Figure 1: Fayum mummy portrait of a youth from Hawara; A.D. 80-100 (in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
NYC).

How did he die? How did death present to him? Where did he (his soul) go after death? Where is he now? How is he doing? Is he resting in peace or is he being tormented? What will be his fate on the Last Day?

– all natural questions which Man has never stopped asking about his dead.

Man has a natural need to understand what happens at death and in the afterlife to his loved ones who have departed and ultimately to his own self. This perennial and universal question was asked by the Ancient Egyptians as it was asked later by their descendants the Copts. Our Pharaonic ancestors tried to answer the puzzle by referring to their pagan mythology; and Egyptians, once they became Christians, found a wealth of Judeo-Christian writings that can helped them in forming an idea about the destiny of Man at death and afterwards. Christian theology, in general, agrees that between death and the Last Day (Day of Judgement) when Christ returns, there is for every soul an intermediate state. Fringe Christian groups[1] believe that the soul of the dead goes into sleep in which the soul is unconscious until the day of resurrection of the bodies when Christ returns. Major Christian Churches,[2] however, believe that the soul – every soul – after death does not go into a state of coma but will be conscious; and after separating from the body (which remains in the grave to turn into dust until it is resurrected and reunited with the soul later) it will go to another place: the soul of the righteous (believer) will go to be with the Lord in Paradise; while the soul of the unrighteous (unbeliever) will go to a place of punishment may be until the Last Day. Those who go to Paradise to be with the Lord, it seems, are rare, and only great saints, such as the Virgin Mary, have been allocated that special treatment. The souls of most dead, who were believers, but had committed some sins in their lives from which they have not fully repented, will not go direct to Paradise but will be sent to Hades,[3] the abode of the dead, or the Tartarus of Hades, a deep gloomy part of Hades, according to Greek mythology, used as a dungeon, a pit, an abyss, which exists beneath the underworld, in which souls are purged and refined by tormenting and suffering to make them ready for a pass to Paradise, either before the Last Day or after it. This is what has become known in the Catholic Church as the Purgatory.[4] These souls in Hades, who undergo a process of purification, know their final place is to go to Paradise. This process can be cut short by prayers of the living community of the Church for the dead, and by succouring them through other means, such as giving alms. The intercession of saints who have departed, and presumably in Paradise with the Lord, is also influential in reducing the suffering of some of the souls in Hades.

The Copts have taken this broad understanding of death and the afterlife, which finds its basis in the Old and New Testaments. They, however, have peculiar vocabulary, concepts and imaginations of death and the afterlife, which are influenced to some extent by the mythology of their pagan forerunners. This is yet another example that there was no complete disconnect between the pagan culture of the Pharaohs and the Christian theology of the Copts, but a continuation of the old into the new when the new allows it. It is this, in addition to finding what Copts of the old really believed on Death, the Intermediate State and the Last Day – that one finds scattered in so many Coptic manuscripts – which we will try to study under this category.

Caution: This is not meant to be a theological treatise, which the author is incapable of dealing with – it is, however, a study of what Copts believed on the matter as revealed to us from what has remained of ancient manuscripts and documents.

 Figure 1: The Life of Apa Cyrus, by Pambo (Brit. Mus. MS. Oriental No. 6783. fol. 23 a).

In 1914, E. A. Wallis Budge published the texts of some of the most interesting Coptic manuscripts which came under the possession of the British Museum, with their English translation. He was then Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum; and his valuable book is Coptic Martyrdom etc. In the Dialect of Upper Egypt.[1] All four published manuscripts[2] were found in Edfu (the Coptic Atbo[3] and Greek Apollinopolis Magna) in Upper Egypt, in the Monastery of Saint Mercurius and the library of the church of Saint Victor,[4] and all had been copied, from earlier manuscripts, during the second half of the tenth century and early eleventh century.[5] Budge thought the manuscripts were of “great importance for the history of Christianity in Egypt;”[6] their contents representing “the views and beliefs of the great monastic communities of Upper Egypt at the most flourishing period of their history”.[7]

One of the four manuscripts, Oriental No. 6783, was copied in 1003 AD during the Patriarchate of Philotheus (979 – 1003)[8] and the Fatimid Caliphate of Al-Hakim Bi-Amrillah (996 – 1021),[9] by a certain Victor.[10] It is a large manuscript, which includes, inter alia, The Life of Cyrus, the perfect monk, as told by Apa Pambo, the presbyter of the Church at Scete.[11]

Saint Cyrus (corrupted into Karas as consequence of Arabisation) was brother of the Emperor Theodosius I (379 – 395) and uncle of Emperors Arcadius (383 – 408) and Honorius (393 – 423).  He himself tells us of his royal connection and the reason for him to renounce a life of richness and comfort and go to Egypt’s western desert to live the life of an isolated anchorite: “Cyrus is my name. I am the brother of the Emperor Theodosius, and I was reared and fed at the same table as Arcadius and Honorius. And, indeed, many, many times hath Honorius said unto me, ‘Take me with thee into the desert, and I will become a monk’; but I did not wish to take him with me, because he is a son of the Emperor. And when we saw that oppression (or, violence) had multiplied, and that the Emperors were committing sin, and that the rulers were robbing the poor, and that everyone was turning out of the straight road, and making corrupt his path before God, I rose up, and I set out and I came to this desert, and I took up my abode therein because of the multitude of my sins. May God forgive me these!”[12] There, in complete isolation in the inner desert, where no one ventured beyond to live, Apa[13] Cyrus followed a saintly life, and received no man until the eve of his death, on the 7 Epip 182 AM (1 July 466 AD),[14] when Apa Pambo,[15] the elder of the Church of Shihet[16] (the Greek Scetis, Arabic Wadi El Natrun ‘Natrun Valley’) visited him. Hitherto, only Christ visited him in his isolation, and Pambo was to witness one such visit, in which he “saw the Christ go up to that brother [Cyrus] and kiss him, mouth to mouth, even as doth a brother who hath arrived from a strange region when he meeteth his friend.”[17]

On that day, Apa Cyrus told Apa Pambo that “A great prophet and Archimandrite hath died this day, that is to say, Apa Shenoute the elder; the whole world is punished this day, for he was a very great teacher, and this day is the seventh of the month Epeph.”[18] After paying homage to Apa Shenoute, Apa Cyrus tells Apa Pambo that he is sick, a sickness he knew will end in his death, and begs him: “I beseech thee to do me the favour of praying for me until I journey over the road of fear and terror.” Astonished, Apa Pambo enquires: “My beloved father, art thou, even thou, afraid, notwithstanding all the multitude ascetic labours which thou hast performed in this world?” And Apa Cyrus responds:

“I have performed a few of the ascetic labours which God appointed for me, it is true, but how is it possible for us not to be afraid of the things which have been indicated to us by very many witnesses, that is to say, the river of fire, and the appearance before the Judge? And as for that river, everyone is bound to pass over it, whether he be a righteous man or whether he be a sinner, and it is right that thou shouldst pray on my behalf until I journey over that terrible road.

… If a man’s life upon this earth were to consist of one day only, he would not be free from sin. And, moreover, all flesh shall be purged by the fire.”[19]

And behold, it came to pass on the following day, the eighth of Epip, at the third hour,[20] that Apa Cyrus became very ill, and yielded his spirit. As Apa Pambo was weeping over Cyrus, we read, “Christ opened the door of the cell, and He came in, and He stood up by the body of the blessed Apa Cyrus, and He wept over him.”[21] The body of Apa Cyrus was then visited by a multitude of Angels, and Archangels, and Apostles, and all the righteous. One of the visitors was Saint Peter, who told Apa Pambo that Christ has taken the soul of the blessed man Apa Cyrus, and the soul of Apa Shenoute, who had died yesterday, “to the place of rest, even as it is written, ‘There are many mansions in the house of My Father.’[22]”[23] And, again, we are told that Christ Himself returned and buried the body of the blessed man, “and He became unto him a place of defence until the day of the Righteous Judgement.”[24]

__________

Here we have a story of a great man from the 5^th century, whose sainthood was attested by Christ Himself, who visited him, kissed him life a friend and wept over his depaarture. When he dies, Christ takes his soul with Him to “the place of rest”, which one takes to be Paradise, a place of no fear or terror. Moreover, Christ buries Cyrus’ body, and protects it until the Last Day, when all bodies of the dead shall be resurrected, joined with their souls, to face the Judgement.

And yet, this great saint, on the last day of his life, talks of a “road of fear and terror”, a “river of fire” over which “everyone is bound to pass”, whether he be a righteous man or sinner, for no one is free of sin even if his “life upon this earth were to consist of one day only”. This river of fire seems to me to be Hades, that place of suffering many Christian thinkers thought of as intermediate status between death and the Day of Judgement. In that river of fire, all flesh (Apa Cyrus must have meant by it ‘soul’) shall be purged by the fire. There is no “soul rest” here, which some advocate in their teaching following death, when the soul stays unconscious and unperturbed until the Last Day. Furthermore, and more interestingly perhaps, Apa Cyrus is talking here about a “purgatory” for all sinners and righteous: no man shall escape the river of fire, which has the purpose of purging the souls from their sins. Is Apa Cyrus advocating a universal sort of purgatory to all humans, followed by universal salvation, along the same idea attributed to Origen? This is difficult to ascertain. Anyway, there is no doubt that he believed that the destiny of the souls of the dead can be altered by the prayers of the saintly living.

