THE SERAPEUM AND KOM EL-SHOQAFA

I hadn’t realized we’d arrived at the Serapeum in Alexandria when the van stopped short on a street lined with stores closed for the Friday holiday. It’s an unlikely place for an enormous ancient monument, amid the noise of the taxis and the filth of wrappers and plastics covering the ground.

The site is smaller than I had expected, elevated a few feet above street level and enclosed by a beige gate made of stucco. In the center is Diocletian’s Column, described to us a few days ago by Adam during his presentation. Walking along the edge of the enormous working pit at the Serapeum, one can see bits of round limestone architecture jutting out from beneath the dirt. At the end closest to the guards’ table near the entrance, a large semicircular limestone structure protrudes from the side of the dig area.

The column is indeed gigantic, so much so that I had to back up about 100 feet in order to get Adam and the whole pillar in one picture. It is made of red granite, and the bottom blocks are reused from ancient Egyptian monuments (I didn’t expect this, as it was never mentioned to us before; it was funny, then, to see glyphs lining the underside of this colossal Roman-era structure). I asked Asharaff if there had been a statue on top (as I remember Monika saying something about Trajan’s Column and others in Rome having statues on top), and he said that he believes the simple capital would have been enough to cap it off.

There were also some glyphs inside the base of the column, which we were able to examine thanks to a Page-size hole left by a missing granite block at the back. These images were quite strange, most of them geometric and without comparison to those we’ve seen before.

Next to the column is a labyrinth cut into the limestone underground, which seems to be part of a tunnel system stretching to the edges of the site underneath all of the structures on the surface. Numerous cylindrical shafts dug through to the ground level above let light into the otherwise dark system. I thought about what this could be, and I’ve decided that it may have been part of a network of priests’ and servants’ passages to get from place to place without being seen for whatever reason (no doubt the priests’ would have had something to do with the smooth running of rituals and ceremonies).

Behind the column is the most confusing part of the Serapeum area: the underground tunnel system thought by some to have been an auxiliary space for the Great Library. The passages smell quite dank, and the humidity is unbearable—if it’s so wet, how could scrolls have survived here?

In the main hall that begins at the entrance there are two shallow circular depressions in the ceiling, which run on roughly the same axis as the door and the staircase ahead. One of these is a bit off-center in a roughly-cut low dome. We were unsure as to what these were, but the general consensus is that they were probably part of an unfinished light source. They wouldn’t have been niches for columns, because they’d stand in the way of the staircase and the long hall branching off to the right after the entrance if this was so.

In one room, strange lowercase “r”-shaped niches were carved in alternating top-and-bottom rows along the walls. In the other rooms, rectangular niches are scattered from place to place, seemingly without a base plan. No one seem to have any idea what these were for, but it’s pretty clear that they were not intended for the storage of scrolls.

Someone mentioned animal burials, but that wouldn’t explain their size (too big for a bird, to small for a bull). And if they were cut upon need, as William suggested, then their unorganized, asymmetrical orientation doesn’t make sense. These may be one of the great inexplicable wonders of Egypt, like the mystery of the building of the pyramids (and at least that one has some plausible theories attached to it).

All in all, I enjoyed our visit to the Serapeum not just because it has so many inexplicable features, but also because of the freedom we were given to roam around and explore its underground tunnels. I didn’t feel like my attention was being diverted from the physical remains by a lecture, since Adam gave us the background information we needed on one of our seminar days. And I truly enjoyed venturing off on my own, albeit with the others close behind.

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After our visit to the Serapeum, we went to Kom el-Shoqafa, the site I focused on for my presentation a few days ago. The catacomb looked just as I had expected, since I became rather well-versed in the area of Marjorie Venit’s Monumental Tombs of Ancient Alexandria while doing my research. I must admit, though, that I imagined everything on a much larger scale. The only exception was the triclinium, which in reality has benches so much larger than those I had expected that I gasped out of shock when I entered the room.

I attempted to give the group a tour of the tomb (I’m a Barnard tour guide—it’s in my blood), but certain students decided to wander off and pay me no respect. After a short while, I set off to explore the loculi, which were not described in detail or photographed by Venit.

The loculi run in two rows on top of each other on the second level. The bottom row was flooded as recently as two years ago according to William, and today the ground is still wet (in fact, there were a few sunken-in loculi that were filled with ground water). Nick stuck his hand in the water. Ew.

Though I read through all of Venit’s work, I hadn’t understood her explanation of the placement of the bodies in the Main Tomb until today: the entrances to the coffins are at the back of the naos, making them inaccessible from the chamber.

