Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 27

Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 27 (1990) 151-162 Christianity at Syene/Elephantine/Philae One of the few times papyrology has made the major media was in The New Yorker's "A Reporter At Large" in October 1983, where, in reporting on the papyrology congress in Naples that previous spring, the observer had overheard in the corridors such interesting sentences as "I personally am not a demotist." Though I personally am not a demotist, it is a most worthwhile interaction to be part of the "Constantine and Beyond" portion of a conference on "Life in a Multicultural Society: Egypt from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond".1 In a paper of limited scope I can do no more than touch on the high points of what we know, from different kinds of evidence, about Christian life and activity in the area of the First Cataract under the Later Roman Empire. Some monuments and manuscripts remain, in spite of the second great inundation of the twentieth century, to provide information about the Christian society of this strategic frontier zone. The latitude of Syene (Aswan), Eratosthenes' measuring point, is still shown on the sixth-century Alexandrian sundial preserved in the London Science Museum;2 and in late apocryphal texts the phrase "from Alexandria to Syene"3 bounds and defines Egypt the way "from Dan to Beersheba" defines Israel. As we know from the history of the Christian kingdoms of Nubia, the new faith made the First Cataract a major station in its spread upriver; enough physical evidence remained even in 11 should like to thank Bezalel Porten, J. Joel Farber, Janet Johnson, Monica Blanchard, Robin Darling, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Anna Kartsonis, James Keenan, Richard Millman, Stephen Morse, Lee Perkins, and Gary Vikan for their helpful comments during the preparation of this paper and at the "Multicultural Society" conference in Chicago. I am also grateful to the members of Peter Grossmann's excavation team for taking me round the Elephantine site in March 1981. And, as always, Mirrit Boutros Ghali (Ezekiel 30:6). 2J. Field, M. Wright, Gears from the Byzantines (London 1985) 110; cf. L.S.B. MacCoull, "Philoponus and the London Sundial: Some Calendrical Aspects of the De opificio mundi," BZ 82 (1989) 19-21. 3E.g. the homily on the Church of the Holy Family at Qosqam (Deir al-Muharraq) attributed to Theophilus of Alexandria: .M. Guidi in RendLinc ser. 5, 30 (1921) 274 the late eighteenth century of pagan structures transformed into and superposed by Christian ones to give Jomard and the members of the Description d'Egypte team a vivid impression of the quondam "Assouan chr6tienne". Tourists can still see St. Simeon's monastery and the excavated remains of the Elephantine church. Let us therefore begin with a juxtaposition of archaeological evidence with the literary, epigraphic, and papyrological testimonia. After Diocletian had moved the EgyptNubia frontier north to Syene,4 we are informed by a paschal letter of Athanasius of Alexandria dating to A.D. 347 that the city already had a bishop.5 From nearly a hundred years later (A.D. 425-450) we have the famous petition of the Syenite bishop Appion, the often-cited Papyrus Leidensis Z recently republished by D. Feissel and K.A. Worp,6 in which the prelate asks Theodosius II for military aid against the attacking nomad tribes, the Blemmyes and Nobadae. Here I would with great caution like to suggest that perhaps our colleagues might think of reconsidering their acceptance of Wessely's correction of Xeyeovoq to PcyeSvo in Appion's title ("bishop of the legeon [or the 'region'?] of Syene, ContraSyene and Elephantine").7 Farber and Porten have shown8 that legio (Xeyet'v), not the later dptOp6q, was the characteristic term for the garrison of Syene in the earlier Byzantine period (fifth-early sixth centuries); and a bishop "of a legion" in a one-industry town like Syene might not be so unlikely after all (cf. the term "Bishop of the Skenitae" in the sixth century).9 For the fifth and sixth centuries, below the level of the bishopric, there is no lack of

