With Wall paintings in Greek, members of a Norwegian-French archeological expedition discovered in the Oasis of Baharea, considered the oldest monastic monument, perhaps not only in Egypt, but also global.
It is a monument that has been built gradually over a period of time between the 3rd and 4th century AD. in the area of ”Tel Ganub ‘Asr El Agouz”, 370 kilometers southwest of Cairo.
Excavations are being carried out there by the French institution Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale (IFAO) and the Norwegian institution MF Vitenskapelig Høyskole, Norway.
By now, a desert hermitage has been excavated, a hermitage built in five time phases, from the first half of the fourth century to the seventh century.
In the center of the site, a rocky area, a church and adjacent liturgical sites have been discovered. Also, in the same area, two cells were discovered, a dining-kitchen and a room and four more rooms, one of which was a church.
In the later built extensions of the space, a total of 19 rooms were built and a church that was connected with two stone halls.
There, many frescoes were found – and in the church – written in Greek that referred to biblical and paternal texts, but also pieces of clay vases with Greek inscriptions that referred to the monks, probably of the fifth or sixth century.
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