The rest of the site was just as I’d expected, with the exception of pieces of the Stagni and Tigrane Tombs outside the catacomb. The Tigrane Tomb got its own little house, but a cut from the upper half of the Stagni Tomb sits exposed behind the Tigrane Tomb house, amid broken columns and sarcophagi, perhaps even from other sites. I was frustrated at this, and turned a blind eye when the tourists began to use the statue fragments as benches.

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I was going to add “and some rants about my experiences in Alexandria” to the end of this blog title, because today was the first time I really felt threatened and uncomfortable as a woman in Egypt.

I tried to rationalize the noise level of the city in comparison to Cairo after last night’s Call to Prayer nearly blew out my eardrums. But it’s not because it was Mohammad’s birthday yesterday, nor is it because today is Friday that it happened again. It’s because Alexandria is a much more religious (and fanatical, if I’m allowed to say that,) city than anywhere else we’ve been in this country.

The culture of Alexandria is one of restriction—not just for the women, but for tourists, non-Muslims, and even the men (if you think about the suppression of their sexuality).

We were lied to when we were told that this city is more European, more open, and more modern. As Page put it, the Alexandria of today matured too fast for its own good. It is stuck in the 1950s, with technology from the 1990s and the mindset of an incredibly chauvinist movement. The people seem to have taken for granted the inventions and ideas of other countries, while still perpetuating the hatred and antiquated ideas that set radical sects of Islam off from the mainstream. None of this spells anything good for their image.

Leigh, Page, Adam and I went to the beach this afternoon. We three women were fully-clothed, no bathing suits, with long skirts and sleeves. But the minute we set foot on the beach, we were badgered by young adults and by small children who have (already) been taught to hate.

I cannot imagine being a mother and teaching my child to disrespect women. I cannot imagine telling a child that it is okay to spit on women (as one did with Leigh), to shout at them and to alienate or make spectacles of them by staring incessantly. I will never tell my child to try and make other people feel uncomfortable in their own skin. I cannot imagine teaching my child to clap and shout after a group of women attempting to respect my country while simply wanting to use a public beach leaves the scene because of the torment they elected not to have to endure.

This is not the way Islam is practiced in the U.S., in Cairo or in Jerusalem. This is a product of the religious atmosphere of Alexandria, which is severely different from the others I’ve mentioned. I would love to work in Dakhleh again, to visit Kharga, and to spend a few days mixed up in the hustle and bustle of Cairo. But I will never set foot in Alexandria again. Ever.

GIZA AND SAQQARA

I’m sitting on the roof of Happy City Hotel, smoking a coconut hookah and reflecting on our day at Giza and Saqqara. I’m emailing everyone to let them know that I finally made it to the pyramids, but I still can’t believe it myself.

The pyramids are weathered, their choppy limestone skeletons exposed almost entirely (with the exception of the top of Khafre’s pyramid, where one can still see the high-quality limestone casing that used to cover the whole of these structures). I found it impossible to capture an entire pyramid in one picture, so I had to take several of each to show all of the sides and rows of blocks.

Standing in front of the Great Pyramid gave me a funny feeling: it’s so big and so impressive for its time (2500 BCE), something to marvel at—but I just didn’t know what to do with myself once I was there. Most of the other students bought tickets to go inside and crawl up to the burial chamber, but I stayed behind with Monika and William.

The three of us walked around the structure as we debated whether or not it was ever painted (the answer is of course no, if only because the Egyptians would never have wasted their time adding color to something outside that would fade in mere decades). Monika and I found ourselves at the museum housing Khiops’ solar boat, where we were asked to wear cloth slippers over our shoes; they probably wanted to save money on floor polish, so we did them a favor and slid around the place like we were wearing ice skates.

The solar boat is extremely large–probably too large to have been merely a symbolic grave good. My guess is that the boat was used at some point and then buried with the king for use in the afterlife, though William suggested that it might have been constructed for real use in the afterlife without having been used before. The display is fantastic: three floors of photographs and relics like rope and wood, as well as posters showing the conservation of materials and restoration of the structure. Above hangs the solar boat itself, raised off of the second floor by t-shaped metal posts. The conservators clearly went through a lot of trouble to make the boat look like it was when it was built, probably using images from tombs and other buildings contemporary with the vessel. Though new wood had to be used to reconstruct some of the more delicate parts of the boat, the bottom is made from the original pieces. Amazingly, it is held together only by rope and the pressure of expanding wood after it’s been exposed to moisture.