evidence for Christian institutions at Syene. At least 4F.Ll. Griffith, Catalogue of the Demotic Graffiti of the Dodecaschoenus (Oxford 1937) 4, 10. 5Paschal letter no. 19. The testimonia for Aswan in the Christian period are collected in S. Timm, Das christlich-koptische Agypten in arabischer Zeit (hereafter Timm, Agypten) I (Wiesbaden 1984) 222-35; for Elephantine (Gazirat Aswan), II 1044-49; for St. Simeon's (Der Anba Hadra), II 664-67; and for Philae (Bilaq), I 392-401, all of which I follow and gratefully acknowledge. 6"La requete d'Appion, 6veque de Syene, A Th6odose II: P.Leid. Z r6vis6," OMRO 68 (1988) 97-108. 71bid. 101-03. 81n BASP 23 (1986) 87, 91-92. 9Cf. Xeyewtv tuIvr\.n in P.Lond. V 1855.7 (A.D. 493), the first item in Farber and Porten's chronological list; E. Bernand, Les inscriptions grecques de Philae II (Paris 1969; hereafter Bernand, Philae II) 225.3-4, mentioning .(Lucillianus, eparch of the legeon of Philae (whose camp was at modern Shellal three churches (the "holy church of Syene", the bishop's see; St. Mary's, of which more below; and the eukterion [oratory] of the martyr Apa Victor [possibly the abbey church, cf. next]) and one monastery (the lavra of St. Victor) in Syene itself are attested in Greek documentary papyri. The monastery apparently gave its name to a street and a quarter of the city.10 Already by the mid-fifth century Bishop Appion attested to churches (in the plural) on Philae, as well as to the threatening presence of the pagan Nubians who continued to worship in the Isis temple on the island. One of the landmark dates in the history of Byzantine Egypt, or so it has always been regarded by historians, is Justinian's ordering his general Narses to close the Isis temple between 535 and 537, thus putting an end to the cultic co-existence between the pagan building in the south of the island and the two or more Christian churches at its northeast end. Was this act part of a planned Chalcedonian policy to convert the Nubians to that ecclesiastical position?11 We shall return below to the question of Chalcedonian versus non-Chalcedonian Egyptian confessions in the Syene area. Keeping in mind this framework of literary and documentary attestations, let us turn to the monumental and epigraphic evidence revealed by archaeological research. Excavations by P. Grossmann in the Chnum temple complex on Elephantine island12 have brought to light a unified, planned Christian settlement in the courtyard area dating to the second quarter of the fifth century, corresponding to the data in Bishop Appion's petition. It appears to have been a monastic settlement, complete with an infirmary or hospice; the monastic church was rebuilt in the second or third quarter of the sixth century (and the nave later provided with additional columns after the Arab conquest). The ruins of two other churches have also been found.13 1~Timm, gypten 1223-24. 11Downriver still in the 570s Dioscorus of Aphrodito could write, "No more shall you fear Blemmyes or Saracens" (L.S.B. MacCoull, Dioscorus of Aphrodito [Berkeley 1988] 115). For Narses cf. Procopius Wars 1.19.37. 12p. Grossmann, Elephantine II: Kirche und spdtantike Hausanlagen im Chnumtempelhof (Mainz 1980). 13W. Kaiser et al. in MDAIK 26 (1970) 101-05 and 30 (1974) 71. Evidence can also be provided by the Elephantine Coptic ostraka, originally found by Rubensohn in 1906, published by R. Engelbach in ASAE 38 (1938) 47-51 and F. .Hintze in ZAS 104 (1977) 97 -112: cf. below With funds provided by the fifth-century bishop of Philae, Daniel, repairs were made to the island's wall, with help from the soldiers of the Thebaid limes under the authority of Fl. Damonikos, comes sacri consistorii (Bernand, Philae II 194-195).14 P. Nautin in 1967 described the stages of transformation of the Isis temple complex on Philae into two Christian sanctuaries15 dedicated to St. Stephen and the Holy Cross, under the leadership of the sixth-century bishop Theodore, several of whose building inscriptions survive.16 In A.D. 577 the Philae wall was again repaired by order of

