Abstract

It seems that a large town with beautiful stone architecture, located on the southern shore of Lake Mareotis and excavated since the 1977, deserves to have a name not only because of standard requirements of research. The name would reveal much of its history and facilitate the reconstruction of conditions in which it rose and functioned. Was the town an early local centre of the wealthy region of Mareotis or a settlement serving the pilgrims on their way from Alexandria to the sanctuary of St Menas? The comparison of literary sources with results of the archaeological work makes the author reject both possibilities; hence the town remains nameless. The only hope for any progress in this respect is that one day archaeologists will come across an inscription, graffito, ostracon, or any other written source explicitly stating the name of ‘Marea’.