Town on the east bank of the Nile, in the 10th Upper Egyptian nome. Traces of settlements and cemeteries from the Badarian culture, named after this area, have been found here, as well as from the Naqada period. The Badarian period is dated from roughly 5,500 BC to 4,000 BC and is the earliest phase of the Predynastic period. A great deal of pottery, stone tools and terracotta and ivory anthropoid figurines have been found here, as well as remains from later periods, from the Early Dynastic period down to the Coptic period. Further, there is a small temple dating from the Old or Middle Kingdom, rebuilt at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty.