Menouthis was a sacred city in ancient Egypt, devoted to the Egyptian goddess Isis and god Serapis.

[1] Land in the bay area was subject to rising sea levels, earthquakes, and tsunamis, parts of it apparently becoming submerged after a process of soil liquefaction sometime at the end of the 2nd century BC.

[7] In 413 AD, at a site opposite the temple,[6] Pope Theophilus of Alexandria built a Christian shrine dedicated to the Four Evangelists.

[7] Coptic tradition says that the temple remained in use alongside the Christian shrine and the worship of Egyptian gods and their statues continued in the city.

[9] At the height of its popularity in the 6th and 7th centuries the shrine was one of the two principal pilgrimage centres of Christian Egypt.