Caution: This again is not an article on theology. It just tries to bring to the forefront stories or topics that are hidden in Coptic literature, and, though they may not represent the theology of the Church of Alexandria, help us to understand how Copts saw the world and afterlife in the olden days.

 Figure 1: The sufferers in Hades get temporary rest when visited by Christ (from Dante’s Inferno).

We have seen in our previous article “Coptic Purgatory: The Destiny of All Flesh? The Verdict of Apa Cyrus” Apa Cyrus’ vision of Hades – a “river of fire” over which everyone is bound to pass, and by which all flesh [soul] shall be purged from sin. We have learned that vision from the Life of Apa Cyrus, which was written by Apa Pambo, the presbyter of the church in Shihet in the 5^th century. The story, which the British E. A. Wallis Budge found in a Coptic manuscript from the early 11^th century,[1] and which he published in his Coptic Martyrdom,[2] is found repeated in other sources, such as the Synaxaria, but with some changes.

The Synaxarium (or Synaxarion) in the Coptic Church is a liturgical book containing short narratives of the lives of saints[3] arranged on the days of the year, and read in the religious services of the Church throughout the year.[4] The book, which was written in Arabic in the Middle Ages by translating earlier sources from Coptic and Greek, is available in two forms: Arabic[5] and Ethiopic.[6] [7] So, what can we find more in the Synaxaria that is not included in the Life of Apa Cyrus by Pambo? What additional information can we garner from them to help us build a more comprehensive vision of Apa Cyrus on Hades?

The Arabic Synxarium, which is used in Coptic churches in Egypt, celebrates the life of Apa Cyrus (ابا كيرس) on the 8^th of Apip in a very contracted form. But still one finds in it additional information that is not available in Pambo’s Life of Cyrus: when Pambo (انبا بموا) met Cyrus, we are told, Cyrus “showed him the [rising] smokes of Hades (دخاخين الجحيم) from afar; and told him that the Lord looks at Hades every Sunday night which gives the sufferers some rest.”[8] The Ethiopian Synaxarium, which celebrates the life of the saint on the 8^th of Hamle, gives a longer biography, and seems to have been taken directly from another version of Bambo’s Life of Apa Cyrus. It expands on what we have just seen in the Arabic Synaxarium:

“And at the ninth hour of the day preceding the Sabbath,[9] I [Bambo] heard a great cry, which reached to heaven, and the mountains and the hills quaked at the cry of them. And I said unto him [Cyrus], ‘O my father, what is this cry and whose are the voices which I hear?’ And he said unto me, ‘O my son, this is the cry of the sinners who are in Sheol [Hades], to whom God giveth rest from their punishment on the day of His holy Resurrection, from the ninth hour of the day preceding the Sabbath until the sun setteth on the First Day of the Week; and they praise God because it is He Who giveth them rest on the First Day of the Week.’ And I marveled exceedingly, and I praised God because He had given them rest.”

This passage tells us that the sufferers of Hades, who are passing over the “river of fire”, in order to be purified, regularly get a weekly rest period from their punishment from 3 p.m. every Friday until the sun sets on the following Sunday, in respect of Christ’s holy Resurrection. This increases our understanding of what Apa Cyrus had in mind about Hades: the sinners who suffer in the “river of fire” are not totally abandoned for the period of their purgatory punishment, but get regular periods of rest from it. This vision does not seem to be peculiar to Apa Cyrus but represents a wider viewpoint within the Coptic ascetic community of the time, as we shall see in other articles.

Caution: Again I caution the reader that these articles are not a study in Coptic theology – they are simply studies in Coptic literature to find, from our literature, how Copts in the past perceived death and Afterlife.

Figure 1: The Gebelein Man (a naturally preserved mummy from the Predynastic period, around 3500 BC, in the British Museum).

The Life of Shenoute by Besa[1] is a book that tells us a few of the miracles and marvels which God effected through the charismatic and most intriguing Coptic saint, Apa Shenoute (348 – 466 AD) the Archimandrite and abbot of the White Monastery in Akhmim (Athripe).

One of the loveliest stories in the book is that related to the corpse of a glassblower from the city of Asyut (Sioot), in Upper Egypt, who lived around the time of the birth of Jesus Christ. From what Besa, who was the disciple and successor of Shenoute, has written, we gather that the Asyutan glassblower went south to the city of Akhmim (Šmin), some sixty miles to the south, looking for work with his co-workers. But shortly after that he died, and his co-workers cast his corpse upon the mountain in the area of the White Monastery. It seems that the glassblower’s corpse, being exposed to the dry and hot weather conditions of Upper Egypt, mummified,[2] and remained where it was cast until the fifth century when Apa Shenoute used to see it around and for years wondered why it was destined to be cast there.

The identity of the corpse and the circumstances that brought it to the mountain of Akhmim is revealed when Christ once appeared to Apa Shenoute and they passed by the corpse while walking together on the mountain. There Shenoute asked Christ about the corpse, and Christ, touching the corpse with his foot, ordered it to rise up and tell Shenoute who he was and why he was cast out like this. The corpse, which was revived, told Shenoute his story. We learn from the story that when the glassblower was in Asyut or Akhmim, he heard that the Saviour had come into the world; that a woman with a little boy in her arms entered the city of El-Asmunein (Coptic Šmoun; Greek Hermopolis), which is some forty-seven miles north of Asyut.[3] This is, of course, the Holy Family’s coming to Egypt as it fled in the face of Herod’s threat to kill little Jesus.[4] Coptic tradition tells us that in El-Ashunein, the child Jesus healed crowds of sick people and performed other miracles.[5] The glassblower heard of these things, and “I resolved in my heart to go north to worship him [the Saviour] but worldly cares did not permit it”.[6]

When the glassblower is resurrected by Christ, he prostrates himself and worships the Saviour, and asks Him: “Let your mercy come upon me, and do not let me be cast into the torments again. Woe is me, that the womb of my mother was not my tomb before I descended to these sufferings!”[7] And Christ, indeed, gives him relief as he orders him to lie down “so that mercy may come upon you, and rest until the day of the true judgement”.[8] But let the reader enjoy the intriguing story himself as told by Besa:

Once, when our father apa Shenoute went into the desert, behold! The Lord Jesus appeared to him and spoke with him. As they were walking together, they came upon a corpse cast out upon the mountain. Our father apa Shenoute threw himself down and worshipped the Lord, and said to him: ‘My Lord and my God, behold, for many years I have passed by this corpse without knowing why it was destined to be cast out here’. Our Lord Jesus Christ touched the corpse with his foot and said to it: ‘Corpse, I say to you, recover yourself and rise up so that you can tell my servant Shenoute who you are, [cast out] like this’. The corpse immediately arose, just as someone would arise from sleep, and when it saw the Lord, it recognised him and worshipped him, and said to him: ‘My Lord, let your mercy come upon me!’ The saviour said to him: ‘Speak, and let my chosen one, Shenoute, know what you have done’. The corpse said: ‘What shall I say, my Lord? You know what is hidden and what is revealed, and you know what was my fate’. The Saviour said to it: ‘Nevertheless, speak, so that my servant Shenoute may hear you himself’. The corpse replied: ‘I am a glassblower from Sioout who was working with some other men. We arose and went south near Šmin so that we could work there, but after a few days had passed, I became ill and died. So because none of them was related to me by blood, they brought me here and cast me forth’. My father apa Shenoute said to him: ‘Had the Saviour come into the world at that time?’ He said: ‘Yes, he had. The news had been spread abroad and came south to us by those passing through [the area] that a woman had entered the city of Šmoun with a little boy in her arms. Everything he said came to pass: he would raise the dead, he would cast out demons, he would make the lame walk, he would make the deaf hear, he would make the dumb speak, he would cleanse lepers; in a word, he was performing every [possible] sign. When I heard these things, I resolved in my heart to go north to worship him, but [worldly] cares did not permit it.’ When the corpse had said these things, it prostrated itself and worshipped the Saviour and asked him: ‘Let your mercy come upon me, and do not let me be cast into the torments again. Woe is me, that the womb of my mother was not my tomb before I descended to these sufferings!’ The Lord said to him: ‘Inasmuch as you have been worthy to see me on earth, together with my servant apa Shenoute, I will give you a little relief. Lie down now so that mercy may come upon you, and rest until the day of the true judgement’. Straightaway the corpse lay down just as it was at first. The Saviour took the hand of our father apa Shenoute and walked with him to the cell in the desert, and they spoke of great mysteries between them. After this, [the Lord] ascended into the heavens with angels singing before him.[9]

Here we have a most beautiful story from the fifth century that tells us of one first century Asyutan glassblower’s soul that had been in torment in Hades but came face to face with Christ when Christ revived its corpse that had been cast out upon the mountain of Akhmim. The soul begged Christ for mercy, and Christ, indeed, gave it rest and relief from its torments until the Last Day.