Our trip to the Sphinx, which we saw next, was surprisingly short. Asharaff took us through the gates to the inner court, which is made of granite and constructed in the same way as the Osireion at Abydos (his theory is that they are linked, though built fifteen dynasties apart). We split up and walked up a stone ramp to the viewing area closest to the monument, where I thought I could get a good photo; instead, I was pushed and shoved by scantily-clad tourists trying to funnel in through the small surrounding walkways. (And what a display of poor taste! Their were shirtless men and women with shorts riding up their rears. No respect, I say!)

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Saqqara was originally supposed to be the subject of my site report, so I found myself adding little tidbits to William’s and Asharaff’s spiels. First we visited the Teti Pyramid, which is covered in neat rows of uncolored glyphs. The ceiling shows signs of earthquake damage and quick restoration to stop it from collapsing, in the form of plaster buffers between the stones. The king’s name is everywhere, filling in all of the blank spaces between the spells! Perhaps they should’ve thought of a more exciting space-filler…

I was particularly impressed by the reliefs in the 6th-dynasty tombs, which focused a great deal on daily life (like Petosiris’ tomb at Tuna el-Gebel and the Old Kingdom tombs), and are so detailed that the rope looks like rope, the fish look like fish and the force-feeding of piglets looks like the force-feeding of piglets (those were quite disturbing, I have to say). Other images included butterflies, dancers and, er, man parts. These images are important no doubt because they can help scholars understand how the people carried out everyday tasks in this area, in conjunction with surviving texts.

Each tomb had one or more false doors with cylindrical lintels, which reminded me of the one on display in the Met’s Egyptian Wing. Whereas the wall art was in raised relief, the decoration on the doors was in sunken relief (except in Mere-Ruka’s tomb, where the door was decorated in paint alone).

In the tomb of Ka-Gmni, two figures were defaced; I have a feeling that these were of the same person, someone who committed some crime or disrespected the ruling party at the time of this act. Other than that, the walls of each of these structures were in great condition, save the missing paint on top of the reliefs. On one wall, Mere-Ruka’s wife is helped to stand by a group of professional mourners, wearing wigs in contrast with her bald head. What a powerful scene!

I really wish we had designated a separate day for Saqqara, because I was exhausted by the time we arrived at Djoser’s complex. It would have been nice to walk around with some energy left in me, since the site contains the earliest known stone structures (exciting!) and is quite well-preserved for its date. Here are the results of the restoration of the world’s first colonnade, and the step pyramid that developed out of a mere mastaba. Instead of exploring the area, I found myself bending my knees around one of the foundation blocks of Djoser’s pyramid to get comfortable as the group nodded with the rhythm of William’s voice.

WHITE AND RED MONASTERIES AND AKHMIM

Today we explored the remnants of early monasticism with visits to the Red and White Monasteries. We began with the latter, which is nick-named for its white limestone composition largely created from the remains of ancient Egyptian temples. Its official name is the Church of Saint Shenoute.

The monastery boasts a sloping front with wave-like cornices and a traditional pylon like those we have seen at Hibis and Douche in the Valley: it is clearly modeled after older sacred buildings, and faint reliefs (some of them upside-down) can still be seen here and there. We sat in the courtyard of the monastery, which used to be the nave of a basilica when extra floors stood and a wooden divider sectioned the altar off from the rest of the building, while William gave us a run-down on Saint Shenoute and the Coptic Church. This was particularly interesting for me because I am interested in early Christian art and the development of the Church and its sects.

Shenoute was apparently a ruthless leader who took pleasure in controlling his nuns and monks with the use of corporal punishment. Most of these people bought into monasticism because they were poor and wanted a source of guaranteed food and housing; banishment was considered the worst punishment of all (ironic, since it would seem that one might want to escape the oppression brought upon him or her by Shenoute).

William explained the differences between the teachings of Saint Anthony and those of Pachomius: Anthony advocated monks’ seclusion for spiritual purity, while Pachomius, whom Shenoute followed, saw living in a close religious community as the best way to enforce the teachings of Christianity. We were also told that the Coptic Church is distinguished from other sects by its sanctification of Mary: Copts believe that Jesus was born divine, as opposed to becoming divine at the occasion of his baptism, which makes Mary the mother of a god of sorts.

