Atfih

Atfih is a town in Middle Egypt, on the east bank of the Nile in Giza Governorate south of Cairo. Its Arabic name comes from the ancient Egyptian Tp-jhw, meaning the first of the cows, a reference to the goddess Hathor, and in Greco-Roman times it was known as Aphroditopolis. In antiquity the town stood in the northernmost nome of Upper Egypt and was an important cult centre of the sacred cow: it holds the Hesateum, a necropolis of sacred cows of the goddess Hesat with sixteen surviving animal tombs of the Ptolemaic Period, and a Tomb of Ip dated to about 2000 BC lies roughly 17 kilometres to the north. From April 2008 to April 2011 Atfih belonged to the short-lived Helwan Governorate before returning to Giza. It had a population of about 106,300 in 2001. In March 2011 the town was the scene of sectarian clashes in which a church was burned, an event that drew national attention and a pledge from the armed forces to rebuild it.