Desert Caravan: The Streets of Coptic Cairo

From cruising the Nile River to a beachfront hotel on the Mediterranean Sea, can life get any better! I do miss my Sunboat III though, but the Mediterranean is so beautiful! Our balcony opens right into a view of the Mediterranean! I will be posting pics of that soon, but I need to back up a bit and share some other sites before moving on to Alexandria.

I have spoken a great deal about ancient Egypt, so I am going to talk about religion in Egypt, mainly Coptic Christianity, Islam and even a little Judaism. I will apologize before hand for the lack of pictures because some of these sites would not allow photography.

Our religion lesson begins in Old Cairo or what many call Coptic Cairo. Coptic Cairo is the modern name for the oldest part of the city. Coptic Cairo lies within the walls of a third century AD Roman fortress of Babylon, and is a haven of quiet, narrow lanes ancient holy places. The main entrance, leading to the interesting Coptic Museum and the beautiful Hanging Church, is between two round Roman towers, against which the waters of the Nile once before the river shifted course to the west some centuries ago. A second, stepped entrance to the north leads along a sunken alley to the rest of the churches, the synagogue and the cemeteries.

Alley Entrance into Coptic Cairo

Let’s start with our first site the Ben Ezra Synagogue. While Egypt is legally a Muslim state, there is an extremely small Jewish population that still supposedly resides here. We haven’t met any Jewish people here, so I am still going to say there are probably no Jews living in Cairo, at least. It wouldn’t make sense if they did live in Egypt, given Israel is right across the border. Nonetheless, there is still Ben Ezra Synagogue, which belongs to the Jewish community of Egypt. Ben Ezra Synagogue is Egypt’s oldest synagogue and it has been heavily restored in recent times. Ben Ezra was originally a church, built in the 8^th century. Around 300 years, later the church was destroyed, and the site and the ruins were sold to Abraham ben Ezra, a 12^th century rabbi of Jerusalem.

ben Ezra Synagogue

Jewish history in Egypt dates back to the era of the Old Testament and the stories of Moses and the persecution by the pharaohs. After the Roman expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem in the first century AD, Alexandria became the world’s most important center of Judaism. As recently as the early 20^th century the Jewish community in Egypt remained significant and prominent. This changed dramatically with the creation of Israel in 1948. Those Jews that had not already left by choice were forced out of Egypt when the country went to war against the newly formed Jewish state.

We have spent a great deal of time learning about Coptic Christianity. Many people in the west are unfamiliar with Coptic Christianity. Coptic Christians or Copts claim to be the first followers of Christ. Coptic means “believers,” and refers to native Egyptian Christians. The word Copt means Egyptian in Greek. Ten percent of the Egyptian population practices Coptic Christianity. It should come as no surprise that there are Christians in Egypt given its geographical proximity to the Holy Land, and given it’s tie to the Holy Family (Joseph, Mary and Jesus). According to the Bible, the Holy Family visited Egypt to escape King Herod’s “massacre of the innocents.” Coptic tradition says that one of the sites they visited was the Church of St. Sergius, where the Holy Family stayed in a cave beneath the current site of the church. The cave is preserved as a crypt, but we were not allowed in to explore. We were only able to see a bit of it from the top of the stairs.

According to ancient tradition, Christianity was introduced to the Egyptians by Saint Mark in Alexandria, shortly after the ascension of Christ and during the reign of the Roman emperor, Claudius, around 42 AD. The legacy that Saint Mark left in Egypt was a considerable Christian community in Alexandria. From Alexandria, Christianity spread throughout Egypt within half a century of Saint Mark’s arrival in Alexandria, as is clear from a fragment of the Gospel of John, written in Coptic, and the New Testament writings found in Oxyrhynchus, in Middle Egypt. In the second century, Christianity began to spread to rural areas, and scriptures were translated into the local language. By the beginning of the 3^rd century AD, Christians constituted the majority of Egypt’s population, and the Church of Alexandria was recognized as one of Christendom’s four Apostolic Sees, second in honor only to the Church of Rome. The Church of Alexandria is the oldest church in Africa. Egyptian Christians split from the orthodox church after the Council of Chalcedon proclaimed, in 451 AD, the dual human and divine nature of Christ. Dioscurus, patriarch of Alexandria, refused to accept this definition, believing only in Christ’s divinity.

Our next site was the Coptic Museum. The museum houses the finest collection of Coptic art in the world. The building boasts elaborately painted wooden ceilings, elegant mashrabiyya windows, and a garden courtyard. The exhibits date back to Egypt’s Christian era and both Pharaonic and Islamic influences are evident in the artifacts on display. Early exhibits carry motifs and symbols, such as ankhs and Horus-like falcons that are recognizably ancient Egyptian. A 6^th-century Coptic stone pulpit resembles the stairs and shrine of the pyramid complex at Saqqara, and also prefigures the minbars found in all Cairo mosques. Still more fascinating are the crudely painted depictions of Mary suckling Jesus, which directly echo images of found all over Egypt of Isis nursing Horus.

Remains of the Roman Fortress Outside of the Coptic Museum with the Coptic Museum in the background.

Our last stop was the Hanging Church. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, this church is popularly called the “Hanging” or “Suspended” Church because it was built on top of the Water Gate of the old Roman fortress of Babylon. The original structure was built possibly as early as the 4^th century AD, but it was destroyed and rebuilt in the 11^th century. A marble pulpit and the inlaid ivory screens that hid the three altar areas date from between the 10^th and 13^th centuries.