Top 10 Monasteries in Egypt
No country has a deeper claim on the history of Christian monasticism than Egypt. It was in the Egyptian desert, at the turn of the fourth century, that Saint Anthony the Great withdrew into solitude and became the model for every hermit who followed, while a generation later Saint Pachomius gathered monks into organised communities at Tabennisi in Upper Egypt and effectively invented the cenobitic, or communal, monastery. From these roots the Coptic Orthodox Church built a whole civilisation of prayer: the great monastic colony of Scetis in the Western Desert, the cave-dotted mountains of the Eastern Desert near the Red Sea, the churches of Old Cairo where the Hanging Church still stands above a Roman gate, and the monastic towns of Upper Egypt. The ten monasteries below trace that inheritance from its desert beginnings to the living communities that keep it today.
1. Monastery of Saint Anthony (Deir Anba Antonios)
Hidden beneath the cliffs of the Galala plateau in the Eastern Desert, roughly 155 kilometres south-east of Cairo near the Red Sea coast, this is widely regarded as the oldest still-inhabited Christian monastery on earth. It was founded in the mid-fourth century by disciples of Anthony the Great, the man whose retreat into the desert gave rise to the whole monastic movement. Behind high fortified walls lie several churches, gardens fed by a perennial spring, a bakery and mill, and a tower keep, or qasr, into which the monks once retreated from raiders; the old Church of St Anthony preserves a celebrated cycle of thirteenth-century Coptic frescoes. High above the monastery a long stair climbs the cliff to the cave where Anthony sought his deepest solitude.
2. Monastery of Saint Paul the Anchorite (Deir Anba Bula)
A short drive through the mountains from Saint Anthony's stands the monastery of Saint Paul the Anchorite, and the two desert houses are traditionally visited together. It is built around the cave of Paul of Thebes, revered in Coptic tradition as the very first Christian hermit, who is said to have lived in the desert for decades before Anthony sought him out; their legendary meeting, at which a raven brought a double portion of bread, is a favourite subject of Coptic art. The heart of the monastery is the ancient cave church raised over Paul's dwelling, dim with icons and hanging lamps and holding the saint's relics. Like its neighbour it is a fortified, self-sufficient community, ringed by desert on every side.
3. Monastery of Saint Pishoy (Deir Anba Bishoy), Wadi El Natrun
Wadi El Natrun — the ancient Scetis, or Shiheet — was once home to hundreds of monks scattered across a salt-flat wilderness; four monasteries survive there, and Deir Anba Bishoy is among the most important. Founded in the fourth century, it is associated with Saint Pishoy, a desert father whose body is venerated here and traditionally held to be incorrupt. Today it adjoins the papal residence used by the Coptic Orthodox pope, which has made it a spiritual centre of the modern church. Its walled enclosure, churches and refectory give a clear picture of how a Scetis community was arranged around its daily round of prayer and work.
4. Monastery of the Syrians (Deir al-Suryani), Wadi El Natrun
A short walk from Deir Anba Bishoy lies the Monastery of the Syrians, which took its name when it was acquired for a community of Syrian monks around the eighth to ninth century. It became famous for its library: the medieval Syriac manuscripts gathered here were among the greatest collections of their kind, and many were later dispersed to European institutions, including the British Museum. The Church of the Holy Virgin preserves remarkable early wall paintings, uncovered in recent restorations, along with an ancient wooden door inlaid with carved panels. A venerable tamarind tree in the grounds is tied by legend to Saint Bishoy himself.
5. Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great (Deir Abu Maqar), Wadi El Natrun
Founded around 360 by Saint Macarius the Great, this became the most influential house of Scetis, and for many centuries it supplied a large share of the patriarchs of the Coptic Church. Its churches are traditionally associated with the relics of numerous saints, and in the 1970s remains identified with John the Baptist and the prophet Elisha were reported discovered here during restoration. In modern times the monastery was famously revived under Father Matta el-Meskeen — Matthew the Poor — whose community renewed both its crumbling buildings and its intellectual life. It remains a large working monastery, its walls surrounded by reclaimed desert farmland.
6. Monastery of the Romans (Deir al-Baramus), Wadi El Natrun
The fourth of the surviving Scetis monasteries, Deir al-Baramus is by tradition the oldest of them, its foundation reaching back to the earliest days of the colony under Saint Macarius. Its unusual name, "Baramus," is understood to mean "that of the Romans," and is linked to two young monks, Maximus and Domitius, remembered as the sons of a Roman emperor who came to the desert and died here as ascetics. The main Church of the Virgin holds ancient columns, icons and a sanctuary of great age, and the monastery keeps the quiet, remote character that first drew hermits to this ground. It stands at the northern edge of the wadi, the first of the four monasteries reached on the road up from Cairo.
7. Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai
At the foot of Mount Sinai stands Saint Catherine's, which differs from every other house on this list in being Greek Orthodox rather than Coptic — a useful reminder that Egypt's monastic map is not exclusively Coptic. Built on the order of the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, it is among the oldest continuously functioning monasteries in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, enclosing the traditional site of the Burning Bush of Moses. Its library is extraordinary, ranking second only to the Vatican's in the age and value of its manuscripts; it was here that the fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus came to light. The monastery also guards an unrivalled collection of early icons that survived the Byzantine iconoclasm.
8. The White and Red Monasteries, near Sohag
On the edge of the Western Desert near Sohag in Upper Egypt stand two remarkable survivals of late antiquity. The White Monastery (Deir al-Abyad), named for the pale limestone of its towering, temple-like outer walls, is the monastery of Saint Shenoute the Archimandrite, the fifth-century abbot and writer who shaped the Coptic language and led one of the largest monastic federations of his day. A few kilometres away, the Red Monastery (Deir al-Ahmar), built of red brick, is celebrated for the exceptionally well-preserved and recently restored polychrome paintings that cover its sanctuary — among the finest survivals of late Roman church decoration anywhere in the Christian world.
9. Monastery of Saint Simeon, near Aswan
On the west bank of the Nile opposite Aswan lie the ruins of the Monastery of Saint Simeon (Deir Anba Hadra), one of the largest and best-preserved fortified monasteries in Egypt despite having stood empty for centuries. Founded in the seventh century and rebuilt in the tenth, this great complex of mud-brick and stone once housed a substantial community behind walls that look more like a desert fortress than a cloister. It was abandoned around the thirteenth century, reportedly for want of water and under pressure from raids, and has never been reoccupied. Reached by boat across the river and a climb over the sand, its two-storey basilica, cells and towers still convey the scale of monastic life on the frontier of Nubia.
10. Monastery of Saint Mina (Abu Mena), near Alexandria
In the desert south-west of Alexandria stood one of the greatest pilgrimage centres of the early Christian world, the city of Abu Mena, which grew around the tomb of Saint Menas, a martyr of the early fourth century. Pilgrims once carried away small clay flasks of holy water stamped with his image across the whole Mediterranean; the ruins of the great basilica and pilgrim town are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, though a rising water table has placed them on the list of sites in danger. Beside them a large modern Coptic monastery, built in the twentieth century, keeps the cult of Saint Menas alive and draws great crowds of pilgrims. It is the burial place of Pope Cyril VI, who inspired its refounding.
Following the desert's thread
Together these ten houses trace Christian monasticism from the first hermit's cave to communities still chanting the offices today, and you can find every one of them, and the world of the desert fathers, on the interactive map.