply to its relative seclusion.

[11] Medinet Madi is "the only intact temple still existing from the Middle Kingdom" according to Zahi Hawass, a former Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

[12] The temple's foundations, administrative buildings, granaries and residences were recently uncovered by an Egyptian archaeological expedition in early 2006.

In a house on the temple district, thousands of inscribed potsherds, so-called ostraca, were found during archaeological excavations in 1938.

In regard to the history of writing, these ostraca are thus evidence of how Coptic script developed from the Egyptian and Greek written languages.

[13] In terms of content, the texts can be assigned to the milieu of priests and provide insights into various facets of their everyday life in the temple district: preserved are, for instance, notes on the calculation of personal horoscopes, school texts and a guide for archivists.

[14] Particularly personal insights into life behind the temple walls are provided by a dossier of more than one hundred ostraca, on which the priest Phatres compiled notes for a petition to the authorities.

In these texts, he reports on corruption, cult-related misconduct, and disputes in the local temple college.

The text is thus an important document for understanding how temples cooperated with each other when there was a shortage of staff.