I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I love churches. That’s why our trip to Old Cairo today was such a treat; we explored an entire neighborhood of places of worship, which were fascinating despite their current state of 19th-century style and restoration.
Our day began in the small backyard garden of a local café, where we sipped extra-pricey tea as William explained the origins of some of the buildings in the area. The Fortress of Bablyon, the beginnings of which were constructed during the reign of Trajan (wow, that’s old), encloses our wandering vicinity. It was originally constructed right on the bank of the Nile, but shifts westward by the ground have left it about 300 meters away from its original location at present. The neighborhood inside the fortress became a Christian and Jewish ghetto surrounded by a Muslim city after the Arab conquest. On one side of the fortress walls are two large towers, from which one of the only bridges across the Nile (through Rawdah Island) was once controlled. Today, the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint George sits on top of the remains of one tower, while part of the other serves as a pedastil for the Church of the Virgin, or the Suspended Church (Muwalakka in Arabic).
The area outside of the Church of the Virgin, between the two towers at the site of the Coptic Museum, looks like a gated community. The facade of the church sports small windows with pointed arches and little balconies too small for use. Walking inside, I scanned the rows of poster-size photographs of past Coptic popes; among them was a frightening image of a deceased monk, split-frame with another image of his decaying corpse years later. I made a note of this, since it relates directly to my major thesis topic (the exhibition of the dead for institutionalized or ritual purposes), and continued down the hallway.
A lovely open court with bright beige walls and dark wooden fixtures serves as an anteroom for the chapel itself. It reminded me a lot of the atrium at the Frick Museum in New York, one of my favorite places to read and study. A lintel made of Ottoman-Period tiles and dark wood hangs over the door to the chapel. A test-cleaning done by the same Italian team working at the Red Monastery and elsewhere left two bright strips on a column beside the door; William explained that the Italian team was simply too expensive for the church to hire, “a mistake”.
When I entered, I could smell the familiar scent of church incense (my best friend is Greek Orthodox). The gallery is lined with pointed arches and is supported by late-antique columns, while on the ground floor are 12th-century wooden screen walls in cookie-cutter patterns and matte walls decorated with 18th-century icons. A strange podium of sorts sits in the center of the sanctuary, much like those I saw in the churches of Cyprus last summer. The roof tyle is “wagon-vaulted,” according to William, symbolic of Noah’s ark. In the second room, the window cut in the chancel wall (or hiekel wall), originally used to view an icon or statue (like at Gebel el-Tayr), allows visitors to examine a newly-discovered 13th- or 14th-century painting. Elaborate wood and ivory carvings and inlays adorn the chancel wall. Beneath the second room is the substructure of the original Roman tower, which visitors can view through a glass panel in the floor, lined with a light wooden balcony. Before I left, I picked up a photograph of that dead monk poster at the gift shop. Thus starts my thesis-driven collection of dead-people pictures!
What I really loved about the Church of the Virgin was the montage of different eras inside and out. It was such a great mix, really showing the evolution of church artistic and architectural styles. I was also pleased with how many connections I was able to make between this church and those I have visited before. It really feels like I’m building up my churchy-knowledge repertoire!
We exited the church and headed down the block, where we walked down a small staircase to a narrow ally paved with stone. The ally was dotted with churches, and the walls showed pockets of exposed brickface, the blank spaces between filled with peddlers’ merchandise. Adam and I met a (presumably Jewish) merchant who spoke perfect Hebrew. He handed us pamphlets on the restoration of Ben Ezra Synagogue, which we would see later on.
After a nice chat with our new friend, we entered the Church of Abu-Serga, the oldest in the area. The chapel felt much more open than that of the Church of the Virgin, with alternating pitched and domed wooden roofs. Pink garlands hung from the chancel wall, which had the same kind of ivory and wood inlays, as well as carvings of saints, as the last church (an element of 12th- and 13th-century style). The same strange podium sat in the middle of the sanctuary.
The same Italian team I mentioned previously recently uncovered a 13th-century painting of Christ in Majesty in the chapel, painted by the same artist who worked at the Monastery of Saint Anthony in the Eastern Desert: this means that the artist had wealthy and driven patrons, since he was able to travel so far to work on these great pieces.
This church sits above a crypt where the Holy Family is said to have lived at some point. We were able to enter the room with the staircase down into the crypt, where I saw many frustrated worshipers sigh at the throngs of tourists in their house of prayer. I really wish we could have gone to these churches at a time when local Copts were not expected to pray, because I hate being an invasive tourist.
Speaking of not wanting to be disruptive to prayer services, our next stop was an inactive house of worship. Ben Ezra Synagogue, probably the only one we’ll see with this program, no longer has an Eternal Light above its altar (which means it hasn’t been in use for some time). Beautiful columns and statues that look marble–but are really cast-iron–have gold inlays of the Ten Commandments and other religious motifs. Ben Ezra is the site where the Geniza Documents, 11th- to 19th-century records of everyday life, were found in the 1890s. I was expecting pointed arches in the style of churches in the area, but instead found rounded arches and a golden-red and blue ceiling.
The layout of the synagogue is very different from what I’m used to: usually, pews for men are in front of the bima, the women’s pews behind them, separated by a screen. Here the sanctuary is lined with black benches, which means that the men probably prayed on the ground floor, facing the center of the building, and the women in the galleries. This is much like the old style of the Coptic Church, which clearly influenced Jewish practices in the area. On my way out, I gave some money to the cemetery-preservation fund. Unfortunately, we were unable to visit the cemetery.
Our last stop was the Mosque of ‘Amr, the oldest mosque on record (built in 641). It started very small, but was expanded 5 times in 200 years (until about 820), using basilica-style construction turned 90 degrees (everything looks very flat and horizontal, with aisles of worshipers facing inward in a square towards the center space). Because it is a “Friday mosque” where everyone prays together, it grew with the population. The Muslim community grew with the conversion of Christians after a failed rebellion over taxes during the ninth century (likely including Asharaff’s family, according to William). Most of what we saw dates to the latest expansion and update, in about 1980.
The women had to wear these absurd neon-green cloaks, which I felt were less for modesty and more for outcasting because of their color (I’m not being cynical; just honest). We sat on a red carpet floor in the huge, open space lined with classical columns and supported by wooden beams while William lectured a little on Islam.
Woven into the carpet were the outlines of prayer mats, so as to arrange worshipers in neat rows. I was fortunate enough to experience my first realtime Muslim prayer service, where I saw men of all ages following the vocal cues of the voice on the speaker. Their prayer is more of a performance than I expected, and included many acute yet symbolic motions that were intriguing for a nice Jewish girl (like touching one’s hands to his ears in a swift, light movement before kneeling to pray). I think a lot of the assumptions I made about Muslim prayer rituals based on hearing their services as opposed to seeing them were turned on their heads today. I’m really glad we got to sit in on the service, and I hope they enjoyed our company.
Alright, I have to leave this coffee shop. They have the same CD on repeat, and I’ve heard When a Man Loves a Woman and My Heart Will Go On eight times already!