Figure 1: The Mummy of Artemidorus, AD 100-120 (In the British Museum).

The Life of Bishop Pisentius is very important in many ways not least because it sheds some light on what Copts of the Classic Period,[1] at least, thought of death and afterlife. Saint Pisentius[2] (548 – 632 AD) was selected bishop of Coptos,[3] in deep Upper Egypt, in AD 599, and remained bishop there until his death.[4] The Life of Bishop Pisentius is written in the 7^th Century by his disciple, John the Elder, but there are other recensions where one finds the names of Moses and Tawudoros (Theodore) as authors too.[5] We have it in Coptic Sahidic, Coptic Bohairic (Memphitic), Arabic and Ethiopic versions;[6] and some of these were published in English:

-          The Sahidic version: This was translated in 1913 by E. A. Wallis Budge in his Coptic Apocrypha in the Dialect of Upper Egypt under the title The Life of Bishop Pisentius, by John the Elder.[7] This manuscript (Brit. Mus. MS. Oriental No. 7026) dates to AD 985. In his book, Budge included an excellent Introduction on Bishop Pisentius.[8]

-          The Bohairic (Memphitic) version: This was edited by E. Amélineau in 1889,[9] and is attributed to John the Presbyter and Moses, Bishop of Coptos (he succeeded Pisentius). This version, unlike the Sahidic version, contains the story of Pisentius’ conversation with the mummy, the story that interests us here. Budge translated the story, and added it as an appendix to his translation of the Sahidic version.[10] It is the story in this Bohairic version which we use here under the title The Life of Bishop Pisentius.

-          The Arabic version: There are many Arabic versions. In 1930, DeLacy E. O’Leary used two Arabic manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Arabe 4785 and Arabe 4794), which he didn’t date, to publish his The Arabic life of S. Pisentius,[11] and he says both manuscripts contain the miracle of the saint’s “converse with the dead”.[12] The book includes fifty six wonders of the saint, and it is The Thirty Two Wonder which deals with Pisentius’ conversation with the mummy.[13]

Saint Pisentius was bishop of Coptos at the time of the Persian invasion of Egypt, in AD 619, when Khosraw II Pevez took Egypt from the Byzantines. This third Persian occupation of Egypt (619-629 AD)[14] lasted for only ten years, and ended when Heraclius I wrestled Egypt back from the Persians. Once Bishop Pisentius got the news of the approaching Persians, he wrote a pastoral letter to all his diocese in which he said, “Because of our sins God has abandoned us; he has delivered us to the nations without mercy;”[15] and he, together with his disciple and biographer John, fled some 23 miles south to the mountain of Tjîmi[16] (called Shama شامة in Arabic manuscripts)[17] in Western Thebes (Luxor), where he stayed in retreat for ten years,[18] “praying night and day that God would save the people from bondage to those cruel nations.”[19] Only John knew his hiding place, and he used to take him a supply of food and drink each Sabbath day.[20]

In the recesses of that mountain, Pisentius found a tomb in which he took refuge. It possessed “a large hall about 80 feet square, and its roof was supported by six pillars. This hall was made probably under one of the kings of the New Empire, and had been turned at a much later period, perhaps in one of the early centuries of the Christian era, into a common burial-place for the mummies of people of all classes. At all events, when John was taken there by his master the hall contained many mummified bodies, and the air was heavy with the odour of funerary spices. Pisentius and his disciple opened some of the coffins, which were very large, with much decorated inner coffins. One mummy was swathed in silk, and must therefore have belonged to the third or fourth century of our era. As John was about to leave Pisentius he noticed on one of the pillars a small roll of parchment, and when Pisentius had opened it he read therein the names of all the people who had been buried in that tomb. The roll was probably written in demotic, and it is quite possible that the bishop could read this easily.”[21]

In that Pharaonic hall, used as little necropolis for some mummified dead from the Roman period, Pisentius had a curious encounter and intriguing conversation with a mummy, which was heard by John when he returned the following Saturday with water and food supply for the week, and later documented it in his book. We know that the mummy belonged to a man from Erment;[22] and although we are not given his name, his parents’ names we are given as Agricolaos and Eustathia, and that they were Hellenes. Furthermore, we are told that the family worshipped Poseidon, the Greek God of the Sea. That encounter with that mummy reveals a great deal of what Copts of that age thought of death and afterlife.

Let us read together that fascinating story in The Life of Bishop Pisentius as it was told in the Bohairic (Memphitic) version, and which was published by E. A. Wallis Budge:[23]

And it came to pass on a day whilst my father was still with me in the mountain of Tjîmi that my father said unto me, ‘John, my son, rise up, follow me, and I will shew thee the place wherein I repose and pray, so that thou mayest visit me every Sabbath and bring me a little food, and a little water to drink wherewith to support my body.’ And my father rose up, and walked before me, and he was meditating on the Holy Scriptures of the Spirit of God. And when we had walked about three miles, at least so the distance appeared to me, we came to a path which was in the form of a door which was wide open. And when we had gone inside that place, we found that it had the appearance of being hewn out of the rock, and there were six pilasters rising up against the rock. It was fifty-two cubits in length, it was four-cornered, and its height was in proportion [to its length and breadth]. There was a large number of bodies which had been mummified in it, and if thou wast merely to walk outside that place thou wouldst be able to smell the ‘sweet smell’ (i.e. spices), which emanated from these bodies. And we took the coffins, we piled them up one on top of the other — now the place was very spacious — ……..[24] The swathings wherein the first mummy, which was near the door, was wrapped, were of the silk of kings. And his stature was large, and the fingers of his hands and his toes were bandaged separately.[25] And my father said, ‘How many years ago is it since these [people] died? And from what nomes do they come?’ And I said unto him, ‘It is God [only] Who knoweth.’ And my father said unto me, ‘Get thee gone, my son. Sit in thy monastery, take heed to thyself, this world is a thing of vanity, and we may be removed from it at any moment. Take care for thy wretched state. Continue thy fastings scrupulously. Pray thy prayers regularly hour by hour, even as I have taught thee, and do not come here except on the Sabbath.’ And when he had said these things unto me, I was about to come forth from his presence, when looking carefully on one of the pilasters, I found a small parchment roll. And when my father had unrolled it, he read it, and he found written therein the names of all the people who were buried in that place; he gave it to me and I put it down in its place.[26]

And I saluted my father, and I came away from him, and I walked on, and as he shewed me the way he said unto me, ‘Be thou diligent in the work of God so that He may shew mercy unto thy wretched soul. Thou seest these mummies; needs must that every one shall become like unto them. Some are now in Amenti,[27] — those whose sins are many, others are in the Outer Darkness, and others are in pits and basins which are filled with fire, and others are in the Amenti which is below, and others are in the river of fire, where up to this present they have found no rest. Similarly others are in a place of rest, according to their good works. When a man goeth forth from this world, what is past is past.’ And when he had said these things unto me, he said, ‘Pray for me also, my son, until I see thee [again].’ So I came to my abode, and I stayed there, and I did according to the command of my holy father, Abba Pisentius.

And on the first Sabbath I filled my water-pot with water, and [I took] a little soft wheat, according to the amount which he was likely to eat, according to his command (he gave [me] the order [to bring] two ephahs[28] which he distributed over the forty days),[29] and he took the measure and measured it, saying, ‘When thou comest on the Saturday bring me this measure [full] with the water.’ So I took the pitcher of water and the little soft wheat, and I went to the place wherein he reposed and prayed. And when I had come in to the abode I heard some one weeping and beseeching my father in great tribulation, saying, ‘I beseech thee, O my lord and father, to pray unto the Lord for me so that I may be delivered from these punishments, and that they may never take hold of me again, for I have suffered exceedingly.’[30] And I thought that it was a man who was speaking with my father, for the place was in darkness. And I sat down, and I perceived the voice of my father, with whom a mummy was speaking. And my father said unto the mummy, ‘What nome dost thou belong to?’ And the mummy said, ‘I am from the city of Ermant.’ My father said unto him, ‘Who is thy father?’ He said, ‘My father was Agrikolaos and my mother was Eustathia.’ My father said unto him, ‘Whom did they worship?’ And he said, ‘They worshipped him who is in the waters, that is to say Poseidôn.’ My father said unto him, ‘Didst thou not hear before thou didst die that Christ had come into the world?’ He said, ‘No, my father. My parents were Hellenes,[31] and I followed their life. Woe, woe is me that I was born into the world! Why did not the womb of my mother become my grave?[32] And it came to pass that when I came into the straits of death, the first who came round about me were the beings “Kosmokrator”,[33] and they declared all the evil things which I had done, and they said unto me, “Let them come now and deliver thee from the punishments wherein they will cast thee.” There were iron knives in their hands, and iron daggers with pointed ends as sharp as spear points, and they drove these into my sides, and they gnashed their teeth furiously against me. After a little time my eyes were opened, and I saw death suspended in the air in many forms. And straightway the Angels of cruelty snatched my wretched soul from my body, and they bound it under the form of a black horse, and dragged me to Ement (Amenti). O woe be unto every sinner like myself who is born into the world! O my lord and father, they delivered me over into the hands of a large number of tormentors who were merciless, each one of whom had a different form. O how many were the wild beasts which I saw on the road! O how many were the Powers which tortured me! When they had cast me into the outer darkness I saw a great gulf, which was more than a hundred cubits deep,[34] and it was filled with reptiles, and each one of these had seven heads, and all their bodies were covered as it were with scorpions. And there was another mighty serpent in that place, and it was exceedingly large, and it was a terrible sight to behold; and it had in its mouth teeth which were like unto pegs of iron. And one laid hold of me and cast me into the mouth of that Worm, which never stopped devouring; all the wild beasts were gathered together about him at all times, and when he filled his mouth all the wild beasts which were round about him filled their mouths with him.’

