Pagans, Christians and Muslims:
Egypt in the First Millennium AD – The Annual International
Egyptology Colloquium 2012.
9-10 July 2012.
Due to work based commitments I was
unable to reach the first day of the conference until the 4pm break,
where I met up with Metropolitan Seraphim at the Museum as well as
some known Egyptologists who I have had the pleasure of meeting
before. Though I missed the first two lectures, I was there in time
to catch Jochem Kahl and Jane Faiers' talks on Middle Egypt.
Both talks were excellent and highly
insightful, looking at monastic settlements in middle Egypt. Jochem
Khal's detailed contemporary expeditions and analysis of the Gebel
Asyut Al-Gharbi site but, of the two, I found Mrs Faiers' especially
interesting as it used a photo diary from the last century to analyse
previous knowledge of the site. This talk was met with questions and
links to other research which Mrs Faiers said she would look into.
After this, we had the chance to
discuss the talks with others in the museum and look around the books
before heading in for Dr Gawdat Gabra's talk, which was this year's
Raymond and Beverly Sackler lecture.
Dr Gabra's lecture was focussed on the
connections between the Coptic mindset's link to Martyrdom and the
Ancient Egyptian view of death. It looked heavily at what Coptic
Christianity had inherited from its ancient ancestors, which
sometimes made it sound like a polemic, but resonated at a time when
Egypt is facing political uncertainty after the election of the
Islamist Dr Mursi as President.
The part of this lecture which I found
extremely interesting was the link between the christianisation of
the Ankh and the mindset of Martyrdom. Dr Gabra looked at this with
respect to the tradition of the Soldier-Saint in Coptic iconography,
a topic which I have recently studied myself. This made the lecture's
underlying study of the Coptic 'Church of the Martyrs' extremely
interesting though somewhat out of place in an Egyptology conference.
When the lecture ended, we attended the
reception which gave the guests a chance to talk and people the
chance to talk to Abba seraphim about Coptic Christianity, as most
were Egyptologists, so did not study the faith on its own. Having an
Archbishop there to talk to helped them put Dr Gabra's talk in
context and gain a further understanding of the faith behind the
Copts.
On the Second day, I reached the Colloquium at 10.30, in time to hear
Dr Cäcilia Fluck speak on the discovery of a female Tomb at
Antinoupolis. Though the title of the lecture leant heavily on the
study of textiles (Which I expected to be very boring) it was a
fascinating look at the traditions of the day. It developed into a
lecture on the clothing designs of women in 5th Century
Coptic Egypt, something which it is rare to have explained since the
majority of women we hear about in that period our the Holy Desert
Mothers or the aristocracy.
From this,
we were given three lectures on the area of Minya (Now Al-Minya) and
the monastic settlements here. The first two focussed heavily on the
tombs of the area. The first was by Dr. Katja Lembke, who explained
the changes in burial traditions in the Necropolis of Tuna El-Gebel.
The lecture looked into how the traditions became Hellenised, though
his did not cover the later Christian period, only the change from
the Egyptian Gods and rituals to the more Hellenic style of Roman and
Greek burial with images of their Gods and Myths.
This led smoothly on to the final two
talks of the morning which were on the use of Tombs and quarry worker
settlements by 4th and 5th century Anchorites
and the evidence at sites across Minya which show the presence of
monks. It covered the pattern of monastic settlements around cities
in the area and the development of Christian communities close to
abandoned cities such as Amarna which was the short lived Capital of
Egypt under Akenaten.
This final talk led to some interesting
discussions and questions on the Monks who lived there such as St
Ammonas who wrote to other monks in the area, instructing them in the
teachings of Saint Anthony. Some of the questions and comments were
far more obscure, such as a claim of Kabbalistic and Gnostic
teachings by the Monks under Ammonas, which led to some sniggers by
people in the audience. On the whole it was a productive session,
looking at the links and marriage between the Egyptian Landscape and
Christianity and explaining how it was a fertile environment for the
faith to develop and grow, even under the most difficult of
circumstances.
Altogether, the Colloquium was an
extremely successful event and a rare chance for Coptology to take
the forefront at an Egyptology event in the UK. With a demonstration
of the ongoing and planned work on the somewhat forgotten monastic
settlements of Early Medieval Egypt it demonstrated that the study of
Christian Egypt is still alive and well, with many breakthroughs
expected in the field within the next few years.
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