The Nile

by Toby Wilkinson

  Amidst all these outward signs and sounds of Islam, it is easy to forget that, for three centuries, Egypt was a Christian nation. Indeed, between the proscription of the pagan cults and the Arab conquest, Egypt was one of the leading centres of Christianity. It still has the largest Christian population of any Middle Eastern country—well over eight million people, or 10 per cent of the population—and its Christian history, as the Nag Hammadi codices show, is richer and more illuminating than most. Besides the apostle St. Mark, whose bishopric at Alexandria is still the ecclesiastical headquarters of Egyptian Christianity, two figures, one ancient and one modern, have played a decisive role in shaping the Christian faith of the Nile Valley. Both came from Middle Egypt.

  In AD 251, a boy was born to wealthy landowner parents in the village of Cooma near Ihnasya el-Medina (a city then known by its classical name, Herakleopolis Magna). Although a few pagan temples remained open, notably at Philae, Egypt was already largely Christianised, and Herakleopolis was no exception. The boy’s parents died when he was about eighteen, leaving him in the care of his unmarried sister. Whether it was the trauma of losing his mother and father, or the trauma of living with his sister, the young man—whose name was Antony—decided soon afterwards to follow the words of Jesus, sell all he had, and give it to the poor. And, being a landowner, he had quite a lot to sell. Some of the family estate he gave away to neighbours, but the rest he sold, donating the proceeds to the local poor. He then placed his sister with a group of Christian virgins—so much for fraternal feelings—and took himself away to become the disciple of a local hermit.

  In the third century AD, monasticism had already become an established way of life among the Christian community in Egypt. The harsh, uninhabitable wastes around Lake Mareotis near Alexandria offered an unrivalled setting for solitary contemplation and prayer, and the desert landscape was dotted with lone anchorites, fasting and praying in the wilderness. Antony decided to follow this tradition, going out into the alkaline Nitrian Desert west of Alexandria (whence the ancient Egyptians collected the natron used in mummification) and staying there for thirteen years, cut off from civilisation. There, according to his later biographer Athanasius, Antony was visited by the devil, who afflicted him with laziness and boredom (understandable, in the circumstances), and tempted him with imaginings of women. Like all good Christian hermits, Antony rebuffed the devil through the power of prayer. Even so, he felt compelled to move into a nearby tomb where local villagers brought him food. After more tempting by the devil, Antony retreated back into the desert to a more distant mountain on the edge of the Fayum, not far from his birth place. There he lived in an abandoned Roman fort for the next two decades. Nobody was allowed to enter his cell; his only means of communication with the outside world was a small crevice, through which parcels of food could be passed and blessings given. When, one day, he emerged from the fort, he was reported to be healthy and serene; and he was promptly hailed as a holy man.

  In his new role as a leader of the Desert Fathers, Antony undertook missionary work in the Fayum, confirming Christians in their faith, and visited those imprisoned for their faith in Alexandria, in defiance of the authorities. When they refused to martyr him, he returned to his old fort and became a focus for pilgrims seeking forgiveness, healing or enlightenment. But Antony was a hermit at heart, and the constant visits kept him from his prayers. So he retreated further into the desert until he found an isolated well where he settled down, cultivated a garden, and made rush mats. Unfortunately, the disciples and pilgrims continued to arrive, so Antony engaged in manual labour to purify his soul.

  His fame spread far and wide throughout the Byzantine Empire. The Emperor Constantine asked Antony to pray for him, and Antony’s sayings were collected, written down and disseminated to the faithful. He prophesied the persecution of Christianity and its ultimate victory. When he felt that death was near, he instructed his followers to bury his body in an unmarked grave on the top of a mountain. There, his remains were reportedly dug up in AD 361 and taken to Alexandria. They were later transferred to Constantinople and, in the eleventh century, given by the Byzantine emperor to a French count, who had them re-interred at La Motte Saint Didier (duly renamed Saint-Antoine-en-Dauphiné). It, in turn, became a place of pilgrimage; miraculous healings, especially of skin infections, were attributed to St. Antony. The biography of his life, translated into Latin, became one of the best-known works of Christian literature, and his temptation in the wilderness was a popular subject in religious art. Antony’s fame spread the concept of monasticism throughout western Christendom. The great monastic orders of western Europe thus owe their inspiration to a man from Middle Egypt. From a village on the Nile to a town in south-eastern France: Antony has travelled a long way and his impact on the development of Christianity, in Egypt and Europe, has been profound.

