AHNAS (Ihnas al Madinah, Ihnasyah al-Madinah, Byzantine
Herakleopolis), settlement on the site of pharaonic Nn-nswt,
Ptolemaic, Roman, and Byzantine Herakleopolis. The Coptic and
Arabic names go back to Egyptian Hwt-nn-nswt, Hnn-nswt, the
Greek name comes from the identification of Hrj-š.f (Herishef,
Greek Harsaphes), the town's ram-headed local deity, with
Heracles (Herishef was also identified with Dionysus). Ahnas
lies in Middle Egypt 75 miles (120 km) south of Cairo and about
10 miles (16 km) west of Bani Suef, close to the entrance to the
Fayyum, between the canals al-Sultani and al-Manafrah. From the
Sixth Dynasty until the Late Period, Ahnas served as the capital
of the twentieth and twenty-first Upper Egyptian nomes n‘rt hntt
and n‘rtpht (Helck, 1974, pp. 121ff). The royal center of the
First Intermediate Period of the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties and
the seat of the family of local kings of Libyan origin, it also
housed the shipmasters of Herakleopolis between 940 and 630 B.C.
(Kitchen, 1973). During th