TACHOMPSO
TACHOMPSO (
Ταχομψώ,
Hdt. 2.29; Tacompsos,
Plin. Nat. 6.29. s. 33; Mela, 1.9.2), a town in the Regio Dodecaschoenus, S. of Aegypt and the Cataracts.
It stood upon an island of the Nile, and was inhabited by a mixed colony of Aegyptians and Aethiopians. The Coptic word Tachempsa signifies “the place of many crocodiles.” Tachompso was seated on the E. bank of the river, lat. 23° 12′ N., nearly opposite the town of Pselcis. As Pselcis increased, Tachompso declined, so that it at last was regarded as merely a suburb of that town, and went by the name of Contra-Pselcis. Though supposed by some to have been near the modern village of
Conzo in Lower Nubia, it is impossible to reconcile any known locality with the ancient descriptions of this place. Heeren (
African Nations, vol. i. pp. 346, 383) supposes it to have been either at the island
Kalabshe (Talmis) or 20 miles further S. as
Ghyrshe. Herodotus (
l.c.) describes the island on which Tachompso stood as a plain contiguous to a vast lake.
But neither such a lake nor island now appear in this part of the Nile's course.
The lake may have been the result of a temporary inundation, and the island gradually undermined and carried away by the periodical floods.
[
W.B.D]
