Sakha

Sakha is a town in the Kafr El Sheikh Governorate of Egypt, near the center of the Nile Delta, and a city of great antiquity known in ancient times as Xois, identified with the Egyptian city of Khasut. Xois stood on an island formed by the Sebennytic and Phatnitic branches of the Nile and was the capital of the Xoite nome; according to Manetho the Fourteenth Dynasty consisted of 76 Xoite kings, although most Egyptologists today place that dynasty at Avaris. Through the Roman and Byzantine eras it was the center of a Christian diocese, which remains a vacant titular bishopric. In the 900s Ibn Hawqal described Sakha as a large city, and in the 1200s it was the capital of the province of Gharbia. The census of 1885 counted 950 people. Christian tradition holds that the family of Jesus visited Sakha during the Flight into Egypt, and a stone said to bear the footprint of Jesus was found there in 1984.