The world's oldest monasteries

So what's more fitting to do during Coptic Easter than visiting some Coptic monasteries? And not just any monasteries, in fact, but the oldest Christian monasteries in the world?

The Coptic saint St. Paul is considered the first Christian hermit, seeking solitude and refuge from Roman persecution in the Eastern Desert of Egypt in the 200's. A century or two afterwards a monastery was built on the site of the cave that served as his home. In the same area at roughly the same time St. Anthony came to live as a hermit as well. He really just wanted to escape the world and focus on his relationship with God, but other devoted Christians clearly didn't quite understand this concept as they started coming to live as hermits with him. What idiots. But out of this paradox Christian monasticism was eventually born, when his followers started to form a more organised community. For this reason St. Anthony is often called the Father of Monasticism. The actual monastery was built in the 300's, and is therefore the oldest Christian monastery in the world. These were the places I visited last weekend! Beat that!

St. Anthony's Monastery is quite a big monastery situated right below some hills in an oasis in the desert. The setting is beautiful and the contrast between the arid desert landscape and the lush area of the monastery is breathtaking. Circled by eagles, it looks quite majestic. It is an extremely tranquil place - but I guess that is kinda the point. It seems it was extra peaceful the day we visited, however, as they don't normally recieve visitors on Easter Sunday, but an exception was made for us as our driver knew one of the monks. Apparently there will often be hundreds if not thousands of pilgrims visiting the monastery each day, which must be a bit overwhelming, but as there were only two other visitors there at the same time as us, we didn't really have to fight for space. We were shown around by a very friendly monk, who showed us the small fort where the monks used to retreat during Bedouin raids and gave us a tour of the monastery's old mill, it's miraculous spring, the refectory - which he described as having a "natural sound system"-, and two of the monastery's churches. One is a medieval church from the 12th century, with the very unexpected name Church of St. Anthony. It contains some unusually well-conserved, beautiful frescos, some of them even older than the church itself. It is a stunning little church, and our visit there was probably my favourite part of the whole trip. The burial place of St. Anthony is supposed to be a well-kept secret, as he didn't want to be glorified after his death, so of course the church claims to contain his tomb, which is - again of course - honoured reverently.

The Church of St. Anthony is connected to the newer Church of the Apostles. In the passage between them you can behold the relics of St. Justus, a very holy monk whose religious genius partly consisted of constantly asking about the time. Inside of the Church of the Apostles there are more relics - miraculous ones at that - and if your eyes are good you can also admire a minuscule splinter of the cross. We were all quite surprised when the monk started removing the carpet and a glass floor emerged - apparently this church is built on top of ruins of the ancient monastery, and through the glass floor we could see what used to be the monks' cells. Pretty awesome!

Some of the details in the churches seemed quite Ottoman, and this mixing of styles I found very fascinating. The monastery really had a special atmosphere, and I left with that serene, humbled feeling only religious places instill in me. It lived up to my expectations of the calm and peace and quiet a monastery should contain, even though the illusion was slightly ruined by monks chatting away on fancy phones - but I guess time doesn't stand entirely still here either. In a way it was nice seeing that the monks on the whole are normal human beings just like us, and we really appreciated their friendliness.

St. Anthony's Monastery

Not-quite-as-saintly Anthony entering St. Anthony's Monastery

Me in front of the monks' cells at St. Anthony's

St. Anthony, I presume

Salma outside a church in the monastery

The monastery's medieval church, Church of St. Anthony

Some of the beautiful frescos

Jesus and the apostles: the oldest painting in the monastery, dating from the 600's

The unusual theme of this painting is Virgin Mary nursing baby Jesus. This theme was sometimes used to emphasise that even though Jesus was divine, his body was thoroughly human.

Candles by the entrance to St. Anthony's tomb

The relics of St. Justus

Me in Church of the Apostles

Us in the refectory

The monastery's garden

Posing with our monk in front of the monastery

Afterwards we made our way to St. Paul's Monastery, which appeared to be smaller, even though both monasteries house about 120 monks. It is situated a bit higher up, and gave a less polished impression - it clearly seemed to recieve fewer visitors than St. Anthony's. Also here we saw a miraculous spring  - this time the one that sustained St. Paul. The main attraction of the monastery is Church of St. Paul, which contains the relics of the saint kept in the cave where he lived. We were taken care of by a lovely monk, who had never shown tourists around before and was therefore slightly worried he might not meet the standard required of a tour guide, but we could assure him that the tour he gave us was most enjoyable.

Afterwards we made our way up to a cluster of houses with crosses on their roofs a bit further up in the mountains. Apparently this had originally been the dwelling place of one monk, but it seemed others had joined him later. It looked very beautiful from below, but it turned out to be a quite disappointing place filled with kitschy religious paintings, weird Christmas displays and badly kept animals. Rather absurd.

Church of St. Paul

Inside the church. The ostrich eggs symbolise resurrection

The cave of St. Paul with his relics

Some rather luxurious dwellings belonging to the more important religious leaders, if I understood correctly

The houses further up

Religious kitsch

I think I watched the sun set five times on the way home. A funny effect of driving alongside a mountain range with peaks of various heights.

Of course, no desert trip is complete without dolphin watching. The road to the monasteries passes Ain Sukhna, a popular beach get-away for people from Cairo, and while we were driving along the coast in that area we suddenly saw four dolphins playing around. Maybe it was the fact that they were so close to the shore, or the fact that they looked almost too perfect, but I was sitting there staring at them for a long time before it dawned on me and I uttered the brilliant remark: "Are those actual dolphins?"