When entering the church, we were asked to remove our shoes–clearly a spin-off of the Muslim practice of removing one’s footwear before prayer. The sanctuary is arranged like that of a Greek Orthodox church, with red rugs and high, domed ceilings. Rows of modern Coptic icons, with faces composed of flat layers, gold backgrounds and names beneath them (to legitimize the saints depicted through the use of text, as with old Cypriot icons bearing the initials IC XC next to Jesus), sit atop a wooden chancel wall.

The chapel is in use again, spawning a series of new archaeological excavations on site. The monastery will likely provide some interesting details about early monastic architectural foundations in the future, but until then, it’s simply a nice old building (I say this in anticipation of my thoughts on the spectacular Red Monastery).

Cool things I learned while at the White Monastery:

• Under Muslim rule, Jews wore yellow turbans, and Christians wore blue turbans.
• Cyril was one of Shenoute’s patrons.
• The garden next door to the monastery caused the back wall to cave in when it was watered.
• There was strict control over food rations at this site! Was Shenoute a crazy dietitian?
• Coptic was used for record-keeping and to translate the Bible from Greek until Shenoute helped make it a literary language.
• The current Coptic pope is named Shenoute!
• An ostrich egg is hung over some Coptic sanctuary doors.

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The Red Monastery is staffed by a lovely man and his family, who have a quaint little snack stand just before the entrance. The structure looks very plain and aged next to the bright tapestry covering the stand, but the inside is simply marvelous.

An intricately-carved stone lintel, original as far as I could tell, sits at the top of the door. Walking inside, one can see three large half-domes above several stories of carved imitation balconies, with elaborate hoods on window-like niches. The Red Monastery is the epitome of my interest in Christian art: on the walls are two centuries’ worth of paint layers depicting saints, floral motifs and geometric patterns originating in the 6th century.

The site is being restored by none other than the wonderful Italian team working at Luxor Temple (it’s actually a school, the Moras’ school). Here, small test-cleaning “windows” are visible, as well as a clear line about three feet above the floor separating the immaculate stories above from the gritty, blackened walls below (this soot is called “dirty water” in the conservation trade). The clean paint is so vibrant that it looks brand new. Places where older stages of painting are visible underneath newer layers are, to the conservators’ credit, so well blended that the layers look almost natural in their fragmentary states.

My time in the Small Finds Room with Angela and Mohammad got me intrigued about restoration, to the point where I’m actually considering pursuing a degree in conservation for my Master’s. Studying under the Moras might be a possibility for me in the future, as I certainly appreciate their work and applaud their techniques.

Perhaps one of the most genius techniques they’ve employed at the Red Monastery and elsewhere is to mix colors from preserved paint with grey plaster, so the empty spaces between the remaining artwork compliment–and don’t overshadow–the images. The stages of paint exposed at the Monastery blend so flawlessly together next to this plaster, and I feel like nothing is lost with their treatment of the paint. In addition to leaving the ground level partially unclean, the arch on the far right of the entrance has also been left as it was. My guess is that they’re getting set to work on it next, when their campaign resumes in three days’ time (I wish I could be there to see it!).

It was funny to see a fully-stocked conservator’s workroom in a corner of the church, surrounded by light wood scaffolding. They hung a sign listing their inventory in Italian, and a woven image of Jesus and Mary on the wall. Boxes of Dasani and long extension cords reminded me of the Small Finds Room in Dakhleh.

The team is apparently working to stop local people from using the church, so the paintings don’t incur any more damage. The reason why they’re allowed to work (and why we were allowed in) is because the altar board is not in its place. The chapel isn’t at risk for disturbance by tourists, both fortunately and unfortunately, because of the apparent contempt people seem to have for red brick; they flock to the worser-preserved White Monastery instead. William believes that once the conservation campaign is finished, the Red Monastery will be a popular tourist attraction for its fantastic artwork.

The art itself reminds me a lot of Cypriot church art from the same period, where saints with long faces are painted with raised hands and blank stares. The colors on these saints are very similar to those I saw last summer–lots of reds, yellows and dull greens–but the colors used to paint the patterns on faux-marble columns and hooded niches are incredibly bright, in pinks and golden yellows. Marquees of legitimizing text, like in Cyprus and at the White Monastery, are painted either below the paintings or on each side of the figures within them.

I really, really, really loved the Red Monastery. I think it’s my favorite place in Egypt so far.

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On the road to Minya, we stopped at Akhmim, a new site where a large statue (8 meters high) of Rameses II’s daughter, Merit-Amun, was uncovered. Strange round brick structures surround the statue, and a cache of the SCA’s neglected materials, including blocks from Tel el-Amarna, sit in the back corner under an awning. An altar or statue base with a Greek inscription on it seemed a little out of place. The whole site was out of context and very poorly organized; I kind of wish we had had a lecture on it or something, because I really didn’t know what a lot of its elements were.

