Coptic Cairo
Cairo, Egypt
June 15, 2013
For the first time in a long time, we did not have to set the alarm! We woke up around 7:00 and went down for breakfast. We were greeted by a fellow guest who was smoking in the elevator. I held my breath all the way down.
I had further frustration at the breakfast buffet. For some reason strange things happened to my toast. Someone took my first toast. So, I stood by the toaster for the second one and the hostess walked up, put another slice in, pulled mine out and then placed it back in and restarted it. I glared at her, took a fresh slice of bread and started with my third slice of the morning!
At 10:30 we met Makmood, Omar and Hany. Omar and Makmood took us to an area, Coptic Cairo, that was important to many religions including Christinan, Jewsih and Muslim
. The oldest synagogue in the world was located in this area and Arabs built the first Muslim capital here in 642, which was now in ruins.
On the way we drove by the city of the dead, the citadel and an unfinished museum.
Romans had a fortress and defeated the Byzantines in 641. This had been an important commercial area. The Pharonic Canal from the Red Sea to the the Nile ended here until the 8th century century AD. It was called the Candle Fortress or Babylon Fortress.
It is believed that St Mark's family hosted the last supper. During 60-68 AD St Mark became the first patriarch and founder of the Egyptian church. There have been 118 patriarchs in Egypt. Theoadrus II is the current patriarch. The Orthodox Church spilt off from the Catholics in the 5th century. Egyptian branch was called Coptic Orthodox. Athanasuous wrote about St Anthony, the first known monk. His words founded the Byzantine monks.
The tower of the Babylon Fortress had a church, named the Hanging Church because if it's location, suspended over a passage
. Today, most of the tower is buried, so it does not look as elevated/impressive as it had originally been. This site was chosen because it was believed that the Holy Family drank for the well that used to be at this site.
In the courtyard there were mosaics from 2003. The Hanging Church entrance had a water fountain that had been used by the head of church to wash the feet of the priest. At the back of the church there were the relics of St George. Orthodox followers will write their prayers on place them with the relics, we saw evidence of that here.
There were many good examples of common Coptic Orthodox Church characteristics:
Many icons (images of religious figures painted on wood). There were 110 icons in this church, the first was St Catherine, dating back to the 8th century.Iconostasis (wall of icons, separating the nave from sanctuary)
Beautiful wood work without glue or nails. Here it was ebony inlaid with ivory
Pulpit in middle, 7 chapels here
. Pulpit has not been used since he 10th century because pariah is buried there.
Egg of ostrich which is a symbol because of the great care that an ostrich takes of her eggs before they hatch; reminding followers to have great focus on God
Shen Ring was a symbol of eternity; when elongated it became the cartouche.
Symbol of the cross with steps, symbolizing the three days that Jesus was in the tomb before rising.
The ceiling imitates the arch of Noah.
Two things that were unique to this church were:
13 columns around the pulpit that represented Jesus and the apostles. One black column represented Judas and one gray one represented Doubting Thomas.
An icon of the virgin Mary, Jesus and John the Baptist. It was unqiue because John the Baptist was depicted as a man and Jesus as a child, they should be the same age.
We walked to the Coptic Museum, but we were not able to take photos. It holds the largest amount of Egyptian Christian artifacts in the world and was founded in 1908 by Marcus Pasha.
The first room was a good illustration of early Christian art (1st and 2nd century). There was a blend of Greek and Egyptian sytles.
We saw many examples of Coptic Orthodox Church symbolism: Acamthathis leaves, grapes, fish, peacock, cross, ankh were some of the Coptic symbols. The museum was very well maintained museum and had beautiful wooden carved ceilings. The rooms were divided by types of artifacts contained such as stonework, woodwork, metalwork, textiles and manuscripts, not by chronology.
We also saw many great examples of coptic paintings were of the face, not profile, had dark shadows under their eyes, a variety of beard styles, a circle between the lip and chin and halos.
We then went to another Coptic Orthodox church, Abu Serga. The church was build to honour Saint Serguius. It was the oldest church in Cairo, dating back to the 7th century. There was a fascinating icon of he holy family traveling to Egypt with another woman, she must have been a relative. The Holy Family lived on this site in the crypt and drank from the well displyed.
Omar was shocked that the crypt was open. It has never been opened in all of his years of guiding.
We also walked to the Ben Ezra synagogue. It was originally a church, but the patriarch could not pay the taxes so he sold to Jews. It was believed to be the site where Moses and the basket was picked up.
Omar told his theory about the story. According to common thoughts, this would have been during the time when Ramses II was elderly, but he had a lot of illnesses when he died. The pharaoh would have been too old to do the battle that the holy scripts describe. The story of Moses is not mentioned in any of the temples built by Ramses II, which adds credence that it was not Ramses II. The stelae of Israel were the only historic Egyptian recording of the story of Moses, it mentions Israel. Another stelae mentions battling with Hebrews. This story was mentioned in Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious historical documents.
Manuscripts used to be sorted here, now moved to library. A lot of Jews left in the 1950's, many also converted to Islam to stay in Egypt.
The final church of the day was decidated to St Barbara. Her body was returned after Constantine stopped the persecution of Christians. There is a church inside the church here.
We then went to lunch with Omar at a nearby buffet. There were lots of other tourist there and the food was pretty decent.
We came back to the hotel and Bill worked on the blogs in the lounge while I soaked up the rays at the pool. I joined Bill at the lounge to avoid the smoke at the pool only to deal with more smoke in the lounge, but at least there was beer!
We cleaned up and took a cab to the City of Stars mall. Our driver was uber agressive and we had a half dozen near misses! We finally arrived without an actual accident and crossed through the InterContinental Hotel to get to the mall. This shopping centre was huge! We wandered through some of the six floors before finally deciding to have dinner by the pool at the hotel. The meal was disappointing for the price. My fresh tuna nicoise salad had canned tuna... After dinner we had a safe drive back to the hotel and called it a night.