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Mendes (, Genitive case.: Μένδητος), the Greek language name of the ancient Egyptian city of Djedet, also known in ancient Egypt as Per- Banebdjedet ("The Domain of the Ram Lord of ") and Anpet, is known today as Tell El-Ruba ().
The city is located in the eastern Nile delta () and was the capital of the 16th nome of Kha Nome, until it was replaced by Thmuis in Greco-Roman Egypt. The two cities are only several hundred meters apart. During the 29th Dynasty, Mendes was also the capital of Ancient Egypt, lying on the Mendesian branch of the Nile (now silted up), about 35 km east of Al Mansurah.
The sheep deity of Mendes was described by Herodotus in his HistoriesHerodotus, History, Book II, 42 (Robin Waterfield translation) as being represented with the head and Wool of a goat: "...whereas anyone with a sanctuary of Mendes or who comes from the province of Mendes, will have nothing to do with (sacrifice) goats, but uses sheep as his sacrificial animals... They say that Heracles' overriding desire was to see Zeus, but Zeus was refusing to let him do so. Eventually, as a result of Heracles' pleading, Zeus came up with a plan. He skinned a ram and cut off his head, then he held the head in front of himself, wore the fleece, and showed himself to Heracles like that. That is why the Egyptian statues of Zeus have a ram's head, is why rams are sacred to the Thebans, and they do not use them as sacrificial animals. However there is just one day of the year—the day of the festival of Zeus—when they chop up a single ram, skin it, dress the statue of Zeus in the way mentioned, and then bring the statue of Heracles up close to the statue of Zeus. Then everyone around the sanctuary mourns the death of the ram and finally they bury it in a sacred tomb."
demonology in early modern times often imagined Satan as manifesting himself as a goat or satyr, because goats had a reputation for lustful behavior and were used in the iconography of pre-Christian gods like Pan and the goat of Mendes. The occultist Eliphas Levi in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1855) drew an image of the fictitious medieval idol Baphomet that conflated it with the goat of Mendes and the imagery of the Satanic satyr. The image of the satyr-like Baphomet and its supposed connection with Mendes has since been repeated by various occultists, conspiracy theorists, and neopagans."Pan en Egypte et le «bouc» de Mendès" by Youri Volokhine, in Francesca Prescendi and Youri Volokhine, Dans le laboratoire de l'historien des religions: Mélanges offerts à Philippe Borgeaud. Editions Labor et Fides, 2011, pp. 637–642, 646–647.
Work on the New Kingdom processional-style temple has recently uncovered foundation deposits of Merenptah below the second pylon. It is thought that four separate pylons or gates existed. Evidence has suggested that their construction dates from at least the Middle Kingdom, as foundation deposits were uncovered. The original structures were buried, added to, or incorporated into later ones over time by later rulers.
A cemetery of sacred rams was discovered in the northwest corner of Tell El-Ruba. Monuments bearing the names of Ramesses II, Merneptah, and Ramesses III were also found. A temple attested by its foundation deposits was built by Amasis II. The tomb of Nepherites I, which Donald Redford concluded was destroyed by the Achaemenids,
was discovered by a joint team from the University of Washington and the University of Toronto in 1992–1993.On the edge of the temple mound, a sondage supervised by Matthew J. Adams has revealed uninterrupted stratification from the Middle Kingdom down to the First Dynasty. Coring results suggest that future excavations in that sondage should expect to take the stratification down into the Buto-Maadi Period. The material excavated so far is already the longest uninterrupted stratification for all of the Nile Delta, and possibly for all of Egypt.
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