Naucratis

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An ancient Greek trading settlement on the Canopic branch of the Nile in Egypt, founded around the seventh century BCE as a port for Greek merchants
2. A historic Greek port city in the Nile delta of Egypt that served as a centre of trade between the Greek world and ancient Egypt
3. The ancient Egyptian town of Naucratis, a Greek mercantile settlement on the Nile that flourished as a commercial hub during the archaic period

Etymology: Naucratis was a Greek trading town on the Nile delta in Egypt, and its name survives in English as a place name for that ancient settlement. The name comes from Ancient Greek "Ναύκρατις" (Naúkratis), and the Greek elements behind it are the ones any reader can recognise: "naus" meaning ship and "kratos" meaning power or rule, so the name can be read as something like "ship-power" or "power of ships." Greek settlers founded it, and it became one of the few places in Egypt where Greek merchants were allowed to trade and settle. Because the name is a Greek compound, it is a proper noun rather than a common word with a shifting sense. Its English use has stayed fixed on the town itself, which was excavated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is now studied for the light it sheds on Greek presence in Egypt.