It was named for the fifth milestone west of Alexandria along the coastal road between Lake Mareotis and the Mediterranean Sea, probably near present-day al-Maks.
The first writer to record the presence of a monastery at the Pempton is Epiphanius of Salamis, who describes a visionary monk from there who behaved as if he were a bishop.
[2] During the reign of Justinian I (527–565), according to the Life of Daniel of Scetis, a certain monk of the Pempton for eight years left to play the holy fool in Alexandria, becoming known as Mark the Mad.
[3] In the same reign but prior to the death of the Empress Theodora in 548, Anastasia the Patrician founded a monastery either at the Pempton, according to her Greek hagiography, or at the Enaton, according to the Syriac tradition.
At Dekhela (Dikhaylah, Duḫēla), today a suburb of Alexandria, excavations in the early twentieth century and in 1966 uncovered funerary stelae and traces of religious structures.