Papremis

PAPRE´MIS (Πάπρημις, Hdt. 2.59, 71), is mentioned by Herodotus alone, and appears to have been seated in the western parts of Lower Aegypt. Mannert (x. pt. i. pp. 517--519), without very good grounds for his supposition, believes it to have been another name for XOIS(Comp. Champoll. l'Egypte, vol. 2. p. 213.) Papremis was the capital of a nome called Papremites (Herod. ib. 165), one of the districts assigned to the Hermotybian division of the Aegyptian army. A deity corresponding in his attributes to the Greek Ares was worshipped in this nome; and the river-horse was sacred to him. His festivals were of a sanguinary character, in which opposite parties of priests contended with staves, and inflicted on one another sometimes death, and usually serious wounds. Now the river-horse was among the emblems of Typhon, the destroying principle; and the festivals of the Papremite deity savoured of violence and destruction. He may accordingly have been one of the forms of Typhon, whose worship was widely spread over the Delta. There is indeed an Aegyptian god named Ranpo (Wilkinson, M. & C. pl. 69, 70), whose attributes answer to those of Ares, and who may, accordingly, have been the object of Papremite worship. In the Papremite nome a battle was fought between, the Persians and Aegyptians, in which the satrap Achaemenes was defeated by Inarns, king of Lower Aegypt, B.C. 460. (Hdt. 3.12,. comp. 7.7; Ctesias, Excerpt. Persic. 100.32; Thuc. 1.104, 109.) It is useless to speculate which of the various mounds of ruins in the Delta cover the site of a town whose exact situation cannot be discovered.

(Πάπρημις). A city of Lower Egypt in the Nomos Papremites. It was sacred to a god whom the Greeks identified with Ares (Herod.ii. 71).