BABILONIA d'Egitto. - A city of ancient Lower Egypt, situated in the region from which the canal from the Nile to the Red Sea began.
Despite the legends reported by ancient historians (Ctesia, Fragm., ed. Dindorf, Parigi, II, 13; Diodoro Sic., I, 56; Flavio Giuseppe, Ant. Iud., I, 15, 1), which attribute its foundation to Assyro-Babylonian prisoners, it was in fact a distinctly Egyptian city, predating the XVIII dynasty. It is identified with Her-'aba, already mentioned on the Palermo Stone (Hir-'b'), which lies south of present-day « Cairo vecchio ». Here the Romans built
a fortress called Babylon, which still exists today under the name Qasr al-Sām. The Arabs of 'Amr ibn al-'As, having conquered it (641), enlarged it into a city called al-Fusṭat (from the Latin Jossatum), the present-day « Cairo vecchio » (over 50,000 inhabitants). The ancient name survived: Babiljūn, today Dejr-Bāblūn, is part of the ancient fortress. In the Middle Ages the ruler of Egypt was called the « sultan of Babylon ». B. appears in the fifth century as the seat of a Catholic bishopric under the name Bablun.
The Copts, together with a few rare exegetes, say that St. Peter wrote his first letter there (cf. I Pt. 5, 13).