  In twenty-first-century Egypt, monasteries are once again popular retreats for young Copts. The renaissance of monasticism, and the survival of Coptic Christianity in the face of persecution and official indifference, owes much to a second Christian leader from Middle Egypt—a man in whose life St. Antony’s example played an influential role. Nazeer Gayed Roufail was born on 3 August 1923 in a village called Salaam (“peace”) in the governorate of Asyut. He was the youngest child of eight, and his mother died shortly after his birth. Nazeer was forced to leave his home town to be raised by his older brother Raphael in the Delta city of Damanhur. After Coptic elementary school and American middle school, the young Nazeer moved to Cairo for his secondary education and became active in the Coptic Sunday-school movement. His first teaching role, appropriately, was at St. Antony’s church in the Cairo suburb of Shubra. Nazeer was academically gifted and, at the age of twenty, he was accepted into the University of Fuad I (now Cairo University) to study English and history. But his summer vacations he spent at the monastery of St. Mary in the Western Desert.

  While still an undergaduate, Nazeer was accepted into the Coptic Theological Seminary in Cairo. After graduation from university, he continued taking night classes at the seminary while teaching English, history and social sciences at a Cairo high school during the day and attending graduate courses in archaeology and Classics at university. The dean of the seminary recognised Nazeer’s exceptional abilities (he spoke fluent Arabic, English, Coptic and French, and could read Greek, Latin and Amharic), and appointed him to a full-time lectureship in Old and New Testament studies in 1950. Nazeer remained dedicated to the Sunday-school movement, establishing a youth group at St. Antony’s church.

  After four years’ teaching and leading the Christian community of Cairo, Nazeer decided to follow St. Antony’s example and retreat to a monastery. These were the early days following the Free Officers’ coup, and Egypt was in a state of turmoil and transition. Nazeer chose to go to the so-called Syrian Monastery in the Nitrian Desert, where St. Antony had first adopted an anchoritic lifestyle, and was duly given the name Father Antony the Syrian. For a period of six years from 1956 to 1962 he lived as a hermit in a cave some miles from the monastery. During this time he was ordained priest and, on emerging from his ascetic lifestyle, was appointed bishop and dean of the Coptic Orthodox Theological Seminary. He took as his episcopal name Shenouda, in honour of a renowned fifth-century Coptic scholar and monk, St. Shenouda the Archimandrite. Under Bishop Shenouda, attendance at the seminary trebled, the students being inspired by his great learning and his support for reformist measures.

  When the Coptic Pope Cyril VI died in 1971, Bishop Shenouda was an obvious choice as successor. He was duly enthroned in the recently completed St. Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo as the 117th Pope of Alexandria and patriarch of the See of St. Mark. To signal his commitment to ecumenism, one of his first acts was to visit the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, becoming the first Coptic leader to do so since the schism between the two churches fifteen hundred years earlier. Shenouda also signed a joint declaration of faith with the Vatican, and travelled widely to visit Coptic
communities in North America, Europe and Australia.