Emperor Justin II and Empress Sophia, together with the Caesar Tiberius the New Constantine, under the authority of Theodore the dekourion, duke of the Thebaid,17 helped "by the prayers of the holy martyrs" and with the same bishop Theodore presiding, and with financial aid from Menas, singularius on the ducal staff (Bernand, Philae II 216). Does this indicate renewed Chalcedonian interest in maintaining a presence for that confession in the frontier region, in view of Justin II's well-known position of trying to promote ecclesiastical peace between Egypt and Constantinople? In Syene/Aswan itself, infrared photography has revealed the remains of Christian wall paintings, dated tentatively to the sixth century, on the north and south pilasters of Ptolemy Philopator's temple of Isis.18 The northern painting depicts the enthroned Virgin (the Child once present has been destroyed) flanked by six standing figures, three on each side, apparently of either saints in ecclesiastical garb or angels in Byzantine court dress. This iconography has suggested the identification of this building with the Syene church of "Holy Mary" attested in the papyri.19 The southern painting preserves parts of the figures of three standing male ascetic saints with an angel at their right: possibly they are Shenoute, Anthony the Great, and Pachomius, with the angel dictating his Rule to the last-named. Could traces at the extreme left be of a figure of St. Victor, the eponym of the monastery and eukterion in Syene 14On Daniel cf. also H. Munier, "Le christianisme i Philae," BSAC 4 (1938) 47. 15p. Nautin, "La conversion du temple de Philae en 6glise chr6tienne," CahArch 17 (1967) 1-43. St. Stephen: Bernand, Philae II 200, 203, cf. Wilcken in Archiv 1 (1901) 403; Holy Cross: Bernand, Philae II 201. 16Bernand, Philae II 200, 202, 203, 204 (= Nautin nos. 1, 3, 4, 5). On Theodore see also J. Maspero in RHR 59 (1909) 299-317. 17Cf. L.S.B. MacCoull, "Dioscorus and the Dukes," BS/EB 13 (1986) 35. 18E. Bresciani et al., Assuan (Pisa 1978) 39-41, plates 27-28. 19G. Husson, this volume, .p.132 attested in the Patermouthis archive, a saint known to be venerated in the Syene area? Finally, we cannot omit to mention the pioneering work of Ugo Monneret de Villard on the largest surviving Christian structure in the Aswan area, now known as the Monastery of St. Simeon.20 Nearly all of the building visible today is Fatimid, but it appears to stand on an early site and to incorporate some Byzantine foundations, and its original commemoration of the legendary early bishop (Anba) Hadra is attributed in the Coptic church's synaxaria to the turn of the fourth/fifth centuries.21 We shall return to this monastery, whose story really belongs to post-conquest Egypt, when we come to the Coptic manuscript and epigraphic evidence later in this paper. Now to turn from monumental and epigraphic to manuscript evidence. Our principal source for knowledge of Christian life and church affairs at Syene in the Byzantine period is of course the Patermouthis archive,22 which spans a 120-year period from A.D. 493 to 613. These archival papers are concerned with property transactions, not theology: their evidence for what is Christian about this Christian society is built in, so to speak, rather than explicit. James Keenan (above, p.146) has mentioned that the people we encounter in the archive, officers and men, civilians and women, bear Christian names, often Biblical and indeed Old Testament names. What appear to be Egyptian or pagan Greek theophoric names are at this period (at one remove) really saints' names: a person was named, for example, not after the god Phoebus Apollo or Ammon, but after the holy men Saint Apollos or Saint Phoibammon.23 We can continue to read what is implicit, taken for granted, in the Patermouthis archive texts as evidence for the underlying assumptions of Christian customs and ways of thought in sixth-century Egypt. 20U. Monneret de Villard, II monastero di San Simeone

