Antinoöpolis was a city founded at an older Egyptian village by the Roman emperor Hadrian to commemorate his deified young beloved, Antinoüs, on the east bank of the Nile, not far from the site in Upper Egypt where Antinoüs drowned in 130 AD. Antinoöpolis was a little to the south of the Egyptian village of Besa (Βῆσσα), named after the god and oracle of Bes. Antinoöpolis was built at the foot of the hill upon which Besa was seated. The city is located nearly opposite of Hermopolis Magna and was connected to Berenice Troglodytica by the Via Hadriana.
Antinoöpolis: 19th century AD view of the triumphal arch, from Description de l'Égypte.
Bust of Antinoüs-Osiris from Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli (Louvre)
Fragment of a cloth from the tomb of Sabina, a 4-5th century woman in Antinoöpolis, showing Bellerophon and Pegasus trampling on the Chimera. (Louvre)
Late Roman column capital from the north necropolis (National Archaeological Museum, Florence)
Hadrian was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian was born in Italica, close to modern Seville in Spain, an Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his branch of the Aelia gens, the Aeli Hadriani, came from the town of Hadria in eastern Italy. He was a member of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty.
Bust of Hadrian, c. 130
Hadrian's Arch in central Athens, Greece. Hadrian's admiration for Greece materialised in such projects ordered during his reign.
Bust of Emperor Trajan; Musée Saint-Raymond, Toulouse
A denarius of Hadrian issued in 119 AD for his third consulship. Inscription: HADRIANVS AVGVSTVS / LIBERALITAS AVG. CO[N]S III, P. P.