Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Prophethood, texts, and artifacts: The monastery of Epiphanius MacCoull, L S B Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Autumn 1998; 39, 3; ProQuest pg. 307 Prophethood, Texts, and Artifacts: The Monastery of Epiphanius L. S. B. MacCoull A LONG AGO as 1820 the Greek merchant Ioannis Athanasi1 identified a site within the Pharaonic Egyptian antiqui­ ties complex of Luxor/Thebes/Deir el-Bahri/Medinet Habu, on the west bank of the Nile, as a Coptic Christian If chapel,ff2 which, on the basis of a Greek wall inscription, he mistakenly dated to the fourth century, to the patriarchate of his namesake Athanasius (328-373). In conjunction with the main official project to excavate an Eleventh-Dynasty Phara­ onic tomb at the site, the entire Christian complex was explored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1912 and 1914. The excavators' findings are published in two splendidly produced volumes that contain a wealth of reportage on both the physi­ cal, material remains and the documentary and literary texts recovered. Thus the Epiphanius site is one of the very few in Egypt from Late Antiquity from which we have both texts and objects, together with their built space, in a documentable and datable context.3 It is worth investigating the interrelation of 1 See Warren R. Dawson, Who Was Who in Egyptology2 (London 1972) 13. 2Herbert E. Winlock, Walter E. Crum, Hugh G. Evelyn White, The Mon­ astery of Epiphanius at Thebes I-II (New York 1926: hereafter Ep.) I 25; cf. Malcolm L. Peel, "Dayr Epiphanius," Coptic Encyclopaedia III (1991) 800- 802, here 800. 3 Datable in fact to the sixth and seventh centuries, as we shall see. The fourth-century village site at Kellis in the Dakhleh Oasis is being revealed as comparable: see lain Gardner and Samuel Lieu, "From Narmouthis (Medinet Madi) to Kellis (Isment al-Kharab)," IRS 86 (1996) 146-169; Paul Mirecki, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 39 (1998) 307-324 © 2000 GRBS 307 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 308 PROPHETHOOD, TEXTS, AND ARTIFACTS objects and texts at this site for the light such investigation may shed on doctrinal and ascetic practices in sixth-century Egypt. The ancient tomb had in fact been the nucleus from which the Christian complex had grown. Since Antony the Great it was traditional for Egyptian charismatic ascetics to take up residence in tombs, the better to do battle against demons.4 As David Brakke has explained, "Antony's battles with the death­ dealing demons and with his body's weakness in the tombs plays out Christ's victory over the tomb."s Sometime in the reign of Maurice in the 580s A.D.6 a Coptic hermit and local wonder­ worker named Epiphanius started living in the tomb of Daga, a semi-ruined ancient structure west of the Valley of the Kings (Ep. 129-32). Using recycled ancient bricks, he built a tower for storage and protection (I 32-36). Around his charismatic figure gathered other hermits, as tended to happen, and building lain Gardner, and Antony Alcock, "Magical Spell, Manichaean Letter," in Emerging from Darkness: Studies in the Recovery of Manichaean Sources, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 43, ed. Paul Mirecki and Jason BeDuhn (Leiden 1997) 1-32, here p.1 on the interrelation of texts and artifacts in a datable context. Cf Introduction to Klaas A. Worp, Greek Papyri from Kellis (P.Kell. 1) (Oxford 1995) 1-11. The recently excavated late antique monastery of Deir Abu Fana, for its part, has not yielded papyri: Helmut Buschhausen et at, "Die Ausgrabungen von Dair Abu Fana in Agypten in den Jahren 1991, 1992 und 1993," Agypten und Levante 6 (1996) 13-73. 4The locus classicus is Athanasius' Life of Antony 8-10, ed. G. J. M. Barte­ link, Sources Chretiennes 400 (Paris 1994). sDavid Brakke, "'Outside the places, within the truth': Athanasius of Alexandria and the Localization of the Holy," in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, ed. David Frankfurter, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 134 (Leiden 1998) 445-481, here 457, cf. 458; cf. also David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford 1995) 239-244. 6 A date inferred from the data in KRU 75, a Coptic document translated in Ep. II 344-348 and dated by Crum to the early seventh century. See Walter C. Till, Erbrechtliche Untersuchungen auf Grund der koptischen Urkunden (Vien­ na 1954) 198-204, who however dated KRU 75 to the mid-seventh century (198); idem, Datierung und Prosopographie der koptischen Rechtsurkunden aus Theben (Vienna 1962) 79-80, 102, 236. This text had been known long before the Metropolitan Museum's archaeological campaign on the ground, having been first published in 1876 (see Ep. II 343). Coptic documents are cited here according to Arthur A. Schiller, "A Checklist of Coptic Documents and Let­ ters," BASP 13 (1976) 99-123. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. L. s. B. MACCOULL 309 operations expanded to include dwellings, storage spaces for foodstuffs, work areas for the practice of crafts, prayer sites (of course), burial places, and eventually a carefully laid out and decorated set of approach spaces through which visitors would pass on their way to see the holy man.7 All over the site, in every space, texts were found: Greek and Coptic wall inscriptions,s some very lengthy, and graffiti; Greek and Coptic letters and documents on papyri and both pottery sherds and limestone flakes; Greek and Coptic literary, patris­ tic, and liturgical texts.9 Clearly this was a world of bilingual literacy in several registers. lO From the letters directed to Epi­ phanius himself and to his companions and followers we find that he was addressed as a "prophet." Ep. no. 162, a Coptic letter on papyrus, was written to "my holy lord father, being the 7 Ep. 136-50, cf 30 on the "Vestibule"; Winlock, though, misinterpreted this space as one in which the anchorites habitually sat (on the wall benches) instead of as an approach space. 8 Also the Lord's Prayer inscribed on a wall in Syriac: Ep. II 342 with Plate XVII; also I 140-14l. 9Cf Ep. I xxii-xxv. laThe rise of Coptic alongside Greek as a language used for legal documents, a phenomenon in place by the sixth century, still occasions debate. See Leslie S. B. MacCoull, "Further Notes on Interrelated Greek and Coptic Documents of the Sixth and Seventh Centuries," ChrEg 70 (1995) 341-353, esp. 341-342, and "Dated and Datable Coptic Documentary Hands Before A.D. 700," Le Museon 110 (1997) 349-366, esp. 351. At the Epiphanius site were found, in Greek, fragments of legal agreements, deeds, inventories, accounts, and a petition to a magistrate (Ep. II 137-139 [texts], 323-325 [transl.]); in Coptic, contracts (agreements to payor to perform tasks, with pro­ visions for fines if transgressed), deeds, wills, acknowledgements of debt, and accounts (of expenses, receipts, payments) (II 27-32,110-116 [texts], 173-178, 284-297 [transl.]): leaving aside the category of letters, which are of course found in both languages (though predominantly in Coptic). As Hannah Cotton has written, the use of a language in legal documents comes from " ... the need to make the contracts valid in a court of law which had the power to enforce them when necessary ... documents [which] could later be produced in court as evidence": "The Languages of the Legal and Administrative Documents from the Judaean Desert," ZPE 125 (1999) 219-231, here 230. Members of the Epi­ phanius settlement were not unmindful of the fact that such legal recourse might become necessary at any time, especially in the unsettled conditions of the reigns of the strongly Chalcedonian emperors Maurice, Tiberius II, Phocas, and Heraclius (up to A.D. 641). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 310 PROPHETHOOD, TEXTS, AND ARTIFACTS temple (rpe) of God, Apa Epiphanius the prophet and anchorite, from Joseph the most humble archdeacon."l! Joseph, a subordinate of an unnamed bishop12 of a see farther south (whether Hermonthis or some other is impossible to infer), has been forbidden13 by his bishop to consult Epiphanius in person about his money, family, and job troubles. So he writes, /I As I desire (epithymei) to see God, I desire to see the blessed face of your fatherly holiness and to receive blessing from it, entreating the Lord for me to have mercy on my poor soul, for I know that He will hear you and will receive your prayer.14 ... What God will reveal (cholp ebol, a verb that can be used of, among other things, seeing visions15) to you, indicate to me ... I know that you are near (hen ehoun) to Him ... Assign (horize) me some prayers ... (and) pray for me in my encountering (apanta) God, the one to whom you are pleasing (r ana!), ... (you) who have done the will of God in all things" (lines 2-5, 18-21, 22-24). Epiphanius is recognized as a person acceptable to God, who can both effectively channel divine power and assign spiritual exercises to those who consult him. 11 Coptic text, Ep. II 45; Crum's translation, 194-195; Plate VI. Translations in the present paper are my own. 12For archdeacons on ,bishops' staffs see Ewa Wipszycka, "Les ordres mineurs dans I'Eglise d'Egypte du IVe au VIIIe siecles," !JurP 23 (1993) 181-215. Cf Klaas A. Worp, "A Checklist of Bishops in Byzantine Egypt (AD. 325-c.750)," ZPE 100 (1994) 283-318. 