presso Aswan (Milan 1927). 21Cf. Timm, Agypten 1664-65, cf. 222. 2See the recent discussion of chronology and re-edited texts by Farber and Porten, "The Patermouthis Archive: A Third Look," BASP 23 (1986) 81-98. I am extremely grateful to Professor Joel Farber for sending me complete printouts of the draft version of his new translation of the archive and the very helpful prosopography, as well as a photograph of the Coptic verso of P.Lond V 1720, which latter I hope to treat separately with a few improvements to Hall's text. 23For the beginning of the process cf. R.S. Bagnall, "Religious Conversion and Onomastic Change in Early Byzantine Egypt," BASP 19 .(1982) 105-24 Clergy abound in the Syene prosopography, in lettered and legal functions, to a total of fifteen individuals known from the Greeklanguage documents (six more from the Coptic; see below on the ostraka). Of witnesses to documents in the Patermouthis archive, in six cases they are priests, in nine deacons, and in two an archdeacon (Isakos); Seren(us), a priest from Omboi, serves as an arbiter (P.Minch. 14). Of scribes of documents, one (Phosphorios) is a priest and one (Theophilus son of Paeion, a frequent witness) a deacon.24 In one case a priest signs for an illiterate, and in two others a deacon (the same Theophilus) does so, while in one document (P.Miinch. 7 + P.Lond. 1860) the illiterate signer made three tiptot orraupoi In A.D. 578-82 the monk John also known as Kattas, from Pampane, acted on behalf of a minor (P.Lond. 1724); in 584 the monk John son of Patechnumius (note the presumably local name) of Syene, who was not literate in Greek, gave Patermouthis a share of a house. During the span of years 574-583, as in other late sixth-century texts, the superscription XMF is found (P.Miinch. 1, 4, 7).25 As one might expect, Christian invocations, known from 591, appear beginning in 594 (P.Miinch. 13, 14; Bagnall and Worp's Type 1, the Christ invocation).26 The imperial oath formulae in the documents of the Patermouthis archive have been treated by Worp in 1982.27 The earliest attested, in A.D. 540 (P.Minch. 8), interestingly swears by "Almighty God and the holy and consubstantial Trinity of the Christians" (my emphasis added), a phrase not commented on by the original editors, nor is it singled out by Seidl in his 1935 treatment of oaths.28 Why "Trinity of the Christians"? As opposed to some other kind of trinity? Or assuming that some people reading the document might not understand the reference of the oath formula? The phraseology is without exact parallel. I can only compare P.Lond. I 77, the testament of bishop Abraham of Hermonthis (early 7th c.), who swears that he possesses neither gold nor silver as personal 24Cf. K. Worp, J. Diethart, Notarsunterschriften im byzantinischen Agypten (MPER n.s. 16, Vienna 1986): Phosphorios is Syene 21.2; Theophilus is Syene 8.1.1. 2For additions to the literature on XMF (also OMF and KMF) see G. Robinson in Tyche 1 (1986) 175-77; G. Robinson Fantoni in CPR XIV 32.32n.; and M. G. Sirivianou in P.Oxy. LVI 3862.1n. 26"Christian Invocations in the Papyri," Cd'E 56 (1981) 113. 27"Byzantine Imperial Titulature in the Greek Documentary Papyri: the Oath Formulas," ZPE 45 (1982) 199-223: esp. 211-14, 217. 2Der Eid im romisch.(igyptischen Provinzialrecht II (Munich 1935 property: vopKi Kar.a rtfic T.v Xpetoartavw v rnirTeax (lines 71-72).29 As noticed by Worp, oaths by the emperor's tyche, a pagan concept, are still being formulated in A.D. 590/91 (P.Minch. 12). Noteworthy, and not discussed by Worp, are the explicitly Christian oaths in the Patermouthis texts sworn on relics (P.Minch. 1), by chapels/oratories (eukterion: P.Lond. 1728), and on a monastic schema (the plaited leather girdle symbolizing religious profession; P.Lond. 1729),30 during the period A.D. 574-584.31 In all this we see a juxtaposition of validating authorities: alongside

the fortune of the (orthodox) Byzantine emperor, the unseen world force of Christian holiness that inheres in the being of One God in Three Persons and invests places and objects with power. Christian phraseology, including the phrase crbv 9ep (as in P.Lond. 1725 and 1737), is interwoven in the texts in other ways too, especially in passages dealing with death or the uncertainty of life (P.Minch. 8 + P.Lond. 1857 [the botax rpocropa]); P.Lond. 1727 ["Christ the Lord of all"]). The donor monk John invokes God's recompense in his donation, and one document (P.Lond. 1729, A.D. 584) appears to echo St. Paul.32 In the description by an adult daughter of her parents' divorce, the wellknown Byzantine phraseology of "the devil made them do it" is found: the divorce happened Kal-ac 8ta3ouoXt Kac aatravtKalv vepyeuav, by the operation [note the technical theological term energeia, which is to generate much controversy in the early seventh century] of that wellknown daimon so often cited in Byzantine divorce petitions.33 2Cf. also the Coptic legal phrase n i xa) e TOy XB n 6ex pICT I NOC "the holy oath of the Christians" (e.g. KRU 92), to which transgressors are declared (DiMo, "strangers". 