Damietta

About Damietta

Damietta is a port city which serves as the capital city of the Damietta Governorate in Egypt. It is located at the Damietta branch, an eastern distributary of the Nile Delta, 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from the Mediterranean Sea, and about 200 kilometres (120 mi) north of Cairo. The city was a Catholic bishopric and is a multiple titular see. Damietta is also a member of the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities, having joined in 2019.

Damietta is 1-2 metres above sea level and 12 kilometres from the mouth of the eastern tributary of the Nile Delta. Coastal progradation by the Nile created the land in the area in the 1st millennium.

The first historical mention of Damietta was by the 6th-century geographer Stephanus of Byzantium. The city was called Tamíathis (Ancient Greek: Ταμίαθις) in the Hellenistic period. George of Cyprus wrote about the city around 605 AD. In 1885, Karl Baedeker wrote that a stone featuring the name of Domitian (r. 81–96) was in Damietta.

Miqdad ibn Aswad conquered Damietta and the rest of Egypt. The Byzantine Empire...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.