VALLEY OF THE KINGS, DEIR EL-MEDINA, MEDINET HABU AND THE COLOSSI OF MEMNON

We did a lot of running around today! We left the hotel at 8:00 (after a fabulous breakfast, might I add,) and went to the west bank of the Nile to explore the Valley of the Kings. We visited three tombs: those belonging to Tesert, Rameses IX, and Thutmoses III. Page was squealing with delight the entire time.

The most striking part of Tesert’s tomb was the relief of Knum with outspread wings on a large wall immediately inside. A strange green-checker pattern was painted on most of the clothing worn by servants in the reliefs; it may have been ceremonial garb. Most of the carvings towards the front of the tomb were painted, but as one walks further and further into the tomb (I’m making it sound endlessly long–well, it wasn’t–it was actually kind of short,) it becomes apparent that nearly everything else is unfinished. Some of the walls are covered in black and white sketches, where reliefs were meant to be sunk. It’s interesting to see these in obvious places, because it points to the importance of symbolic locations over those that would be more readily accessible to mortal viewers. In the burial chamber is a fully-restored sarcophagus in the shape of a cartouche (weird, right?) under a barrel-vaulted ceiling.

Tuthmoses III’s tomb was covered almost entirely with black and red “stick-figure” figures and grids of glyphs, as if most of it was never destined for paint. Judging by the layers of watery blue and green paint I was able to examine, it seems like the artists used black and red to make rough yet well-thought-out sketches, and then used other colors as overlays. I can sort of imagine a drawing school from the look of this art, where students learned to use simple shapes like triangles and S-shaped lines to make composite figures.

Rameses IX’s tomb, from the 20th dynasty, was in sharp contrast to the 18th dynasty tombs. At the end of a small, not-too-slopey dromos, I found myself staring up at a brilliant ceiling of blue and gold. The figures on the walls are immense in comparison with those in Tuthmoses’s tomb, and wearing varied fabrics painted in great detail. Several faces were depicted from the front, though not with much skill–clearly, there is a reason why the ancient Egyptians stuck to drawing people from the side.

Deep inside I found what looked like a shelf-tomb, with two levels of rectangular benches along the perimeter of the room. The tomb is at a much lower elevation than the rest, which may explain why everything had to be cut down into the rock, as opposed to up or straight across it. My guess is that the sarcophagus fit between these benches at one time.

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Page gave her presentation on Dier el-Medina, the workmen’s village for the Valley of the Kings. I have to say that it was very nice to hear about domestic architecture, and about the builders of the great structures we attribute to kings (“this temple was built by Rameses II…”). Based on students’ texts found at Dier el-Medina (like at Amheida), the town had its own school; this means that learning was localized, and that many of the activities carried out by the people of the village could be done right on this site.

Since the people living in the village were professional tomb artists and scribes, their own resting places proved to be incredibly detailed and painted with the utmost care. The people have curly hair and realistic noses. Bright, complex patterns cover their clothing. A couple frightening animals, one of which looks like the rabbit from Donnie Darko, are also depicted. The new scenes painted in these tombs show a reservation by the artisans of Dier el-Medina to give the men in power their best work; instead, they appear to have saved it for themselves. This shows an interesting hidden struggle between the workers and their bosses. (The only exception is the long, flowing cloak on Anubis at the local temple, which was very well-executed.)

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Medinet Habu, our next stop, is the mortuary temple of Rameses III. I was expecting a mammoth, elaborate structure, given the Rameses’ arrogant building practices. Needless to say, I was correct.

When I walked towards the gate, which is modeled after an Assyrian style and rests in place of a traditional pylon, a basalt (or dark-grey stone) statue of Sekmet (?) greeted me to my left. The gate ahead of me was used by the king to watch his army march forth into the distance (so like a Rameses).

Interesting motifs within the sanctuary include an ankh with arms, repeated in a linear pattern. Rows of three-dimensional captives’ heads sit on stone shelves at eye level, jutting out from the walls. There was also a scene showing the collection of the phalluses of the king’s enemies after a battle. How tasteful.

Several areas of this temple show evidence of occupation during the post-Pharonic period, which was common and occurred at most of the sites we’ve visited so far. For example, holes dug into the floor where people could tie down their animals dot the sanctuary. The ceilings are blackened with smoke from fires, to warm or perhaps to cook.

