Ain Shams

Ain, Ayn, or Ein Shams (Arabic: عين شمس, [ʕeːn ʃæms], Coptic: ⲱⲛ ⲡⲉⲧ ⲫⲣⲏ[1]) is a suburb of Cairo, Egypt. The name means "Eye of the Sun" in Arabic, referring to the fact that Ain Shams is built on top of the ancient city of Heliopolis, once the spiritual centre of ancient Egyptian sun-worship. Ain Shams is one of the oldest districts in Cairo and contains many historical sites.

Ain Shams

عين شمس
Shalhoub Street (2007)
Ain Shams
Location in Egypt
Coordinates: 30°07′40″N 31°19′45″E
Country Egypt
GovernorateCairo Governorate
Time zoneUTC+2 (EST)

10th-century Jewish biblical commentator, Saadia Gaon, believed that Ain Shams was the location of the biblical Egyptian city of Rameses.[2]

Ain Shams is one of the first areas to have natural gas supplied to all its residents. The Nature Gas was there since 1985.


See also

Works cited

  1. https://st-takla.org/books/pauline-todary/coptic-language/egyptian.html
  2. Saadia Gaon, Judeo-Arabic Translation of Pentateuch (Tafsir), s.v. Exodus 21:37 and Numbers 33:3 ("רעמסס: "עין שמס); Rabbi Saadia Gaon's Commentaries on the Torah (ed. Yosef Qafih), 4th edition, Mossad Harav Kook: Jerusalem 1984, p. 164 (s.v. Numbers 33:3) (Hebrew) OCLC 896661716. Avraham Ibn Ezra suggests that there may have actually been two distinct sites by the name of Rameses, based on the different Masoretic vowelization of "Rameses" in Exodus 1:11 and 12:37, one a store city and the other a district in or near Goshen, as implied by Genesis 47:11.


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