13Surely an example of the often-found tension between local charismatic personalities and the hierarchy of the "official" church: cf David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton 1998) 189, 277, and "Approaches to Coptic Pilgrimage," in Frankfurter (supra n.5) 1-48, here 24, 33, 39, 48; Roger S. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton 1993) 204-205; Leslie S. B. MacCoull, "Paul of Tamma and the Monastic Priest­ hood," VigChr 53 (1999) 316-320. 14 For a collection of papyrological data on written requests for a monk to pray for the letter-writer, see P.Coi. XI 301. For the importance of intercession and mediation at the Epiphanius community site see also C. Rapp, "'For next to God, you are my salvation': Reflections on the Rise of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity," in The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown, edd. J. Howard-Johnston and P. A. Hay­ ward (Oxford 1999) 63-81, here 72. 15See Leslie S. B. MacCoull, "Gregory Thaumaturgus' Vision Re­ Envisioned," RHE 94 (1999) 5-14, here 10. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. L. S. B. MACCOULL 311 Clearly these are circumstances in which, and particularly expectations with which, one would consult a "prophet" in late antique Egypt.16 Recent work has elucidated the cultural role of such a figure. Local prophetic thaumaturges deeply rooted in their own regions are thought to have moved into the roles earlier played by members of the old Egyptian local priest­ hoods, and provided direct access to supernatural power that often bypassed the "official" churchY From Joseph's letter it is apparent how Epiphanius was in direct competition with the traditional mode of power18 represented by the obstructionist bishop. His face conferred blessing, for he was regarded as one having God's ear and as a recipient of visions, able in his turn both to require his clients to perform spiritual works and to resolve their problems. Dozens of other letters attest to Epiphanius's competence in matters of sickness, poverty, and conflict resolution. He was not the only Egyptian ascetic to be openly styled "prophet."19 "Prophet" is the title par excellence attached to the name of Shenoute, fifth-century head of a large 16Compare also the prominent role assigned to "prophets" and their connection with the eucharist in the Didache, a Coptic papyrus text of which antedates Epiphanius: see F. Stanley Jones and Paul A. Mirecki, "Considera­ tions on the Coptic Papyrus of the Didache (British Library Oriental MS 9271)," in The Didache in Context: Essays on its Text, History and Trans­ mission, ed. Clayton N. Jefford, Novum Testamentum Suppl. 77 (Leiden 1995) 47-87, esp. 82-83. 17 "Prophetic figures ... appropriating in charismatic form such traditional priestly services as divination, social mediation, healing, and supernatural protection": Frankfurter, Religion (supra n.13) 215, cf. 30, 35, and 258 with n.60 on magic at the Epiphanius monastery (to which we shall return below). See also Bagnall (supra n.13) 299-303. 18 As in Frankfurter, "Approaches" (supra n.13) 24-26: Epiphanius clearly "played administrative roles ... resolving village disputes, healing suppli­ cants, and issuing talismans" (25). For healing see Crum, Ep. I 164. Conflicts between individual ascetics and bishops are not uncommon in the documents of this culture; Joseph is clearly relying on a local holy individual rather than his own bishop, and this could have led to a turf dispute. 190ther epithets addressed to Epiphanius are "pneumatophore" ("Spirit­ bearer"), "true Christ-bearer," and "new psalmodos," as collected by Peel (supra n.2) 801. Crum (Ep. II 196 n.23) wondered if this last meant that he composed hymns. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 312 PROPHETHOOD, TEXTS, AND ARTIFACTS monastic congregation centered on the monastery at Atripe in the Panopolite nome, where manuscript colophons and ex-voto donations always record that they were made for the topos of "our father the prophet Apa Shenoute."2o Other famous charismatic "prophets" so styled were Macarius the Great of the Wadi Natrun; Epiphanius's contemporary Pesyntheus of Coptos (who was a monk-ascetic long before being made a bishop );21 and Longinus abbot of the Enaton monastery near Alexandria, famous opponent of the council of Chalcedon and miracle-worker.22 This Enaton connection will return when we come to consider the interrelations of written text and built space in the Epiphanius complex. Winlock's Chapter 3 of Ep. 1 (51-97), "Trades and Occupa­ tions at the Monastery as Shown by the Excavations," is an exhaustive and illuminating summary of the material remains. Even more illumination results from correlating the written texts-the notes and messages of everyday life-with the physical objects, as partially done in Crum's justly famous