Наукратис: Древнегреческий торговый город в Египте

City of Ancient Egypt, on the Canopic branch of the Nile river

Naucratis or Naukratis (Ancient Greek: , "Naval Command"; Egyptian: , , , Coptic: ) was a city and trading post in ancient Egypt, located on the Canopic (western most) branch of the Nile river, south east of the Mediterranean sea and the city of Alexandria. Naucratis was the first and, for much of its early history, the only permanent Greek settlement in Egypt, serving as a symbiotic nexus for the interchange of Greek and Egyptian art and culture. The modern villages of Kom Gi'eif, el Nibeira and el Niqrash cover the archaeological site, which is of great importance. It is the source of numerous art objects in many of the world's museums, as well as pottery inscribed with some of the earliest known examples of Greek writing. The sister port of Naucratis was the harbour town of Heracleion, which was discovered in 2000.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the history of the ancient Greeks in Egypt dates back at least to Mycenaean times (1600–1100 BC) and more likely even further back into the proto Greek Minoan age. This history is strictly one of commerce as no permanent Greek settlements have been found of these cultures to date. After the collapse of Mycenaean Greek civilization and the ensuing Greek dark ages (c. 1100–750 BC), a "renaissance" of Greek culture flourished in the 7th century BC—with it came renewed contact with the East and its two great river civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Nile. The first report of Greeks in 7th century BC Egypt is a story in the Histories of Herodotus of Ionian and Carian pirates forced by storm to land on or near the Nile Delta. It relates the plight of the Saite Pharaoh Psammetichus I (Psamtik) (c. 664–610) of the Twenty sixth dynasty of Egypt overthrown and in desperation seeking the advice of the Oracle of Leto at Buto, who cryptically advises him to enlist the aid of the "bronze men" who would "come from the sea." Inspired upon seeing the bronze armor of the shipwrecked pirates, he offers them rewards in return for their aid in his campaign of return to power. Upon the success of this endeavor, he makes good on his word and bestows on the mercenaries two parcels of land (or "camps," στρατόπεδα) on either side of the Pelusian branch of the Nile. At present these sites remain uncertain but this may be a reference to the city of Daphnae.

Naukratis was the site of an Egyptian town before the Greeks arrived, later becoming established as a military settlement occupied by mercenaries. Naukratis was located on the Canopic branch of the Nile in the western Delta some 16 km from Sais. The Canopic tributary was one of the major waterways linking the Nile valley with the Mediterranean, and the most accessible of the Nile's tributaries during the Saite Period. The early settlement then developed into a busy trading port. They exchanged goods with the Greeks and with other Mediterranean states. Greeks traders settled in Naukratis and a large Greek community began to develop.

The Egyptians supplied the Greeks with mostly grain but also linen and papyrus while the Greeks bartered mostly silver but also timber, olive oil and wine. Naukratis, and the associated Greek "forts" in the general delta area, as demonstrated by accounts given above, became a ready source of mercenary fighting men for the Saite pharaohs, men with superior hoplite armor and tactics, also possessing invaluable naval expertise. Naucratis soon became a profound source of inspiration to the Greeks by re exposing them to the wonders of Egyptian architecture and sculpture lost to them since the Bronze Age. Egyptian artifacts soon began their flow along the Greek trade routes finding their way into the homes and workshops of the Ionian Greek world and, via Aegina, the city states of mainland Greece. Although Greek art and ideas in turn came back the other way their absorption into a largely xenophobic Egyptian culture was strictly minimal. Although Herodotus claimed that geometry (γεωμετρία) was first known in Egypt and then passed into Greece, it is now generally accepted by scholars that what the Greeks learned were more like "surveying techniques" and hardly deserve the designation "geometry" in the sense of a purely intellectual mathematical practice. Indeed, Greeks like Thales were already accomplished geometricians before their travel to Egypt and very likely Herodotus assumed that because the Egyptian γεωμετρία was older, the Greeks must have got it from there. In terms of our modern understanding of the Greeks, and in particular the early use of their nascent Greek alphabet, the finds of Naucratis have turned out to be foundational. "The inscriptions on the pottery have yielded what Mr. Ernest Gardner considers—apparently on firm grounds—to be the oldest Ionic inscriptions, as well as some in the Korinthian, Melian, and Lesbian alphabets." Of particular interest are the several examples of an evolutionary variation from the original Phoenician alphabetic script. Much has also been learned by comparing these alphabets with the forms they assumed a century later, forms that were destined to become universal across the Hellenic world. Naucratis was not only the first Greek settlement in Egypt but also Egypt's most important harbor in antiquity until the rise of Alexandria and the shifting of the Nile led to its decline. Nevertheless, the ancient city of Heracleion/Thonis also rivalled Naucratis as an important port city of Egypt, especially from the 6th to the 4th century BC.