My father said unto him, ‘From the time when thou didst die until this day, hath no rest been given unto thee, or hast thou not been permitted to enjoy any respite from thy suffering?’ And the mummy said, ‘Yes, my father, mercy is shewn unto those who are suffering torments each Sabbath and each Lord’s Day. When the Lord’s Day cometh to an end, they cast us again into our tortures in order to make us to forget the years which we lived in the world. Afterwards, when we have forgotten the misery of this kind of torture, they cast us into another which is far more severe. When thou didst pray for me, straightway the Lord commanded those who were flogging me, and they removed from my mouth the iron gag which they had placed there, and they released me, and I came to thee. Behold, I have told you the conditions under which I subsist. O my lord and father, pray for me, so that they may give me a little rest, and that they may not take me back into that place again.’ And my father said unto him, ‘The Lord is compassionate, and He will shew mercy unto thee. Go back and lie down until the Day of the General Resurrection, wherein every man shall rise up, and thou thyself shalt rise with them.’ God is my witness, O my brethren, I saw the mummy with my own eyes lie down again in its place, as it was before. And having seen these things I marvelled greatly, and I gave glory unto God. And I cried out in front of me, according to rule, ‘Bless me,’ and then I went in and kissed his hands and his feet. He said unto me, ‘John, hadst thou been here a long time? Didst thou not see somebody or hear somebody talking to me?’ And I said, ‘No, my father.’ He said unto me, ‘Thou speakest falsehood, just as did Gehazi when he uttered falsehood to the prophet, saying, “Thy servant went no whither.”[35] But since thou hast seen or heard, if thou tellest any man during my lifetime thou shalt be cast forth (i.e. excommunicated).’ And I have observed the order, and I have never dared to repeat it to this very day.

Here we have an extraordinary encounter of the seventh century saint, Bishop Pisentius of Coptos, with a Hellene mummy that was lodged, with other mummies, in a Pharaonic hall in the mountain of Tjîmi, in Western Thebes, sometime in the third or fourth century. The encounter was witnessed by John, Pisentius’ disciple, and he recorded it after the death of the bishop in AD 632. It sheds, as the reader has seen, important light on the Coptic perceptions and beliefs of the destiny of man at death and then after it. We can summarise these in the following:

1.  At man’s death, his soul departs from his body; it does not sleep or go into coma until the Last Day. Furthermore, all souls are immortal and accountable to God.

2.  Following death, all souls go to the underworld, to spend an intermediate phase of their existence until the Judgement Day. This underworld, the Copts called Amenti, which is an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic word and means “the hidden place, or land, the West, the abode of departed spirits, the name of the first division of the Other World”.[36] The equivalent word in Greek is Hades; in Hebrew Sheol; in English Hell; and in Arabic الجحيم.[37]

3.  Amenti is composed of different places to accommodate souls with different degrees of sin. These places, or stations, are not immediately clear in The Life of Bishop Pisentius, most probably as a result of some careless copyist. In it Pisentius says to his disciple John:

Thou seest these mummies; needs must that every one shall become like unto them. Some are now in Amenti, — those whose sins are many, others are in the Outer Darkness, and others are in pits and basins which are filled with fire, and others are in the Amenti which is below, and others are in the river of fire, where up to this present they have found no rest. Similarly others are in a place of rest, according to their good works.[38]

The Arabic Life of S. Pisentius, on the other hand, gives it a bit different:

Thou hast seen, O my son, all these dead cast aside to warn us that we shall be like them. Some of them are those who are gnashing their teeth, others are in the outer darkness, others are in torment and in the pit full of fire and brimstone, their abode in the lowest hell, and some of them are in the river of fire and have never been able to get out to this present time, and some of them are in places of repose because of their works.[39]

By comparing the two versions, and by resort to relevant Biblical texts, one can come to a clearer understanding: It seems that the Copts had in mind four stations in Amente:

a.  The “Place of Rest”, “Places of Repose”, which some souls occupy because of their [good] works while in the body on the earth.

b.  The “River of Fire” which some sinful souls must cross in order to be purified, and be able to be admitted to the “Place of Rest” at some stage. We have seen this “River of Fire” in The Life of Apa Cyrus.[40] The “River of Fire”[41] (or the “Fiery Stream”[42]) is mentioned in Daniel 7:10, but not in the way intended in The Life of Bishop Pisentius, The Arabic Life of S. Pisentius, or The Life of Apa Cyrus.

c.  The “Outer Darkness”, into which the soul of our mummy was cast, is where those gnashing their teeth, a sign of pain, sorrow and grief for realising one’s own sins in full, are thrown. This “Outer Darkness” is mentioned, associated with weeping and gnashing of teeth, in so many verses in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, such as: “Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”[43]

d.  The “Pit full of Fire and Brimstone (Sulphur)”,[44] or “”Pits and Basins which are filled with Fire”,[45] exist at the bottom of Amenti, in the lowest hell. This seems to be retained for the devil and the ungodly who deserve eternal punishment. Both Old[46] and New Testaments refer to it, particularly in the Book of Revelation, such as: “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever;”[47] [48]and: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”[49]

4.  The “River of Fire” is a fascinating station of Amente according to the Coptic concept. We quote here the relevant piece in The Life of Apa Cyrus:

I [Cyrus] have performed a few of the ascetic labours which God appointed for me, it is true, but how is it possible for us not to be afraid of the things which have been indicated to us by very many witnesses, that is to say, the river of fire, and the appearance before the Judge? And as for that river, everyone is bound to pass over it, whether he be a righteous man or whether he be a sinner, and it is right that thou shouldst pray on my behalf until I journey over that terrible road.

… If a man’s life upon this earth were to consist of one day only, he would not be free from sin. And, moreover, all flesh shall be purged by the fire.[50]

We find a similar passage in The Arabic Life of S. Pisentius under the Fifty Three Wonder:[51] as Pisentius approached his death,[52]John tells us:

[Apa Pisentius] prayed and offered supplication and said: ‘O martyr of Christ, Ignatius,[53] come to me and strengthen my faith: bring the crown which does not decay, with the rest of the athletes. Be with me until I reach the river of fire which flows before the just judge, where there is great and very dreadful fear.’ And I said to him: ‘O my father, after the penances thou hast endured in the world, and fastings, and prayers, and fatigues, and long vigils, dost thou fear the river of fire?’ And the blessed one answered and said: ‘Who is safe from crossing the fiery river? — I say to thee that if an angel came from heaven he would not escape its crossing before coming to the earth.’ And he informed me: ‘I shall cross it on the evening of the thirteenth day of the month Abib.’[54]

Now, I don’t think O’Leary’s translation of the Arabic text is entirely correct. His “Who is safe from crossing the fiery river? — I say to thee that if an angel came from heaven he would not escape its crossing before coming to the earth” must be ““Who is safe from crossing the fiery river? — I say to thee that if an angel came from heaven he must cross it in view of his coming to the earth.”[55] This gives the same meaning that Apa Cyrus wanted to convey: that everyone had to pass over the “River of Fire”, whether he is a righteous man or whether he is a sinner; that no man is free of sin even if his life on earth were to consist of only one day. Apa Pisentius reinforces that by saying even angels if they came to, and lived on, the earth will not be free from sin, and they too must pass through that fire for purification. This, in my opinion, does not mean that, in the Coptic mind, righteous men will definitely pass through this “River of Fire” – what it means is that no one, however saintly, deserves to go to the Place of Rest or Paradise by right: man can only do that through the grace of God. Both Apa Cyrus and Apa Pisentius, in their humility, showed this understanding, and Christ, we are told, showed his mercy to them: we do not know what happened to Apa Pisentius at his death, as his biography doesn’t tell us; however, we know from the Life of Apa Cyrus that Christ has taken the souls of Apa Cyrus and Apa Shenoute, who died a day earlier, to “the place of rest”.[56]

Apa Cyrus says, “All flesh shall be purged by fire”. This may give the impression that all souls will pass through the “River of Fire”, and get their sins washed away through suffering, and so will eventually be saved – i.e. a purgatory for all and a universal salvation. However, read in conjunction with The Life of Bishop Pisentius, one tends to think that only sinners in the “outer Darkness” may be able to do so – those in the “Pit full of Fire and Brimstone”, or the devil and the “ungodly” referred to in Revelation 19-21, will not.

