My Notes on the Troubles in Egypt, anno domini 325 – 415 

John Newton, 1997

 

Today I’m a university librarian, but twenty years ago I was working on my doctorate and teaching classes about the early history of Christianity. I was most fascinated by the fourth and fifth centuries as the Church gained power and began to harass the pagans.

The Roman Empire’s decline brought along with it much change, chaos and conflict.

After Arius of Alexandria put forth an idea the Church didn’t like, Emperor Constantine was persuaded to convene the First Council of Nicaea in 325, and that’s when Christian doctrine became consistent, constant and closed to questions.

When the Divinity of Jesus became doctrine in Alexandria and throughout the Empire, a majority of the indigenous Egyptian Coptic Christian monks said yes to everything that had been decided. Most of them were living the cenobitic lifestyle in monasteries.

But there were many other monks who couldn’t or wouldn’t reconcile their beliefs after that Council decision, and didn’t accept the decrees that kept coming from Alexandrian Bishop Theophilus. Most had been educated at the Catechetical School of Alexandria; embraced the divine nature of Christ and the Bible as allegory, and kept that belief as they sought personal salvation. Called free-thinking monks, they continued to believe as Clement and his pupil Origen had believed and taught at the school years before.

Each free-thinking monk found his or her own individual way. They refused to seek salvation through recitation of statements created by men at a council. They wanted only to be left alone to practice their individual, Neoplatonic-influenced beliefs in peace. After 325, most of them left Alexandria and headed south to find solitude in the desert, where they became known as Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers. They followed their own individual spiritual paths and lived according to their own inclinations. Some chose to live in a monastery. Others chose the eremitic lifestyle, to live alone in a cave or a tiny dwelling called a cell. They were called solitaries, hermits or anchorites.

The Church ignored them for a long while; until Bishop Theophilus and other ecclesiastical authorities began to realize how big the exodus had been and became angry. All those Christians who’d fled into the desert were no longer under Church control; so the Church sent men into the desert to find solitary monks and test their beliefs. If the right answers weren’t delivered when questioned about the Divine Realm, the Nature of God or the Trinity, judgment, denunciation and punishment followed. Some of those monks died, some ran farther south, some fled to other countries.

Alexi and Mark, 1977 - 1995

I’ve always enjoyed teaching, which is how I met Alexi Hamilton and Mark Miller in 1977. They enrolled in my fall seminar: “Causes and Effects of Eremitic and Cenobitic Lifestyles in Ancient Egypt.” Undergraduate students with a keen interest in religious history; Alexi had already decided to be an archeologist like her father; Mark was interested in ancient languages.

The Nag Hammadi texts had just been published in English and were on my desk when classes started. Maybe you know about that famous discovery in 1945, when an earthenware jar of ancient papyrus texts was found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Years of political, religious and academic wrangling, followed by years of meticulous translation and coordination, had finally produced this publication.

A new book about something so old brought increased interest in the seminar that year. Mark, Alexi and several other new students, at graduate and undergraduate levels, registered. It was a lively group of knowledgeable and curious people. Alexi was interested in everything and not too shy to ask whatever question came to mind. When she spoke, her animated voice and expressive dark eyes focused everyone’s attention, and her intense curiosity about details inspired the whole class to take everything seriously.

“Why was the jar hidden? Were monks living in that area?” Alexi paused to catch her breath. “Could they have hidden the jar? What will finding those texts in the twentieth century mean for the history of Christianity? And what about the future?” She stopped and a general discussion began.

When Alexi wanted to know something, the other students assumed it was important and also wanted to know. Everyone paid attention and asked good questions. When old things are found, we learn something new and more questions follow.

After Mark and Alexi received their baccalaureate degrees, we agreed to keep in touch. Alexi went on to study archeology, specializing in the history of Early Christianity and several years later earned her doctorate. Mark studied languages, specifically historical-comparative linguistics, and also earned a doctorate. Later he added another in library science.