  But it was at home in Egypt that his leadership and courage were most acutely needed. During the late 1970s, the threat of Islamic extremism had been growing, and a massacre of Christians in Cairo prompted Shenouda to criticise the Egyptian regime in public for its complacency. In response, in early 1981, President Sadat rescinded the decree recognising Shenouda as pope and banished him to a desert monastery. Shenouda, however, was right: a few months later, Sadat was assassinated by Islamic extremists at a military parade. Eventually, Shenouda was reinstated by the new Egyptian leader, Hosni Mubarak. But still the persecution and attacks against Christians continued, including the massacres at Nag Hammadi in January 2000 and January 2010. Some younger Copts lamented Shenouda’s powerlessness to stop these attacks, and censured him for his friendly relations with the Mubarak regime. Nonetheless, when he died on 17 March 2012, a year after the Egyptian revolution that saw Muslims and Copts standing together in Tahrir Square, Shenouda was widely mourned by his flock as one of the great popes and a defender of their faith, and by Muslims and Christians alike as a noted Egyptian leader of the twentieth century. Even the Muslim Brotherhood hailed him as a national icon. An estimated hundred thousand mourners filed past his body as it lay in state in St. Mark’s Cathedral and, as he had wished, he was laid to rest in the monastery of St. Pishoy in the Wadi Natrun.

  Though little known in the outside world, Coptic popes are as familiar and revered among Egyptian Christians as the Pope of Rome is among Catholics. Every Coptic home and business has a picture of the Pope of Alexandria on the wall—more often than not, a faded postcard or calendar hanging in the front room or office. Many Copts carry small cards with the pope’s image. In the drawer of my desk, as I write, there is just such a card with the smiling face of Pope Shenouda, given to me many years ago by a young Copt in the Middle Egyptian city of Minya.

  It was only my second visit to Egypt, and I was on my guard. I assumed (as Western visitors to Egypt quickly learn to) that any Egyptian who accosted me in the street must be wanting to sell me something, wanting to take me to someone else who wanted to sell me something, or simply wanting baksheesh. So when a young man about my age sidled up to me walking down Minya’s main thoroughfare, I adopted my stoniest of faces, looked straight ahead and carried on walking. Only this time it seemed to have no effect. Still he maintained his friendly conversation (or monologue—I was refusing to engage, for fear of being drawn away to yet another perfume shop or papyrus factory). Eventually, he realised the problem, explained that he wasn’t trying to sell me anything and, by way of proof, showed me the inside of his wrist. There, somewhat smudged and a little faded, but still immediately recognisable, was a small tattooed cross. For Joseph was a Copt, and therefore—it went without saying—trustworthy and sincere. Every Coptic man I have since met in Egypt has been similarly tattooed: a statement of personal faith, of solidarity with a beleaguered community, and of quiet defiance in the face of prejudice, hostility and sometimes personal danger.

  Over the next few days, that chance meeting with Joseph led to introductions to all his other friends—university students, and all Copts. I drank fresh lemonade with them in their digs (as shabby and untidy as any student room anywhere in the world), and talked with them about Egypt, England, and our different problems. Eager to share and celebrate their faith with a sympathetic visitor, they took me to Minya’s Coptic cathedral, with its brightly coloured murals of Christ and the saints, and facilitated my attendance (suitably chaperoned) at a Coptic service. It was a strange, fascinating and memorable experience. Coptic churches, like mosques, separate the faithful according to gender: women on one side of the aisle, men on the other. To an observer used to an Anglican service with its careful choreography, reverent silences and limited congregational participation, the Coptic way of worship was utterly alien: participatory, noisy, somewhat chaotic. At the back of the church, families chatted, caught up on gossip, played with their children, came and went, all during the service. Not that one could blame them, for the liturgy was long and rambling. Most of it was conducted in Arabic, although certain prayers and holy words were still intoned in Coptic—the direct descendant of ancient Egyptian. I was thrilled to hear priests declaim the word pnoute (“God”), just as they did in the days of the pharaohs. How remarkable it is that, sixteen hundred years after the last hieroglyphic inscription was carved, the sacred words of ancient Egypt are still uttered, even if the religion they once described has long vanished.

  But that link with the past is under threat. Ever since the Arab conquest of the Nile Valley in the mid seventh century AD, Egypt’s Muslim rulers have taken an increasingly intolerant view of their Christian subjects. An Ottoman-era decree restricting the building of new churches or the repairing of old ones has been enforced by successive Egyptian governments, so that many Coptic places of worship have fallen into dereliction. (The historic churches of Old Cairo have been saved from utter ruin only by their status as major tourist attractions.) Individual Copts suffer discrimination in the employment market, while official indifference has left Coptic communities to fend for themselves in the face of attacks by Islamic militants, felt most keenly in Middle Egypt where many towns have a large Christian population.