5.  The regular respite period which we have seen in The Ethiopian Synaxarium when it talks about Apa Cyrus is again emphasised here, however inadequately. In The Ethiopian Synaxarium we are told that those sinners who are being tormented in Amente get rest from their punishments “on the day of His holy Resurrection, from the ninth hour of the day preceding the Sabbath until the sun setteth on the First Day of the Week”; that is from 3 p.m. on Friday until sunset on Sunday.[57] In The Life of Bishop Pisentius, sufferers are shown mercy “each Sabbath and each Lord’s Day”[58], and in The Arabic Life of S. Pisentius, the relief given is “on the night of Sunday, because it is the resurrection of Christ,” “from the ninth hour of the sabbath until the end of Sunday.”[59]

6.  Copts have always prayed for their reposed in private and public prayer: they believe that prayer of the faithful on earth does help those departed souls in Amente – and this seems to be an old tradition. We have seen that once Pisentius prayed for the mummy, straightway “the Lord commanded those who were flogging me, and they removed from my mouth the iron gag which they had placed there, and they released me, and I came to thee.”[60] The soul knew of the power of prayer, and so it beseeched Pisentius: “O my lord and father, pray for me, so that they may give me a little rest, and that they may not take me back into that place again.”[61] And Pisentius, having faith in Christ’s mercy, says to the mummy, “The Lord is compassionate, and He will shew mercy unto thee. Go back and lie down until the Day of the General Resurrection, wherein every man shall rise up, and thou thyself shalt rise with them.”[62]

The description by the mummy of his illness that led to his death, the arrival of death, the dragging of his soul to Amente and its casting in the Outer Darkness, and the torments he has received in it, all make excellent figurative language. To take it literally in physical terms, rather than as a metaphor for the agonising pain that a sinful soul meets at and after death, is difficult. It is, however, very effective in bringing to listeners and readers the seriousness of the consequences of their living in sin. The Coptic Amente or underworld may be fearful and a place for suffering and pain; it, however, is also a place where many dead find their rest in peace, and many others experience temporary suffering as their souls are being purified, always being aware of their final salvation – in other words, side by side with sadness and despair exist joy and hope.

 Figure 1: Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge by Bassano, in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

The British Orientalist, Egyptologist and Coptologist Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge, or simply E. A. Wallis Budge, (1857 – 1934), is one of the great English scholars to home Copts and those interested in the study of Coptic culture, language and theology are very much indebted. It was during his job as keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum, in London, towards the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth centuries that his scholarly work was most useful to Coptic studies.

Budge was an expert in Sahidic Coptic, or what he better describes as Upper Egyptian Dialect, the dialect in which great Copts like St. Shenoute and St. Pisentius spoke and wrote. And it is this scholarly knowledge in this dialect, together with his work at the British Museum, which allowed him to undertake the great work of publishing, translating and editing what he calls the “Edfû Manuscripts”, and what others call the “Edfû Codices” – this treasure which is invaluable in the study of Coptic culture, traditions, customs and folklore; Coptic Christianity; and what Copts thought and had in mind, during that time, about the world, religion, justice, love, death, afterlife, Emente, Paradise, sin, evil, goodness, eschatology, angelology, demonology, philosophy, hermitic life, coenobium, history, etc. This Coptic gem, which he published in five large volumes, he tells us, “contain all the principal texts from the series of parchments and paper volumes that originally formed parts of the libraries of the monasteries and churches of Edfû and Asnâ[1], and are now in the British Museum.”[2] And he adds: “Thirteen of these were acquired for the Trustees [of the British Museum] by myself in 1907-8, and the remainder were purchased from Mr. Rustafjaell.[3]”[4]

The five great volumes, and their publication dates, are the following (you can click on them to access the wealth of their material):

1. COPTIC HOMILIES IN THE DIALECT OF UPPER EGYPT; edited from the papyrus codex Oriental 5001 in the British museum (1910)
2. COPTIC BIBLICAL TEXTS IN THE DIALECT OF UPPER EGYPT (1912)
3. COPTIC APOCRYPHA IN THE DIALECT OF UPPER EGYPT (1913)
4. COPTIC MARTYRDOMS IN THE DIALECT OF UPPER EGYPT (1914): Volume 1 (Texts); Volume 2 (Plates)
5. MISCELLANEOUS COPTIC TEXTS IN THE DIALECT OF UPPER EGYPT (1915)

Figure 1: The Coptic title of Brit. Mus. Oriental 5000, which means The Psalter Book.

Figure 2: The title page of Budge’s book (1898). Only 250 copies were printed.

Figure 3: Sir Earnest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (1857-1934), English scholar, Egyptologist, Orientalist and Sometime keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum.

In 1898, E. A. Wallis Budge edited a book under the title, The Earliest Known Coptic Psalter: The text, in the dialect of Upper Egypt, edited from the unique papyrus codex Oriental 5000 in the British museum, which the reader can access it here.[1] Budge was right in claiming at that time that it was the earliest known Coptic psalter; but as we shall know from the next article, it isn’t. However, Budges. Coptic psaltery remains the earliest known complete Coptic psaltery in the dialect of Upper Egypt (or Sahidic), and that is why I stressed that in the title of this article.

Budge estimates the date of the original manuscript to the end of the sixth or the beginning of the seventh century; i. e. before the Arab occupation of Egypt, or what I prefer to call the Coptic Classic Period. It underwent a few repairs, however, in the eleventh or twelfth century. The manuscript, which had been previously in the British Museum (Brit. Mus. MS. Oriental 5000), is now in the British Library; and it forms part of the Edfû Manuscripts (or Edfû Codices). Budge describes the circumstances of the great finds (it was found with another important manuscript: Brit. Mus. MS. Oriental 5001):

About two years ago[2] whilst certain Egyptian peasants were digging up and carrying away the light soil, which is so much valued for “top-dressing” by the farmers, from the ruins of an ancient Coptic church and monastery in Upper Egypt, their tools struck upon a rectangular slab of stone. An examination showed that this slab formed the cover of a stone box or coffer which had been firmly fastened in the ground, and when, after some difficulty, it was removed, a parcel of books, carefully wrapped in coarse linen cloth, was found lying beneath it. The books were two in number and, though written up on papyrus, they were found to be bound in stout leather covers, after the manner of European books in general. That these volumes had lain in the box for several hundreds of years there is no possibility of doubting, but there is no way of ascertaining the exact period when they were first placed in it. It is the opinion of some that the church and monastery which once stood upon the site where the books were found had been in ruins for some centuries, and the general appearance of the place supports this view. There is no reason for supposing that the books were buried along with the body of any ecclesiastical official or monk, for it is certain that they had been expressly written for use in the church of the monastery, and that they were not the private property of any member of it. It would seem that at some period of trouble or persecution an official of the church carefully prepared the box in the event of its ever being necessary to hide books, and that when the need arose he wrapped these volumes in linen with the greatest care, and laid them in it. Their wonderful state of preservation testifies to the wisdom of the choice of a hiding place and the thoroughness with which he carried out the self-appointed task. That they were believed by him to be books of no ordinary kind is evident, and though it is early yet to pronounce a definite opinion upon the value of their contents, it seems clear that the discovery of a complete copy of the Psalter in the dialect of Upper Egypt, and of a volume containing ten complete Homilies by Fathers of the Monophysite Church[3]—for such in fact are the contents of the book—bids fair to rank among the greatest of the great “finds” which have been made in Egypt during the last few years. [Preface; pp. vii, viii]

 Figure 1: The Mudil Codex (The Coptic Psalter in the dialect of Middle Egypt) – the oldest Coptic psalter ever discovered. It is kept in the Coptic Museum in Old (Coptic) Cairo.

In a previous article, we have seen the oldest complete Coptic psalter in the Upper Egypt (Sahidic) dialect, which was edited by E. A. Wallis Budge, and published in London in 1898. It formed part of the Edfû Manuscript (or Edfû Codices), and goes back to the end of the sixth or seventh century. Now, it is time to speak about the oldest Coptic psalter ever – what is called the Mudil Codex, which is written in Middle Egypt (Oxyrhychitic) dialect, and dates from the fourth century. Budge’s Coptic Psalter is kept in the British Library in London – the Mudil Codex is, however, kept in the Coptic Museum (MS. 6614), in Old Cairo, or what is called Coptic Cairo, in Egypt.

 Figure 2: Map showing the location of Oxyrhynchos and Al-Madil (from Emmenegger’s book).

