Edfu Attractions

The town of Edfu or ldfu, a market center with sugar factories and an old established pottery industry, lies on a slightly raised site some 65mi/100km south of Luxor on the west bank of the Nile (now spanned by a bridge opened in 1969), at the point where the valley begins to open out. It was the ancient Egyptian Tbot, Coptic Atbo, from which the modern name is derived. The Greeks called it Apollinopolis Magna after the sun god Horus-Apollo, who was particularly revered here, and made it the capital of the second (Apollinopolite) nome of Upper Egypt.

Horus, who according to the myth fought one of his great combats with Seth here, was known as "he of Behdet" (Behdet being probably a district of ancient Edfu). He was represented as a flying falcon, in human form with a falcon's head or as the winged sun.