  One such town is Abu Qurqas, on the west bank of the Nile between Hermopolis and Minya. My visit, at the invitation of one of Joseph’s student friends, was a stark illustration of the travails of the Coptic community. Under Mubarak, just obtaining permission to visit an Egyptian in their own home—if they lived outside the main tourist centres of Aswan, Luxor or Cairo—was a laborious process: copious paperwork and a personal interview (for visitor and host alike) at the local police headquarters. It seemed—indeed, was—heavy-handed and intrusive, but when I finally made it to Abu Qurqas, I could understand something of the authorities’ nervousness. A few weeks before my visit, an Islamic mob had attacked one of the town’s Coptic churches, setting light to the ground floor which now stood charred and empty. (Fortunately, the sacred books and furniture had been rescued before the fire took hold, and carried upstairs to the room above the church for safe keeping.) In another incident, a Copt had been taken into the surrounding fields and shot.

  Yet, in the midst of all this violence and persecution, the Coptic community remained as friendly and welcoming to strangers as ever. The hospitality I enjoyed on that brief visit has never been matched. In the front room of my Coptic friend’s family home, what seemed like their entire week’s food supply was laid before me in a banquet of epic proportions: dish after dish of classic Egyptian country cooking, until I could physically eat no more. In a further display of hospitality, my Coptic friend, having accompanied me back to my hotel in Minya (the police permit to visit Abu Qurqas did not extend to an overnight stay), promptly turned up the following morning to walk me to the service-taxi stand and put me on the right minibus for the journey to Mallawi and Amarna. He even insisted on paying the fare. In a country famed for its hospitality, it seems that a little tattooed cross on the inside wrist is the surest guarantee of all.

  This district is the most noteworthy of all in respect of its appearance, its fertility, and its material development.1

  —STRABO

  At the northern end of the Nile Valley, just before the great river reaches the apex of the Delta and divides into several channels on its way to the sea, lies an anomaly in the geography of Egypt. To the west of the Nile and surrounded on all sides by the Libyan Desert, a low depression presents a contrasting picture of leafy abundance. With its well-watered fields and flower gardens, its palm groves and irrigation channels, the region called the Fayum is an oasis. But, in contrast to the other oases of the Western Desert, the Fayum receives its water not from underground aquifers but from the Nile itself. The valley’s sweet waters enter the Fayum via the Bahr Yusuf, the subsidiary river that flows parallel to the Nile through much of Middle Egypt. When the Bahr Yusuf reaches the low-lying Fayum, it debouches
into a great lake, Birket Qarun. It is this remarkable geographical feature—a lake in the desert—that has shaped the history of the Fayum and that gives the region its special character.

  From the earliest times, the people of the Fayum revered their lake and the fertility it brought. They identified it—not the River Nile—as the primeval waters where the universe began, and they worshipped its most fearsome denizen, the crocodile, as the very power of creation, to be honoured above all other gods. The Fayum’s main town, Shedyt (modern Medinet el-Fayum), became famous for its sacred crocodiles, so much so that the Greeks later named it Krokodilopolis, “crocodile city.”

  For the ancient Egyptians, the lake and its surrounding region were synonymous; the Fayum was known, simply, as ta-she, “the lake.” Classical authors, who named the lake Moeris, marvelled at its size and splendour. The Greek geographer Strabo called it “wonderful,” likening it to “an open sea in size and like a sea in colour.”2

  Today, the nine-thousand-year-old body of water is ailing. Its deep waters no longer sustain the huge shoals that attracted fisherfolk from earliest prehistory. Its saline shores no longer offer fertile soils for agriculture. But the unique landscape created by Birket Qarun remains as alluring as ever. This lake in the desert has much to teach us about the fundamental bond between water, land and people that is at the heart of Egyptian history, and that holds the key to the country’s future.