This priceless manuscript, as described by the Coptic Coptologist, Gawdat Gabra, is “The only biblical text discovered in an Egyptian tomb, it was found in the large, poor [Coptic] cemetery of Al-Mudil,[1] 40 kilometres north-east of Oxyrhynchos,[2] a city famous on Graeco-Roman times, in a shallow grave under a [Coptic] young girl’s head. Her parents must have been relatively rich to have owned such a valuable volume. The practice of burying religious texts with the dead dates back to Ancient Egyptian burial customs… the small peg used to lock the book is shaped like the ancient Egyptian symbol of life.”[3]

Unfortunately, no study of this gem has been done in English. Recently, in 2007, the German Coptologist Gregor Emmenegger wrote Der Text des koptischen Psalters aus al-Mudil. Ein Beitrag zur Textgeschichte der Septuaginta und zur Textkritik koptischer Bibelhandschriften, mit der kritischen Neuausgabe des Papyrus 37 der British Library London (U) und des Papyrus 39 der Leipziger Universitätsbibliothek (2013), which an extensive study of it. The publisher[4] writes:

The Mudil Codex from the late 4^th century contains the Biblical Psalms in Coptic. However, the text differs significantly from familiar versions of the Psalms, giving rise to the question of whether we are dealing with an original form of the text. The comprehensive analysis presented here demonstrates the tradition in which this fascinating text is located, how it arose, and what significance it has for research into the Psalms generally and the Coptic Bible manuscripts in particular.

An good English review of the German book by Thomas J. Kraus in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2008.01.37), can be found here.

Figure 1: Rev. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012).

Many of you would know Rowan Williams (b. 1950) as the 104^th Archbishop of Canterbury (2002 – 2012) and a man of intellect whose history at Cambridge and Oxford Universities is recognised, and an intellectual and theologian with wide interests.[1] When the American writer with much interest in Coptic monasticism, and author of so many books on the subject, Rev. Tim Vivian,[2] published The Coptic life of Antony by Saint Athanasius, which he translated,[3] he asked Rev. Williams to write a forward for the book.  I like what Rowan Williams wrote, and this is what I would like to share with my readers here.

Now, Saint Antony[4] the Great (d. 356), the Egyptian ascetic, was not an ordinary man – he was intelligent without being lettered; he was a man of clear mind and strong faith; and he was a man of the sweetest of characters. His influence on Egypt’s Christianity, and in asceticism in general all over the world, cannot be overestimated. Saint Athanasius (d. 373), the 20^th Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria, who wrote Vita S. Antoni (the Life of Saint Antony), too was a man of greatest intellect and faith, and his influence on Christianity is acknowledged by all. This combination of the two great minds, characters and saints – the subject of the autobiography and its author – in one book is what makes Vita S. Antoni one of the most beautiful books ever. And now, another intellect, Rev. Rowan Williams, adds to its brilliance by focusing on Chapters 72-80 of The Coptic Life of Antony, labelled “Antony and the [Pagan, Greek/Egyptian] Philosophers”[5]. He writes in his Forward to the book about the beauty of [Coptic] Christian asceticism, and the power and ascendancy of faith over Greek argumentative philosophy in bringing about real change in the lives of men:

In introducing this splendidly readable translation of the Coptic version of the first monastic classic, Tim Vivian speaks of it as a “frontier work”—a narrative that positions itself on the cutting edge of a new movement, pushing back existing boundaries. The boundaries in question are the habits and definition of Egyptian paganism: from the conclusion of the work,[6] we might gather that the translator has in view the average, not too bright rural believer, not the sophisticated Hellenic intellectual. The story is being told to show how Christian faith and monastic faithfulness quite simply expose an unreflective religious practice as slavery and deceit, unworthy of the dignity of human beings. And while we may be tempted to feel either superior or uncomfortable in the presence of this robust assertiveness, we need to hear what is being said. In Antony’s debates with the pagan philosophers, what is at issue is the importance of wisdom acquired in and expressed in action and commitment; even the pagans grant this in theory in the debate. Against what Christianity can offer, pagans practice can only bring forward nit-picking theorizing and empty religiosity—so the Christian narrator insists. The Christian ascetic, on the other hand, exhibits a life, an identy, that is attuned to reality, material and spiritual, and so has the only sort of power that matters, the power that comes from swimming strongly with the stream of truth. This is the power that sustains the monk in dereliction and temptation, that transfigures his physical presence and that exposes and overcomes the demonic slavery that prevails outside the Church, by miracles and exorcism.[7]

I thought it is remarkable that a 21^st century Anglican Church leader, Rev. Rowan Williams, agrees with St. Antony, the 4^th century Copt, that Christian faith beats philosophy in bringing about real change in the lives of ordinary men and women.

Figure 1: A wedding group photo, at All saints Church, showing Mr And Mrs Butcher third and forth to the right of the bride in the centre. The photo is believed to include other prominent Anglican figures of the time, such as Re. Thornton and Dr Watson.[1]

Edith Louisa Butcher (or Mrs. E. L. Butcher) is a Coptic household name. Who doesn’t appreciate her writing “The Story of the Church of Egypt”, which has rendered a great service to the Coptic Church and nation? Nevertheless, there exists no biography of her. We practically know little of her life. I hope by writing this article I will help in building up an adequate Life of her, as others, hopefully, will add to it.[2]

She was born Edith Louisa Floyer on 13 February 1854 in Marshchapel, Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England. On 26 June 1896, at 42 years of age, she married Rev. Charles henry Butcher of Cairo, at St. Paul’s, Rome, Roma, Latium, Italy. After marriage, she moved with him to Cairo. Rev. Butcher, who was born in Clifton in 1833 and died in 1907 in Cairo, was Chaplain of the Anglican, All Saints Church (built 1878) in Azbakiyya, Cairo,[3] from 1880 to 1907, when he died at 74 years old age, was a major figure in the British community in Egypt after the British occupation in 1881; and he had a great influence in her. She called him “The Dean”, and says of his help, for example, “My History of the Egyptian Church was finished just about the time of my marriage to the Dean, else, as I afterwards told him, it would certainly never have been finished at all.”[4] Mrs Butcher survived her husband, and she died on 4 may 1933 in Devon, England, where she has been buried. I don’t know of any children of her.

Figure 2: Rev. Charles Henry Butcher, or The Dean, as Mrs Butcher calls him.[5]

Mrs E. L. Butcher showed a great interest and admiration in the Copts and their Church, and she wrote three important books that no one interested in Coptic matters should miss (click to access them):

• The Story Of The Church of Egypt (1897)[6] in two volumes: Vol. One & Vol. Two

• Things Seen In Egypt (1910)[7]

• Egypt As We Knew It (1911)[8]

In these books, which are not exclusively about the Copts, particularly the last two, Mrs Butcher surveyed not just Coptic history in sympathy and care but also recorded many Coptic traditions as she saw them around the turn of the 20^th century.

Figure 1: Coptic Woman (Koptische Vrouw) by Charley Toorop, date unknown.

Charley Toorop, or Annie Caroline Pontifex Fernhout-Toorop (1891 – 1955), was a Dutch painter and lithographer. She is famous for her strong sense of realism and symbolism in art, particularly in female figures paintings.

Figure 3: Charley Toorop, Self-portrait, 1940.

I found the above piece of art by her, which is labelled “Koptische Vrouw (Coptic Woman)”. I don’t know its date, and it seems that it was published on cards from 1956. Does that work exist as a lithographic art in one of the Dutch galleries or museums? I hope my readers will help in answering this. The work I have found is on a postcard, and is black and white, and dates from 1956. The beautiful, strong figure of a black woman in the front is back grounded by knights on horses, which increases the feeling of strength and solidity which one gets by looking at the work.

I love it; however, the depicted woman does not strike me as Copt. It does not look like an Ethiopian, since some Europeans sometimes confuse Copts with the latter, as both follow the Coptic Church.  Does any one of my readers have more information about this work? It will be great to know more about it!

Figure 1: Coptic Baptismal Procession by Simeon Solomon, 1865 (at the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford, UK).

Simeon Solomon (1840 – 1905) was an English painter, from a Jewish family, whose work is Pre-Raphaelite. He has great pieces of art from the Old Testament and the Classic Period.

Figure 2: Solomon in oriental costume (a photo by David Wilkie Wynfield [1837–1887], a British painter and photographer).

One of the known paintings by him is “Coptic Baptismal Procession”, which is dated 1865. It is kept at Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford, Bedfordshire, UK. The work is 25.9×42.4 cms in dimension, and is made of watercolour, gouache, and gum Arabic. The work is of course very beautiful; however, like the work of the Dutch lithographer and painter Charley Toorop “Koptische Vrouw (Coptic Woman)”, I don’t think it depicts Coptic subjects except, perhaps, the priest. This seems to me an Ethiopian Baptismal Procession led by the Coptic Egyptian Abune (or head of the Ethiopian Church who was a Coptic monk sent from Egypt). If it was a Coptic depiction, Solomon must have used a bit of imagination in it. But do we know if Solomon travelled to Egypt or Ethiopia? Where did he get his topic from? I wish I could get an answer to that. Sadly, all his biographies on the net are limited, and seem to be focused on his sexual life alone.