3Cf. Seidl, Der Eid 41-51. 31For oaths on relics cf. P.Lond. V 1674, oath sworn by or before the ~ytot (or -a) of a monastery: are they relics or ikons? (cf. Seidl, Der Eid 49, where P.Miinch 1 is also cited); and compare again Abraham of Hemonthis, P.Lond. I 77.28, the aentfr Uirl, usually interpreted as a relic (of the True Cross? or of St. Phoibammon?) listed among the monastery's property. For oaths on eukteria cf. Seidl, Der Eid 51 citing NovJust. 74.5, Ev E6KTltplOlq O'KOtu 616oravNte (cf. e.g. BKU I 97 for a Coptic oath by a "holy place"). For oaths by the monastic schema cf. P.Cair.Masp. III 67299; P.Lond. I 77.63, again Abraham; and CLT 1, the CX HMx TA r rex I KO (cf. Seidl, Der Eid 41). No one in Syene appears to swear on the Gospels, as happens in the Dioscorus archive (P.Lond. V 1708, A.D. 567) and of course later in Coptic (e.g. CLT 5). 32Cf. Eph 1:16, oi5 noauoiat exaptaortv rinip biuv. 33Brilliantly explicated by R.S. Bagnall, "Church, State and Divorce in Late Roman Egypt," Florilegium Columbianum (New York 1987) 41-61, esp. 54-55: the point is not the "Christianization of the law" beloved by earlier scholars but rather the practical concern of the propertied class to protect the rights of children of a first marriage, such as the aggrieved party in the .Patermouthis archive document One telling question remains to be asked of these documents. Our literary sources present a picture of late sixth- and early seventh-century Egypt as a violent, raging battleground between non-Chalcedonians and Chalcedonians, with bitter emotions expressed and no quarter given.34 And yet this polemic is not reflected in the documents. Were the people in the Patermouthis archive Monophysites or Dyophysites? Based on their concept of the person of Christ, how did they think of salvation, divine authority, the afterlife, concepts alluded to in the contracts they signed? Of which persuasion were the Holy Church of Syene, and the churches of St. Mary and St. Victor, and their clergy? Were the monks named John, and those of the St. Victor lavra, fighters for or against Chalcedon? And for that matter could they have been associated with the Shenoutean congregation, or with the Pachomian federation (cf. above on the Aswan fresco) that was pressured by Justinian to accept Chalcedon and split under the strain?35 These, important as they are, are not the kinds of questions that can be answered from sales and leases of house property. And yet one must bear in mind that the town was quite probably not all, so to speak, cut from the same cloth. Much has been made in earlier scholarship of the possible unwillingness of Egyptian soldiers with Monophysite loyalties to fight for Chalcedonian Byzantine emperors. We can only wish we knew more about this aspect

of the frontier garrison of Syene36 by the time of the mid-seventh century, when it was confronted by the invasion of Islamic Arab troops. Our manuscript evidence for Syenean Christianity is not monolingual: Coptic texts too have their part to play, in this case both documentary ostraka and literary texts. A few of the Coptic ostraka found on Elephantine have been published.37 Most are loans; military men, boatmen, and clergy appear in them. In all three texts in which one Paham son of Abraham appears, he is a creditor, lending sums of money both to civilians and to "the koinon of the protoi of Elephantine and the 34Cf. D.W. Johnson, "Anti-Chalcedonian Polemics in Coptic Texts," in B. Pearson, J. Goehring, eds., The Roots of Egyptian Christianity (Philadelphia 1986) 216-34. 35See J. Goehring, Chalcedonian Power Politics and the Demise of Pachomian Monasticism (Claremont 1989). 6Justinian's reorganization of Egypt benefitted the soldiers of Philae and Syene by higher funding: J. Gascou in ZPE 82 (1990) 101 n.39. 