Cusae

Cusæ

A titular see of Egypt. The Coptic name of this town was Kõskõ; in Greek it becomes Kousos, Akouasa, Akoussa, Kousis, Kousai, Khousai; in Latin we find Cussa, Cusæ, Chusæ, etc. It is now the fellahtown, El-Kousîyet (Alquoussiah, Al-Kussîje, El-Kusîye, Qossieh), on the western bank of the Nile, inland between the railway stations Dêrût esh-Sherif and Montfalût. Near it stands Deir-el-Moharag, the largest, richest, and most peopled of the seven great Coptic monasteries; the Holy Family is said to have sojourned there and it is the centre of an important pilgrimage. The city figures in the "Synecdemus" of Hierocles (730, 9), Georgius Cyprius (764), and Parthey's "Notitia Prima" (about 840). It was a suffragan of Antinoe in Thebais Prima. Lequien (II, 597) mentions two bishops, Achilles, a Meletian, in 325, and Theonas, present at Constantinople in 553. Cusæ is to be distinguished from Kysis in the southern part of the Great Oasis, now Dûsh el-Kal'a.

BRUGSCH, Geogr. des alten Aegyptens, I, 222; BAEDEKER, Aegypten (1891), part II, 45; JULLIEN, L'Egypte, Souvenirs bibliques et chrétiens (Lille, 1896), 249.

S. PÉTRIDÈS.