Monasteries of Wadi al-Natrun

A lot has happened since last Friday! Things are progressing fine in my unit – the tops of the walls are at my waist when I stand in the room I am excavating, and I have to be careful when I get out so I don’t bump into them and cause damage. A lot of the rooms are made of mud brick and then coated with white plaster, which residents could then paint. Alas, I have only plain white plaster so far, but I like it anyway. I’ve spent most of the week creating detailed drawings of my walls on graph paper, which is time-consuming but oddly satisfying.

Physically, working in the field is tiring but we are all holding up so far, no pharaoh’s revenge just yet. Every day I come home and dump about two tablespoons of sand from each shoe into the trash can. I just scratched behind one of my ears and found… sand. My calculator almost died because it got sand in the keys, and all of my mechanical pencils make an audible crunching noise when I press for more lead. The backs of my hands are starting to tan, unlike the rest of me because I am usually covered up to protect me from the sun.

On Monday night we drove into Cairo to see our ceramicist and plaster expert, Gillian, give a lecture. Not only was the lecture awesome, but we got to wander around for a couple of hours beforehand. Some Cairo veterans led us to an absolutely amazing leather shop that sellls handmade goods, and then we went to this incredible ice cream and pastry shop called Mandarine. I nearly died when I tried the nutella ice cream. WOW. Before we left the shop we stocked up on some delicious sweets, basically diverse configurations of dough, glaze, nuts, and cream.

On Tuesday we got a “day of rest,” meaning I didn’t have to wake up at 4 AM! I didn’t end up sleeping in all that much because my body is conditioned to wake up early, but getting up with the sun instead of before it was pretty fantastic. We almost didn’t get to rest at all, because we had to move our workspace to a different building. There is a huge pilgrimage event going on this weekend, something to do with a saint who climbed a nearby mountain, and hundreds of the faithful have descended upon Anafora. Everyone here is in a huge panic trying to deal with the crunch, and we found out suddenly that our space had been overbooked. We spent the morning hauling our supplies to a new room in a nearby building. Fortunately, we finished in time to visit two of the nearby monasteries here in Wadi al-Natrun, the Monastery of the Syrians and the Monastery of St. Bishoi.


The Monastery of the Syrians is absolutely gorgeous. It's not particularly ancient, but some of the paintings in the church probably date back to the tenth century or so. One of the abounas (fathers) gave us a quick tour and showed us around the courtyard and into a sample monastic cell. Modern monks' desire to show continuity with the monks of old is clear -- their sample cell is stocked with creepy papier mache monks dressed in the modern abouna uniform. Here is one weaving:


And here are some whispering to each other at dinner:


Interestingly, the Monastery of the Syrians purports to house the ancient cell of Saint Bishoi, even though there is a monastery of Bishoi a ten minute walk away. You can look up through a hole in the ceiling to see some light streaming in, illuminating a scraggly rope from which Bishoi allegedly hung by his beard to keep from lying down for a nap!


People take this stuff very seriously. As we were looking around the church, very devout Copts were coming in to pray and to touch holy relics. I even saw a woman crying. Saints' relics are wrapped in embroidered quilted material and smell like perfume, because that is how saints are supposed to smell. The standard procedure for venerating the relics is to quietly approach them, gently press your hand against the quilt's plastic covering, and cross yourself while whispering a prayer. Here is a photo of the "uncorrupted body of St. Bishoi" from the monastery named for him:


There were also Arabic graffiti all over the place, which, like the Coptic graffiti from a previous period in Egyptian history, are probably prayer requests.


After the Monastery of the Syrians, we walked over to the Monastery of St. Bishoi, which had much more modern stuff. We were kind of rushed, and we were given a quick tour by a very... energetic abouna who probably could have had a second career as a used car salesman. He told us with extreme conviction that the Greek myths were borrowed directly from myths about the Egyptian gods. I followed a friend's advice for dealing with such situations: "Smile and nod, and then say thank you a lot."

I'm really glad we went on the trip -- it was utterly fascinating to see modern monks in action, and to be able to see how seriously they take their past. And tomorrow? COPTIC CAIRO. Be still, my heart.