37Above n.13. A few ostraka from Elephantine were published by Hall (1905): pl. 19 no.4, mentioning Lent and Easter; pl. 21 no. 2, pl. 22 no.3, pl. 47 no.1 from a monk; pl. 51 no.4; pl. 88 no.5 mentioning a .Petermouthis; pl. 90 no.4; App. nos. 19, 20 whole kastron" (Hintze no. 7); in one text he is termed a soldier ( MATA i) and in another a centurion, so presumably what we see here is a case of promotion in the Byzantine army. As for clergy, an oikonomos (monastic administrator) named Halo lends someone three cots; two deacons appear as witnesses, two as scribes, while a priest is named in a patronymic. No absolute dates are preserved, but the range of indictions 2-11 may correspond to A.D. 583-592. A section of a late tenth-century Coptic manuscript from Edfu (B.L. Or. 7029, colophon dated Diocl. 708 = A.D. 992, Hijra [wrongly] 372 = A.D. 982), published by Budge in 1915,38 preserves legends of the ascetics living on Philae. The stories are set in the later fourth to early fifth century (though clearly written later), and two of the fathers are said to have become bishops of Philae contemporary with Athanasius and Theophilus of Alexandria. Most of these ascetics came from Syene and embraced the ascetic life by sailing upriver to settle at the mountain nK002, 'The Bend" (in the river), to Philae and the bank east of it, and to "the island in the middle of the cataract";39 they were served by priests from Syene. One, Macedonius, former archon of Syene, relates how he converted the idolworshippers on Philae by dismantling the falcon automaton (called in the text MxrKXNON)40 in their temple. (In Procopius' account, Narses dismantled the temple and brought the &y&Xp~ara, the statues, to Constantinople.) Several stories relate conversions of pagan xa Noy x who are going to Syene with their camels, by a route we know from the Patermouthis papyri (Keenan, above, pp.144-45). The ascetics often accomplish resuscitation miracles by means of dust scraped from a holy man's dwelling mixed with water: we shall return to this motif shortly. Also in Coptic is a fragmentary manuscript of the martyrdom and miracles of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, supposedly from Aswan, published along with biblical texts by Munier in 1923.41 No date is suggested by the 38E.A. Wallis Budge, Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London 1915) 432-95 (text), 948-1011 (translation). 39Identified from archaeological evidence (Coptic graves and perhaps the remains of a church) with the Nile island Gazirat al-Hesa or al-Hasa: Timm, Agypten II 1052-53. 40W. Spiegelberg, "Der Falkenkult auf der Insel Philae in christlicher Zeit,"Archiv 7 (1924) 186-89, though duly citing Strabo 17.818 on the Horus falcon, misses the point about the M r KA NON ()Ityyavov). Clearly it appears to have been a Hellenistic robot, possibly steam-powered, or operated by hidden strings inside like the falcon

statue in the Oriental Institute Museum. 41H. Munier, "Melanges de litt6rature copte," .ASAE 23 (1923) 216-25 editor. Could the existence of this manuscript, if it is indeed from Aswan, be evidence for a Coptic monastic scriptorium, possibly at St. Simeon's? We also remember from the Patermouthis archive that St. Victor was venerated in the region: perhaps here too was the origin of some of the later Coptic cycles of encomia on Apa Victor son of Romanos.42 A recent discovery of late antique archaeological material from Elephantine related to pilgrimage brings us to a very important and almost totally uninvestigated aspect of Egyptian Christianity. We all know that the study of Christian pilgrimage in late antiquity, its mentalite and its artifacts, has become a major academic industry,43 primarily focused of course on Palestine. Yet for Egypt, except for the St. Menas shrine complex and the literary sources for the shrine of Sts. Cyrus and John, pilgrimage has hardly been studied at all, either pilgrimage to shrines of important local saints such as Shenoute at Sohag, or tracing the legendary route of the Holy Family from Pelusium south to the Hermopolite and back (cf. above, n. 3). A recent publication44 has brought to light from the storage rooms of the Coptic Museum a group of terra-cotta molds for making lamps and pilgrimage flasks of familiar type, originally found on Elephantine. Two of the lamps are inscribed with the name of St. Stephen (nos. 2 and 3), while flasks bear inscriptions honoring the Holy Cross (no. 7), the endoxos Theo[ (no. 9), and St. Onophrios (no. 10). We remember that two of the Christian sanctuaries on Philae established