I was interrupted from my examination of the structure by a group of schoolboys visiting the temple. They were carrying a boom-box, blasting “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely” by the Backstreet Boys. Ah, the spread of early-90s American pop culture through the modern Arab world…

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On the way back to Luxor, we stopped to see the Colossi of Memnon. They sure are large, but they didn’t look too pleasant covered in scaffolding.

ABU SIMBEL AND SAINT SIMEON MONASTERY

We awoke this morning at 3am and piled into the van to join a convoy to Abu Simbel. As it was not one of the attractions on our itinerary, only Asharaff accompanied the student group on the trip. The caravan was composed of hundreds of cars and vans; I didn’t see this for myself because I was fast asleep until we arrived (nor did I see the sunrise we all anticipated when we hopped in the van). When one first arrives at Abu Simbel and looks at the back of the man-made mountains created for the restored monuments, it can be slightly underwhelming. But once you’ve turned the corner on the trail towards the temple to Rameses the Great, you can justify the long journey from Aswan.

The façade of the temple to Rameses II (who fancied himself a god) is, I realized, perhaps one of the most reused and recognizable images representing Egypt in modern times. A striking set of four enormous seated figures guards the door, while inside is a long hall lined with 20-foot-high gods and goddesses. The walls are adorned with famous carvings of Rameses smiting Assyrians and Nubians, as well as offering items to gods. The sanctuary is different from those we have seen because of the level of preservation it boasts: the cult statues (all four of them, seated in a row) still remain.

The neighboring temple to Nefertari, a favorite among Rameses’ wives, is equally as impressive in its wall carvings; however, I found the façade and columned hall to be rather plain in comparison with the king’s temple.

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With William and Monika in tow, we headed to the Monastery of Saint Simeon, built around the 4th-century settlement of Anba Hatra, an early monastic figure. My first thought was finally, I get to see something new (new as in post-Pharonic)! I really love churches, so this was a treat for me.

The monastic tradition at this site lasted from the 6th through the 14th centuries, when the Coptic community declined in size (unlike the Delta, which converted to Islam during the 9th century). During its time it was a social center in addition to serving religious purposes.

At first glance, the monastery looks like nothing more than a group of abandoned structures, the stone foundations of which are yellow with age. Inside, however, one can find evidence of recent restoration work with the unique architecture on each of the monastery’s two natural hill terraces. On the ground floor are dwellings for pilgrims, who would stay at the monastery to pray or heal from sickness. The church is also on the ground floor—I spotted the remnants of several stages of building (apparently, it began with the caves of hermit settlers and grew to a full basicilica-style building, modified from its original shape to accommodate domed roofs made of wood during the 13th century).

The dome supports, in the corners of the structure, frame small rounded niches closer to the ground. Faded paint is set atop a light plaster, the whole of which is surrounded by a dark brown plaster applied by conservators. The earliest paintings were supposedly from the 6th and 7th centuries, but what remains today dates approximately to the 13th century. It is obvious from the condition of the paint that the art was allowed to decay for some time, as the bottom of an image of Christ in Majesty seems the only part preserved well enough to be treated with chemicals for preservation. In the corners, small supporting domes are painted in bold blues and purples. Beneath Christ in Majesty are the 24 elders of the apocalypse, all defaced.

There are no roofs on either of the floors of the structure today. As a result, it feels very open and airy, almost like a courtyard or a peristyle hall. The walls are crumbling, but I could still make out the angled windows (angled for protection, like those on medieval fortresses). I walked from the sanctuary to a small, oddly-shaped room with sloping sides, the apparent cave of Anba Hatra. The ceiling of this room is remarkably well-preserved, with beautiful red and yellow geometric patterns and some paintings of saints. Someone saw one with a square halo, and William said that he thought square halos were for worthy people living at the time of the painting’s execution.

It is easy to forget that the monastery has a second floor, since it’s essentially outside on the ground floor. We made our way up to the second level for a little while, where I noticed clay pipes (much like qanats) snaking around the corners and ending in large basins. In the refectory, several large, round stone benches mark the ground. A strange stone structure, possibly an oven but with unnecessary detail-work if so, sits in the center of the room next to the refectory. On our way out, we passed by a row of very thin vaulted rooms, likely a stable.

I must admit that this is not how I pictured an Egyptian monastery. Judging by what I had seen in Cyprus from the 7th century, I was expecting a much more ornate and delicately-built structure. But what gives Saint Simeon’s its charm is how it literally arose out of the rock face—a job well done, I would say, for a group of hermits living in a period of strife.