Antiquities - Coptic Wiki

Coptic art in the Coptic museum

Coptic art in the Coptic museum Coptic art began to emerge in Egypt around 300 A.D. In form, style, and content it was quite different from the art of Pharaonic Egypt. How’ did this come about? Broadly speaking, there were two causes. The first is that indigenous Egyptian art had been in contact with the […]

The churches of old cairo

The churches of old Cairo INTRODUCTION Cairo has been the capital of Egypt for more than one thousand years, but the actual city and history of Cairo are the legacy of many previous capitals of Egypt, of great cultural centers and successive civilizations founded there. The earliest was a predynastic settlement dating from the 4th […]

Shenoute’s Place in the History of Monasticism

Shenoute’s Place in the History of Monasticism A LITTLE MORE than 1,500 years ago, inside the massive church whose ruined hulk has come to be known as the White Monastery (Arabic Dayr al-Abyad), on an occasion near the middle of the fifth century when the monastery’s longtime leader Shenoute was about one hundred years old, […]

The Fate of the White Monastery Library

The Fate of the White Monastery Library THE LIBRARY OF the White Monastery, founded during the fourth century by Apa Pegol, an uncle of Shenoute, went through an outstanding period in the centuries that followed its creation. During the fourteenth century, however, the Arab occupation and the Mamluk attacks sounded the death knell for this […]

The Coptic Life of Shenoute

The Coptic Life of Shenoute THE COPTIC LIFE of Shenoute is best known in its Bohairic version. In Bohairic, a virtually complete version of the Vita Sinuthii, that is the Life of Shenoute, has come down to us. It gives an account of Shenoute’s life from his birth to his death and is attributed to […]

Monks and Scholars in the Panopolite Nome: The Epigraphic Evidence

Monks and Scholars in the Panopolite Nome: The Epigraphic Evidence DURING THE CONFERENCE “Perspectives on Panopolis,” which took place in Leyden in 1998, Lucia Criscuolo discussed the evidence of the Greek inscriptions, including Christian ones, from the Panopolite nome, the present-day Sohag-Akhmim area. Already in the beginning of her paper, she observed that it would […]

The Triconch Sanctuaries of Sohag

The Triconch Sanctuaries of Sohag “Le probleme de I’abside treflee, de son origine, de son developpement, I’histoire enfin de ce type de structure, a ete dans ces dernieres annees 1’argument de bien de travaux; mais, malgre cela, je crois que l’etude peut donner encore quelque resultat si on voudra profiter d’une documentation bien precise et […]

The Art of Coptic Churches

The Art of Coptic Churches WE WENT TO THE CHURCH while the elders of the monastery went with us. There were pictures of monks on the wall of the place, representing our monastic fathers: Antony the Great and Apa Pachom and Apa Paule and Apa Makarios.21 These were on one side and the archbishops of […]

The Church of the Holy Virgin (MINYA)

The Church of the Holy Virgin (MINYA) VARIOUS MUSLIM AUTHORS mentioned Gabal al-Tayr (‘the Mountain of the Birds’), south of Samalut on the east bank of the Nile, as one of the wonders of Egypt: migratory birds, a species called buqir (still not identified), would assemble in great numbers on this mountain that was also […]

The Monastery of al-Zawya (ASYUT)

The Monastery of al-Zawya (ASYUT) THE MONASTERY OF AL-ZAWYA, near the village of al-Zawya, resembles a fortress. High walls topped with ornamental brickwork surround houses and a church in an area of about 80×100 meters. The gate is situated in the west wall and narrow streets lead to a church in the center, dedicated to […]