 Figure 1: Afrikanische Völker: from the Meyers encyclopedia, (Leipzig and Vienna , the Bibliographic Institute, Fourth Edition, 1885-1892; 1888). Showing: 1 & 2, Mpongwe from Gabon; 3, Arab from Morocco; 4. Arab from southern Tunisia; 5, Fellah; 6 & 7, Copts; 8, Koto from Niger; 9, Fan; 10, Berber; 11, Dar Fur Negroes; 12, Nubians (Hallenga); 13, Congo Negroes; 14, Zulu; 15, Bagirmi-boy; 16, Monbuttu; 17, Niam-Niam; 18, Schulineger; 19 & 20, Abyssinian; 21 & 22, Hottentots; 23, Bechuana girl; 24, Akka; 25 & 26, Bushmen; 27, Sakalawe of Madagascar; 28, Swahili of Zanzibar; 29 & 30, Somali.[1]

The Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (or Meyers Lexikon) is a famous German encyclopaedia that was published in various editions from 1839 to 1984.[2] The work was inaugurated by the dynamic Joseph Meyer (1796 – 1856). The monumental work included, inter alia, a survey of the Völker (peoples or nations) of the world, with plates displaying figures of African peoples, Asiatic peoples, American peoples, etc., and with individual notes of each nation. The Copts (Kopten) he included with the African nations (Afrikanische Völker), as indeed their geographical position dictates. I have published the relevant plate at the top. Below, I publish an inset that shows the figures of the Coptic man and woman (figures 6 and 7 in the plate), which, I believe, have not done justice to the Copts, and cannot be taken as representative of them (but it must be stressed there is a spectrum in the physiognomy of the Copts):

Figure 2: Inset from Fig. 1 showing the Coptic man and woman (number 6 & 7).

Figure 3: A less shiny version of Fig. 2.

Under the topic “Kopten (Copts)”, the Meyers Lexikon (1888) included the following text to which I add an English translation:[3]

Afrikanische Völker

Bild 1.148d: Afrikanische Völker. Völker.

Ein Volksstamm in Ägypten, die christlichen Nachkommen der alten Ägypter. Während sie in Unterägypten vor der Zeit der mohammedanischen Eroberung nicht unvermischt geblieben sind, haben sie sich in Mittel- und Oberägypten, ihrem Hauptverbreitungsbezirk, ziemlich rein erhalten, wiewohl es scheint, daß schon in den Adern der alten Ägypter, wie wir aus Abbildungen ersehen, besonders in den niedern Klassen, Negerblut rollte. Sie zeigen in ihrer Körperbeschaffenheit noch den altägyptischen Typus: eine breite, meist niedrige Stirn, schwarzes, leicht gekräuseltes Haar, eine meist gerade, scharf geschnittene Nase, dazu Augen, welche von länglichem Schnitt, aber groß und immer von merkwürdig strahlendem Schwarz sind. Die Hautfarbe wechselt von Gelblich bis Braun (s. Tafel »Afrikanische Völker«, Fig. 6 u. 7).

“Copts”

African nations
1.148d Image: African nations. Peoples.

A tribe in Egypt, the Christian descendants of the ancient Egyptians. While, in Lower Egypt, from the time of the Mohammedan conquest, they have not remained unmixed, in Middle and Upper Egypt, their main region of distribution, they remained quite pure (although it seems that some Negro blood was infused in the veins of the ancient Egyptians, as we can see from figures, especially in the lower classes). They still show in their body composition the Egyptian type: a wide, mostly low forehead; black, slightly curly hair; mostly straight, sharply cut nose; in addition the eyes which are oblong, but large and black always strangely beaming. The skin colour changes from Yellowish to brown (see panel “African nations“, 6 and 7).

In 1888 a great American book, by by H. G. Cutler and L. W. Yaggy, “Panorama of Nations  or, Journeys Among The Families Of Men” was published,[1]  which the reader can access here. Among the countries it covers is Egypt; and in Egypt it talks about the nations: Copts (or “ancient inhabitants” as it calls them), Fellaheen and Bedouins.

On the Copts, it produces a drawing of a Coptic man, “A Copt”:

Figure 1: A Copt, from Panorama of Nations.[2]

This lithograph is clearly taken from the original one in the German Meyers Lexikon, which I have written about before. Although we have it in the 1888 edition of the Meyers Lexikon, it appears that it had been printed in older editions too. It appears that the image was first reproduced from the Meyers Lexikon by the Austrian artist, Leopold Carl Müller in the 1870s,[3] and from it Panorama of Nations copied.

Under Egypt, the authors pass much to focus on the Copts on whom they had high opinion as “a very intelligent, courteous, industrious and humble class of the Egyptians”:

But we pass them [the pyramids] by, and the splendid mosques of Cairo, and the tombs of its rulers, and the beautiful villas in the suburbs, and ancient glory, and present attempts at magnificence, and go into the “by-ways and hedges” to get acquainted with the people. We will have nothing to do with the Turk, for he is not a native; although he has imposed many of his customs among the Egyptians. We shall avoid the Italians, French, English, Armenians and other nationalities, who live in the “Frank” quarter of Cairo and Alexandria, and who are traveling up and down the Nile country, viewing curiosities, trafficking in precious stones, or awaiting the return of the pilgrims from Mecca laden with the wealth of the far East; who are the agents of commercial houses in their native lands, or the principals themselves in this central station of the overland route to India. For the present we have no interest in these people, except in so far as they have relations to a very intelligent, courteous, industrious and humble class of the Egyptians, the COPTS.

They number about one-fifteenth of the entire population of the country, and are the sole remnant of the ancient Egyptians. In Lower Egypt they are of a yellowish tinge, which shades into a dark brown further south. The Copts inhabit small sections of the larger cities, while in Upper Egypt they have settled whole towns and villages. What is their business? They are clerks and accountants in government and mercantile offices; they are the Christian priests of Egypt, cheerful, humane and hospitable, with their convents and monasteries scattered along the Nile. They are the scribes, priests and scholars of Egypt, and an ink-horn at the girdle (for they wear the turban and flowing robe) is a masculine badge, as is the cross, tattooed upon the hand of the Copt woman, her mark of honor. The Coptic priesthood have considerably lapsed from the rigor of their religious observances as primitive Christians, although in the regular monasteries their discipline is still severe. The dress is a simple skirt of coarse woolen fabric. Only on feast days are small quantities of animal food allowed, the ordinary food being black bread and lentils. The convents, when not situated on some inaccessible rock, are surrounded by a high and strong wall which has only a single iron door, and in some cases is wholly without opening, the means of entrance being a pulley from the top.

The religious rites of the Copt are many and severe, the services lasting many hours at a time. Seven times daily he repeats his Pater Noster, and begs for Divine mercy forty-one. The churches are decorated with ornaments of ostrich eggs and divided into four compartments. Furthest from the doorway is the chancel, or sanctuary, where the eucharist is celebrated, and which is hidden behind a high screen. Next is the room where the priests interpret in Arabic the Coptic service to the singers, the leading men of the congregation and to strangers. In the third compartment are the mass of the congregation, moving round in their bare feet to pray before the pictures of the saints, or leaning upon long crutches for support. The veiled women occupy the fourth room, which is dimly lighted, and usually situated in the extreme rear of the church.

The domestic life of the Copts is very similar to that of the Arabs who have settled along the Nile. They have adopted also many of the Moslem customs, such as the veiling of the faces of many of their women. Some Coptic women are allowed to go out from time to time and even to visit and shop pretty freely. Others, again, are as closely secluded as if they were actual denizens of a harem. Nearly all keep black female slaves instead of hiring servants.

There are some peculiarities in the Coptic marriage ceremony, however. The bride, unlike the Moslem, has no canopy to cover her in the procession to the bridegroom’s house. At the preliminary feast, pigeons are released from pies and fly around the room shaking bells attached to their feet. After the marriage ceremony, the priests set on the foreheads of the new couple a thin gilt diadem. In entering her husband’s house, the bride must step over the blood of a newly killed lamb. The whole pageant, after lasting eight days, ends with a grand feast at the bridegroom’s house. This is the custom, of course, among the well-to-do classes, but certainly would not prevail in the hut of a poor chicken hatcher or fellah (farmer). But we shall soon be among these poor swarthy sons of the Nile and it will become evident that they could not be the originators of pageants and feasts of superlative grandeur.[4]

There is clearly much that can be learned from this book about the Copts. It is interesting to know that in the 19^th century the Coptic churches had no pews for seating: “the congregation, moving round in their bare feet to pray before the pictures of the saints, or leaning upon long crutches for support”; and that “[t]he veiled women occupy the fourth room [of the church (see above)], which is dimly lighted, and usually situated in the extreme rear of the church”. The practices of entering the church barefooted, standing up throughout the service that can continue of hours and using long crutches to lean on if one is frail were old traditions. At the present I don’t know if they predated the Arab invasion, but it is clear the practices came to an end in the modern age, particularly after the British came to Egypt in 1882. Again, another practice for secluding women in the rear of the church is intriguing. I don’t know if this is Christian at all; and I although I don’t have any evidence to prove at the present, I think this practice has crept to us as part of the Arabisation and Islamic culturalisation (assimilation) of our people,[5] as also the veiling of women. Thanks God these foreign practices, of secluding women worshipers behind the men and veiling them, have ended now.

