Karanis (Extinct city)

Karanis (Koine Greek: Καρανίς), located in what is now Kom Aushim, was an agricultural town in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt located in the northeast corner of the Faiyum Oasis. It was roughly 60 hectares in size and its peak population is estimated to be 4000 people, although it could have been as much as three times greater. Karanis was one of a number of towns in the Arsinoites nome established in the third century BC by Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The town largely stagnated in the late Ptolemaic period, until in the first century BC it expanded north when Augustus, having conquered Egypt and also recognizing the Faiyum's agricultural potential, sent workers to clean up the canals and restore the dikes that had fallen into decline, restoring productivity to the area. Karanis was continuously occupied up until about the time of the seventh-century Sasanian conquest of Egypt, when it was gradually abandoned due to unclear causes.