We’re still good friends and help each other with work from time to time. While I enjoy living in this beautiful prairie landscape and working in a conventional academic position, they prefer the variety of challenges to be found in different places and unpredictable projects.

So we keep in touch, whether it’s about a tough research question or to discuss and evaluate ideas for a new project. They’re in Egypt now and have been for several years.

Mark went to Alexandria to help plan for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. It’s to be a twenty-first-century incarnation of the Great Library of Alexandria, built during the Ptolemaic dynasty in 305 BC. It was destroyed after several hundred glorious years of collecting and storing knowledge and wisdom found throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. The twentieth century Alexandrian Egyptians are again determined to be known and respected for a magnificent library. May fortune smile on their project.

Alexi chose to work in the desert south of Alexandria. For a couple of years she assisted others on small projects, and learned more about the history of the area. When she began to think about a project of her own, she remembered those free-thinking Neoplatonic monks, the ones who hadn’t accepted edicts. She knew they’d gone south of Alexandria, but wondered where they ended up, and how their lives had changed.

And there were other devout monks who held heretical beliefs. Gnostics, for example, and members of Eastern sects, like the School of Antioch in Syria had also been denounced and many had endured violent punishment administered by Church authorities. Other not-so-well-known kinds of religious communities were also ravaged during those years; violent encounters happened everywhere and often.

So when Alexi learned in 1992, that sixty-two bodies had been found in a mass grave about fifty miles south of Alexandria, she wanted to know more about it. Maybe some of her questions about those years of conflict could be answered.

She knew there’d been much unrest at nearby monasteries and thought the grave must have been dug after a brutal religious clash. A team was already working on it near the northwest edge of Wadi Natrun, a low-lying area of marshes, salt deposits, rough terrain and monasteries in the Scetis Desert. Alexi had also heard there were caves, and thought monks and monasteries would probably have hidden their sacred codices or artifacts when threatened. Maybe some had been buried. Anything she could find might reveal more about the monks and those years.

After visiting with teams working on the grave site and hearing local talk about caves; she looked around for the right sort of landforms along the edges of the Wadi Natrun. She found an escarpment high above the desert floor. The ragged west face of those sandstone cliffs had many indentations about thirty feet above the ground. She could find no natural access to them until she discovered some sloping wind-worn steps in a corner. They led to a small, partly concealed opening that went deep into the wall. She thought that cave could have been a hiding place.

After several months, the preliminary work on permissions was finished and she was ready to begin her first solo dig in Cave 450uc. In February 1994, she installed a string grid just above the cave floor to guide her work, picked up her brush and began the monotonous task.

She was slow and careful. I received a few photos that showed her at work inside the cave, bent over the square she was brushing. She kept her chestnut hair tied up in a bright scarf and always wore layered cotton shirts and olive fatigues for protection from heat and insects. The slow and tedious work went on and on; until one afternoon in May 1995, when her brush revealed a fired clay surface.

“We’re there, we found them!” she yelled. Her two Egyptian assistants came running to share the joyous moment of discovery.

She grinned, thanking them for their unwavering support, and reminded them Mark would visit the next day. They’d have a celebration. What a grand surprise. She knew Mark would be as excited as she was. And since construction of the new library had just begun; he was free to help her at the dig. The stars had aligned.

In the morning, as they brushed the sand in several sections and many more jars were revealed. The four compatriots were in high spirits during lunch as they talked about everything they’d been through for more than a year. They also made a plan for removal and transportation of the jars; then went back to work until all had been uncovered with great care and were safe in Alexandria.

In the city, specialists began the careful processes required whenever ancient, delicate artifacts are found: unpacking of jars, placement of items in controlled environments for preservation, preliminary study of the scrolls and codices; and at last the reading of those ancient written words.

Many conservators and translators would take part in those slow, meticulous processes.

- - - - -

For almost fifteen centuries, potent, unseen forces had been watching,

waiting for this moment.

“It is time,” one of the Guardians said. The other two agreed. “Yes, it begins now.”

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 NEXT.....Chapter 1
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