I also find what the authors call “some peculiarities in the Coptic marriage ceremony” very interesting. The fact that “[t]he [Coptic] bride, unlike the Moslem, has no canopy to cover her in the procession to the bridegroom’s house” is of course part of the oppression and persecution the Copts were experiencing by the Muslims, and is well known. The practice of stepping by the bride over the blood of a newly killed lamb dates back to Pharaonic times, and is kept by the Copts. The tradition at the preliminary feast of the marriage ceremony when “pigeons are released from pies and fly around the room shaking bells attached to their feet” is a beautiful one, and is not well known.

The following lovely Coptic mosaic motifs from the Coptic Period, 3^rd to 7^th centuries (plates XX and XXI) and pottery from the Saitic and Coptic periods (plate XIX) are coloured lithographs printed by Dr. Selle & Co. in Berlin, 1924. They are on heavy paper and with a sheet dimension of around 14 ½ by 10 ½ inch. I republish them here for the reader to enjoy:

 Figure 1: Coptic Maiden by Gustav Richter as it appears in Egypt: Descriptive, Historical, And Picturesque (Aegypten in Bild und Wort) by George Ebers. Translated from the Original German By Clara Bell. With an introduction and notes by S. Birch, D.C.L., LL.D., F.S.A., Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum; President of the Society of Biblical Archœology, etc., etc., etc. VOL. I. (New York, London, Paris & Melbourne, Cassell & Company, Limited, 1879); p. 33.

Figure 2: Coptic Maiden by Gustav Richter as it appears in Zigzag journeys In The Levant, With A Talmudist Storyteller (1886) by Hezekiah Butterworth (1839 – 1905) (Boston, Estes and Lariat, 1886); p. 137.

Gustav Carl Ludwig Richter (1823 – 1984), or simply Gustav Richter, was a German artist who was interested in painting figures and portraits.

He has an interesting painting, titled “Coptic Maiden”, which I reproduce to my readers here. I do not know if he visited Egypt or if his “Coptic Maiden, which appear in two publications at least, as a lithographic black and white art, is based on a coloured painting. Perhaps one of my readers will help in finding about that.

The Illustrated London News was the world’s first illustrated weekly newspaper that lasted from 1842 until 2003,[1] and covered many interesting topics. Collectors pay a lot of money to get hold of its old issues. In its July 15, 1882, issue, it dedicated the issue to Egypt As It Is Seen. That was before the British occupation and the defeat of the Egyptian army at Tel El Kebir in September 1882. The issue included many sketches by what it calls its special artist. This was no one less than the French caricaturist and author Georges Montbard (1841 – 1905). Included was a print which shows seven Egyptian figures: one of them is the Coptic woman, in the cenre. It seems that this print was originally hand coloured wood engraving about 40 by 28 cm in dimension. Here is its coloured version:

 Figure 1: Topographic map of western Luxor, showing the Vally of the Queens and the mountains west to it.

In my studies about Apa Pisentius (548 – 632 AD) I mentioned that he was bishop of Coptos[1] at the time of the Persian occupation of Egypt (619-629 AD). Once Bishop Pisentius got the news of the approaching Persians, he ran away before them as they were targeting Coptic Church leaders, and he, accompanied by his disciple John the Elder, who later wrote his biography,[2] moved from his seat in Coptos southwards to the mountainous area to the west of Luxor. He selected an ancient tomb in one of the recesses of the mountain of Tjîmi (Djîmé or Gemi), which is called Shama شامة in Arabic. There, he retreated for ten years until the end of the Persian occupation when he returned back to his seat, while his disciple stayed at a nearby abode, bringing to Pisentius his meagre provisions on weekly basis. There the saintly bishop spent his time “praying night and day that God would save the people from bondage to those cruel nations.”[3]

The abode in which John the Elder stayed was most probably the Monastery of St. Phoebammon (Abue Fam) the Soldier (his martyrdom is celebrated in the Coptic Synaxarium on 27 Toba), which is some 5 miles (8 kilometres) to the west of the Valley of the Queens.[4] This monastery, which is where Apa Pisentius started his solitary ascetic life, remaining in it for seven years; he then moved to a close by cave, where he stayed for five years; and then sixteen years in a cave in the mountain of Tjîmi before he moved to a northern mountain called in Arabic manuscripts “Al-Assas (الأساس)”, where he stayed for three years until he was ordained bishop in AD 599.[5] It was therefore the right place for him to retreat before the advance of the Persians.

This monastery has been found and excavated a few years ago by the Coptic Archaeological Society. It is built of two floors and has many Coptic writings. Bishop Samuel, in his Directory of Churches and Monasteries of Egypt (2002), that it is difficult to reach this monastery and will need a guide.[6] In it also has been found the original archive of Apa Pisentius’ letters.[7]

I am not sure if these letters have been published. I am also not sure that every thing that could be found has been found. This area is rich with Coptic archaeology and I would not be surprised if we are yet to find more.  It just needs more dedicated Coptologists. There go, young Coptologists! There is a rich gem awaiting you!

Update (7 March 2013):

For the Assas Mountain (جبل الأساس), see Wallis Budge’s note, here. The mountain is called Tsenti in Coptic. In The Life of Bishop Pisentius, Pisentius is called “Anchorite in the Mountain of Tsenti”. We know that he started his ascetic life there before he was ordained bishop at Coptos. He was burried in the Mountain of Tsenti. Budge says the mountain lies to the east of the Nile at Coptos, but he is wrong – it is actually located west of the Nile, and extends with other mountains to join with the Mountain of Tjîmi, to the west of the Nile at Luxor. The whole range of mountains in that area was alive with Coptic monasticism, and is still is but to a lesser degree. It offers to the Coptologist a great field for research.

 Figure 1: Freya Stark in 1928.

The casual reader of the following passage in Freya Stark’s book East Is West,[1] in which she mentions the Copts for the first time, may not immediately understand the innuendo in it:

It is very remarkable phenomenon [the emerging young men of Egypt], for it is the first time in centuries that this country [Egypt] has not been governed by foreign rulers. Like the Arabs of Palestine, the peasants of Egypt are mostly immemorial inhabitants of their land, a product of many mixtures, with but a thin sprinkling of the desert conquerors among them; but the ruling Arabs through the Middle Ages were a separate exclusive society, followed by the more exclusive Turks. The Copts are most like the original people of Egypt; even now you can recognise their slender profiles and long-lashed black eyes, opaque and lustrous, in any pharaoh’s tomb. They still are one-fifteenth or so of the country’s population. They have kept the Christian religion taken from earlier conquerors, but they have long since adopted the Arabic language for ordinary conversation; and – as they are not what is called a “pressure group” – no one thinks of Egypt as they do of Palestine, or contemplates turning it back to the Copts to be as it was in the days of Titus, when his galleys sailed past Roman Alexandria towards Roman Judaea.[2]

Stark has good words for the Copts despite her gaffe that they have “taken [Christianity] from earlier conquerors”. But what is this about the “pressure group”, and what is the connection with Palestine and turning Egypt “back to the Copts to be as it was in the days of Titus, when his galleys sailed past Roman Alexandria towards Roman Judaea”?

Freya Stark[3] to those who don’t know her was a British explorer and travel writer (1883 – 1993) who wrote several books after travelling extensively in the Middle East, Turkey, Greece, and Italy. She was an Arabist and her books reveal that she fell in love with Arab countries.  During World War II (1939 – 1945) she worked for the British Ministry of Information in Aden, Baghdad, and Cairo, where she founded the anti-Nazi Brotherhood of Freedom. It is not a secret that she worked for the British Intelligence during the war.[4] She resisted the Zionist project in Palestine and revealed strong anti-Semitic feelings. This is particularly puzzling as when she published her book in 1945 the Holocaust was fresh in mind.  The overriding motive for her might have been the need to recruit Arabs to the side of Britain in her war against Germany – and to achieve that she had to appear pro-Arab and anti-Jew. That may have been her immediate concern – there is evidence, however, that she harboured real hate towards the Jews.[5] This may help the reader to understand what she meant by that strange sentence in the passage I have quoted from East Is West: Titus, of course, was the future Roman Emperor (79 – 81 AD), who led in AD 70 the Roman army in the siege and the sacking of Jerusalem, ending in the total destruction and demolition of the Jewish Temple in the city.