Qift

Qift (east bank of the Nile), on the site of ancient Coptos, which developed into a great trading town at an early period and in Graeco-Roman times was still an important entrepot on the trade route from Arabia and India. The town's protective divinity was the ithyphallic harvest god Min (Pan), the patron of desert travelers. Coptos was the starting point of the expeditions which set out on the journey from the Nile Valley across the desert to the Red Sea, heading for the Sinai Peninsula and for the Land of Punt (probably on the coast of presentday Somalia), which supplied Egypt with incense, ivory, ebony, panther skins and other precious wares and, like India, was a land of fabulous wonders.

The Egyptians also went to the desert Valley of the Wadi el-Hammamat for the sake of its hard stone, much prized for use in sculpture.

During the great rising in Upper Egypt in A.D. 292, in the reign of Diocletian, Coptos was besieged and destroyed. It made a rapid recovery, however, and was still a populous and prosperous town in the time of the Caliphs.