Heliopolis

Ancient city of the sun in Egypt — today beneath northeast Cairo, with a single obelisk of Sesostris I marking the site of what was once Egypt's greatest sun temple.

Heliopolis — Greek for "City of the Sun" — was one of the most important cities of ancient Egypt and the main centre of sun worship. As capital of the 13th Lower Egyptian nome and cult site of the sun god Re and later Atum-Re, the city possessed one of the greatest temple complexes in Egypt during antiquity. Almost nothing of those buildings survives: the Greater Cairo metropolitan area has buried most of the ancient remains beneath the modern districts of Matariya and Ain Shams. A single obelisk of Pharaoh Sesostris I from the 19th century BC still rises above the modern cityscape, a lone reminder of former grandeur. Regular archaeological excavations continue to uncover new finds, a sign of how much still awaits discovery beneath the ground.