by the sixthcentury bishop Theodore were dedicated to St. Stephen and the Holy Cross. The Philae Cross inscription reads 6 araupobq eviKTlEav at VItK; the inscription on Elephantine flask mold no. 7 reads (C)TAYPOC AEI NIKA. In addition, a possible restoration for line 3 of the inscription Bernand, Philae II 228 might be O]PCHNOYOI, Orsenouphios, a variant on Onouphris/-ios. Moreover, Nautin showed,45 convincingly I think, that the grooves visible on some of the Philae pilasters had been made by late antique pilgrims scraping the walls to obtain holy dust as an eulogion which they could carry away, mixed with water. Surely this is the "liquid charged with the blessing of the place", in Ballet's words (p. 63), that was sought and taken 42T. Orlandi, Coptic Bibliography VII (Rome 1989) nos. 0100, 0132, 0358, 1181. 43See most recently R. Ousterhout, ed., The Blessings of Pilgrimage (Urbana 1990). 44P. Ballet, "Moules en terre cuite d'El6phantine (Mus6e Copte)," BIFAO 87 (1987) 53-72, plates 9-14. 45Nautin, "Conversion," (above n.15) .33 home by late antique Christian pilgrims to the awe-inspiring site of Philae, carried in ampullae for which there was a manufacturing center on nearby Elephantine. Thus we are now aware of the whole Aswan region as a Christian pilgrimage site in the sixth and seventh centuries, a topic which will surely be more intensively investigated in future. It remains a puzzle of the nature of our sources why the pilgrimage phenomenon does not appear to be mentioned in documentary papyri. No private letters preserved from late antique Egypt relate that the writer went on such a journey; no estate accounts record donations to famous pilgrimage shrines by grateful returned pilgrims: yet such references must have existed.46 Perhaps the study of the birth, growth, and development of Christian pilgrimage in late antique Egypt will begin from the far south. There is no time to discuss the evidence for Christianity in the First Cataract region after A.D. 641. The fate of the Byzantine garrison of Syene when the conquering Arab troops finally reached there is unknown. Munier47

published the Coptic gravestones from St. Simeon's monastery, a long series dating by the era of Diocletian (an era early attested in demotic graffiti from Philae and used in two fifth-century inscriptions of a pagan protostolistes [Bernand, Philae II 196-197, A.D. 453/4]) which continues till the tenth century. Travellers continued to scratch their names on the monastery's walls during the Islamic middle ages, and for that matter today, when you often have to row your own boat across the Nile and then hike across a long sandy stretch of desert to get there. Just one small piece of the late Nachleben may be mentioned here. Stanza 308, lines 1-2, of the fourteenth-century Sahidic didactic poem, the Triadon,48 the last work of Coptic literature, reads: "Let us go to the island (rTNHCc ) / And see this beautiful lamb ( Te6 2 Be 6IeT6coW )" (rhyming, as in the poem's rhyme scheme AAAB). The Triadon is known for mentioning local Christian sanctuaries all along the length of the Nile Valley. Now the Coptic name 46It is also unclear why the allied phenomenon of incubation healing in Christian Egypt seems unattested in the documentary papyri, such as letters and accounts. See L.S.B. MacCoull, "Duke University Coptic MS. C25: Dreams, Visions, and Incubation in Coptic Egypt," to appear in OrLovPeriod. 47H. Munier, "Les steles coptes du Monastere de Saint-Simeon a Assouan," Aegyptus 11 (1930-31) 257-300, 433-84. 4Text: 0. von Lemm, St. Petersburg 1903; German translation and notes: P. .Nagel, Halle 1983; English translation: L.S.B. MacCoull, forthcoming for Elephantine, as we know from the ostraka, is (2 e) I HB, "Lamb": quite possibly an evocative reminiscence of the old ram iconography of "Chnum the Great, master of Elephantine" (Kasser-Vycichl, Dict.etymol. 62). I should like to suggest that "the island" being mentioned by the Triadon poet is in fact Elephantine, showing that the Aswan area may have remained a pilgrimage site until Mamluk times.49 Society for Coptic Archaeology (North America) L.S.B. MacCoull 49S. Timm, Christliche Statten in Agypten (Wiesbaden 1979) 52 lists one Coptic Orthodox and one Coptic .Uniat church at the present day