Drepanum
τὸ Δρέπανον ἄκρον
Drepanum (τὸ Δρέπανον ἄκρον, Ptol. 4.5.14), a promontory on the eastern coast of Egypt forming one boundary of the Bay of Heroöpolis or N.W. branch of the Red Sea. There is, however, some difference in the statement of the ancient geographers with regard to its position. Ptolemy describes it, as above, in about lat. 28° N; if so Drepanum was exactly opposite to the S. extremity of the Rocky Arabia, whereas Pliny (Plin. Nat. 6.29.34) brings it nearly six degrees further to S., between Myos-Hormos and Berenice, or lat. 22° N. Drepanum, like other similarly named headlands, derived its appellation from its semicircular form,--a reapinghook. It was a projection of the limestone and hornblende hill-barrier of the Delta and Heptanomis to the E. The seaward termination of the modern mountain El-Garib probably represents this ancient foreland.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.