Samalut

Samalut is a city and capital of the eponymous markaz in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Minya. The markaz comprises nine main villages and 54 subsidiary villages and hamlets and lies on the west bank of the Nile, 225 kilometres south of Cairo. The earliest known reference to the city is in a Coptic funerary inscription that possibly dates to the 5th century AD. Near Samalut is the Coptic Orthodox Monastery of the Virgin Mary at Gebel el-Teir, an important Christian pilgrimage site, and the city's church was built by Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, in AD 328 on one of the sites where the Holy Family is believed to have stayed during their flight into Egypt. It has an arid desert climate (Köppen BWh).