Chapter 6, "Theban Hermits and their Life" (1125-185). Just to follow the outline in the excavation report shows this inter­ relatedness in detail. Ostrakon 400 is a request for 300 bricks "for the lower level, not the upper," as made plain by the actual masonry construction (I 51-53). Ostrakon 540 lists names with quantities of large and small loaves of bread, corresponding to the products of the ovens discovered (I 53-54). Papyrus 432 20 A few examples (of many) listed in Leslie S. B. MacCoull, "The Coptic Inscriptions on the Votive Cross of the Monastery of Shenoute," CahArch 44 (1996) 14, 16. For the manuscript colophons see now also Tito Orlandi, "The Library of the Monastery of Apa Shenoute at Atripe," paper at the Leiden sym­ posium "Perspectives on Panopolis," 17 December 1998 (I thank Roger Bagnall for a copy of the abstract). 21Crum's n.20 to Ep. no. 162.28: Ep. II 195, cf I221-23l. 22See Leo Depuydt, "A HOmily on the Virtues of Saint Longinus Attributed to Basil of Pemje," in Copt%gy-Past, Present, and Future: Studies in Honour of Rodolphe Kasser, edd. Soren Giversen, Martin Krause, and Peter Nagel (Leuven 1994) 267-291; Tim Vivian, "Humility and Resistance in Late Antique Egypt: The Life of Longinus," Coptic Church Review 20 (1999) 2-30. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. L. S. B. MAC COULL 313 mentions cutting acacia wood, the most frequently used for the furniture and latticework found along with carpentry tools (I 54-60; cf also ostrakon 547). Epiphanius himself wrote papyrus letter 397 to his mother, asking to have a lock and key made­ presumably just like the wooden lock found on site (I 58-60). As expected, foodstuffs such as grain, vegetables, fish, and wine are mentioned very often in the letters (cf. I 144-149), and actual specimens, as well as the agricultural tools and irrigation devices for producing and processing them (I 61-67), were recovered. A large-scale occupation of the ascetics, attested in the docu­ ments, was the textile craft: growing flax (no. 85),23 spinning it (no. 353), and weaving it on looms (no. 351; cf Index [II 374] s. vv. "Linen," "Loom"), as well as making garments from the cloth (no. 465; cf I 155-158). Actual remains of fibres, spindle whorls, parts of looms and their emplacements, woven goods, and garments were found on site (167-71). Although the textile craft is usually regarded as the realm of women in Byzantine Egypt,24 it is also recognized as a specialty trade of male monastics since as early as the fourth century.25 A particular category of textile woven by the hermits was their own grave clothes, shrouds, and tapes for binding the shrouds (e.g. no. 532: I 70-71), a striking memento mori. Just these products were found on the bodies in the monastic cemetery (I 45-50)-bodies that, interestingly, seem to have been not circumcised.26 23See Philip Mayerson, "The Role of Flax in Roman and Fatimid Egypt," JNES 56 (1997) 201-207. 24 See JoeIle Beaucamp, "Organisation domestique et roles sexuels: les papy­ rus byzantins," DOP 47 (1993) 185-194. 25 According to P.Kell. C.12, Tithoes, grandson of a carpenter, was sent to a monastery to learn this trade: lain Gardner, "'He has gone to the monastery'," forthcoming in the next Proceedings of the International Congress of Manichaean Studies: see Roger Bagnall, The Kellis Agricultural Account Book (Oxford 1997) 10 with n.17. 26This determination is not always easy to make. Cf. Gudrun Fischhaber, MumiJizierling im koptischen Agypten: Eine Untersuchung zlir Korperlichkeit im 1. Jahrtausend n.Chr., Agypten und Altes Testament 39 (Wiesbaden 1997) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 314 PROPHETHOOD, TEXTS, AND ARTIFACTS Mats (no. 358), ropes (no. 398), and baskets (no. 537) were woven and recovered (I 72-75). Animals (goats and sheep) were raised for leather, which was made into belts, aprons, and sandals (no. 371), and used for bookbinding (no. 380) (I 75-78). Pottery, always the most frequent archaeological find, was the standard material for storage vessels (cf. nos. 531, 549), and other objects of everyday use were recovered in ample quantity (I 78-93). And to fascinate the text specialist, reed pens were found, just such as were used to write on the inscribed papyrus, pottery, and limestone surfaces that bear the Epiphanius texts (I 93-95, cf. 186-195). Those texts were, as mentioned above, not only such as could be held in the hands. Leading up to Epiphanius's own dwelling there was constructed an elaborate series of spaces through which a visiting client would pass on his or he27 way to consult the "prophet." Such a visitor entered the monastic complex through a gate in the wall, passed the imposing First Tower built by Epiphanius himself (I 33), and went through two anterooms separated by rising stairs (plan, Ep. 127, cf Plate III). On the left-hand wall just after the second staircase the visitor encountered a Coptic homiletic text that warned against attacks by evil powers upon the faithful (pistos), using the metaphor of a tree root splitting a rock (trans!. II 337). On the facing right­ hand wall the eye was struck by the most imposing inscription of all, three tall columns giving the synodal letter of Damian, the 41-42, for uncircumcised monastic bodies. This evidence might be taken to militate against the later belief that circumcision was a very ancient practice in Egypt; however, circumcision in the Pharaonic age seems to have been fairly widespread and well-attested, but to have fallen out of general favor in Graeco-Roman times except for some elite males. (I thank Terry Wilfong for his advice on this point.) For parallels to circumcision among later medieval Coptic males see also Leslie S. B. MacCoull, "The Rite of the Jar: Apostasy and Reconciliation in the Medieval Coptic Orthodox Church," in Peace and Negotiation: Strategies for Coexistence in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Diane Wolf thai (Turnhout 2000) 145-162: emphasizing influence of the surrounding Islamic culture and differentiation from the dyophysite Melkites. 27For women visitors and their interaction with Epiphanius and his fol­ lowers see Ep. I 131-133, 182. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. L. S. B. MACCOULL 315 Syrian-born former monk of the Enaton who was patriarch of Alexandria from 578 to 607,28 a letter that is a fiercely partisan exposition and defense of Monophysite Christology.29 Damian's text praises the unfailing orthodoxy of the great fathers, Ath­ anasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and Severus of Antioch, who had come to exile in Egypt and whose burial place at the Enaton had become a Monophysite pilgrimage goal since his death in A.D. 538.30 Next the visitor came into a long horizontally-oriented space (termed the "Vestibule") stretching out into left and right wings. To the left of the facing doorway were two Coptic wall inscrip­ tions. From left to right: first, a dogmatic epistle by Severus of Antioch expounding the Trinity and the Incarnation of the Hypostasis of the Word " ... both God and Man ... not being di­ vided into two natures" (II 337-338). Then, a two-part Coptic homiletic text on the Annunciation and the Incarnation "without change, without confusion" (two of the important Christological adverbs) of Christ, who again is not "divided by the heretics' division" (338-340). Also in the "Vestibule" were two Greek wall inscriptions: an extract from Athanasius' anti-Arian "Letter to the Monks" (with a clear anti-Chalcedonian subtext), and the famous Twelve Anathemas of Cyril condemning, among other things, the dividing of Christ after the union and the Nestorian concept of the "assumed man" (306-308). Flanking the facing doorway were a further pair of grouped Coptic inscriptions, all apparently taken from the works of Cyril of Alexandria. To the right of the door are a credal confession of 280n Damian see C. Detlef G. Muller, "Damian Papst und Patriarch von Alexandrien," OC 70 (1986) 118-142; and Philippe Blaudeau, "Le voyage de Damien d' Alexandrie vers Antioche puis Constantinople (579-580) - Motivations et objectifs," OCP 63 (1997) 333-361. 29Coptic text Ep. II 148-152; Crum's translation II 332-337: "We anathema­ tize the synod that gathered in Chalcedon which declared this in trickery against the upright faith, and everyone that declares two natures in Christ after the union" (lines 86-88). 30See Jean Gascou, "Enaton," Coptic Encyclopaedia III (1991) 954-958. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 316 PROPHETHOOD, TEXTS, AND ARTIFACTS the hypostatic union in Christ, worshipped without division, and a proclamation of Christ's victory over death and its gift of immortality to all (341). To the left is a tripartite Cyrillian text yet again forbidding the division of Christ into two and stress­ ing the true reality of his human birth and death (340-341).31 This impressively textualized space layout32 amounted to a way of giving the visitor to Epiphanius's room a crash course in Monophysite theology. Such a visitor would be assumed to be sufficiently literate in both Coptic and Greek to appreciate how powerfully the space was progressively imbued with the force of the sacred words. For that matter, even the monolingual and/or marginally literate visitor would have been filled with awe at this uniquely textualized space. By the time he or she arrived at Epiphanius in person, the client would ideally have been fully indoctrinated with enthusiastic Monophysite spirit.33 31 Not all originals of these texts are yet identified, especially of the Cyrillian texts in their Coptic form. For the astonishing lack of a "Corpus Cy­ rillianum Copticum" see Leslie S. B. MacCoull, "Coptic Sources: A Problem in the Sociology of Knowledge," BullSocArchCopte 26 (1984) 1-7 esp. here 1-2. 32 For Coptic space see now the papers from the 1997 American Research Center in Egypt panel on "House, Church, and Monastery: Coptic Uses of Space from Late Antiquity to the Present Day," published in BASP 35 (1998) 9-95 (papers by Thelma K. Thomas, Helen Saradi, Rebecca Krawiec, Eliza­ beth S. Bolman, and Sheila McNally, with mention of the work of Elizabeth Oram on the modern period). Also Svetlana Popovic, "The Trapeza in Cenobitic Monasteries: Architectural and Spiritual Contexts," DOP 52 (1998) 281-303, at 281: "The spiritual life of monasticism found material expression in a spatial structure known as the monastery. The concept of this estab­ lishment thus has many layers of meanings in which the architectural and spatial layout is prominent. There is a very close relationship between the monastic way of life and its architectural setting. Building forms and their spatial arrangement often have symbolic meaning ... The layout of buildings in the monastery and their architectural relationships interacted closely with the prescribed daily life and ritual performed in the community." True of non­ cenobitic forms also. 33Crum (Ep. I 151-153) has a strangely contradictory comment, simul­ taneously saying that Epiphanius's hermits favored Monophysite views but that Christological problems were largely ignored in Upper Egypt. Nor, equally strangely, did Winlock think that the wall texts would have been related to disputes in the "distant north" (199). For a more balanced view on Upper Egyptian hermits' awareness of the Christological controversies see Mark Sheridan, Rufus of Shotep: Homilies on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (Rome 1998) 53-58, 303-308. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. L. s. B. MACCOULL 317 Besides letters and other documents of worldly affairs, found in abundance in the hermits' dwellings/4 literary texts, intended for reading and reciting, were also recovered in large numbers (I 196-208). Two of the best preserved and most extensive were papyrus codices: one in Greek, of the Psalms35 (no. 578 = "Codex U"),36 and one bilingual, of Greek alphabetic acrostic hymns with a Coptic translation on the facing page of each bifolium (nos. 592 and 49).37 Reciting the Psalter was of course a central part of any monk's daily activity,38 as was the use of hymns in the day hours whether by oneself or with a group.39 The two best preserved of the Epiphanius hymns are one in honor of an ascetic Saint Ammonius, presumably either the early Ammonius of the Wadi Natrun or the later Ammonius of the Hermopolite,40 and one on the Resurrection emphasizing the defeat of the power of idols (and Jews). Thus it is apparent that texts embodying both the ascetic ideal of the transfigured life to benefit others and the hoped-for triumph of the Monophy­ site way were copied with care and in enduring form. 41 Epiphanius was, as we have seen, simultaneously a world­ renouncing recluse and a thaumaturge acting to help his clients. Connected with his latter role we may consider the magical papyrus found in a jar under the floor of a room in the outlying 34Cf. Ep. I 42-43, 178-182, 186-192. 35For all the biblical texts, see Ep. II 3-7, 155-159 (Coptic), 119-121, 299-301 (Greek). 36 Ep. II 299 with literature; Plate XVII. 37 Ep. II 309-312. 38Cf Ep. I 166-169. 39Robert F. Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in the Christian East (College­ ville, Minn., 1986) 249-259. 40DeLacy O'Leary, The Saints of Egypt (London 1937) 70-72; Crum (Ep. II 310) refused to venture an identification. Ammonius of Esna is mentioned in KRU 75 (supra n.6) (Ep. II 346). 41 Other (Coptic) hymn texts build on New Testament quotations and on ser­ mons by Athanasius and Severus of Antioch, the latter on the dignity of craft practice, consonant with the activities we see embodied in the monastery's material remains (Ep. II 161). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 318 PROPHETHOOD, TEXTS, AND ARTIFACTS part of the complex.42 After "names of power" and similar utterances juxtaposed with the Persons of the Trinity, this text (Cairo 45060) gives spells for diseases that involve writing texts on specific days of the month; to obtain favors or to deter the harmful actions of rulers, involving the use of parts of mummies (easily obtainable in the Epiphanius monastic graveyard);43 and dealing with the sorts of problems clients might have, such as de­ fusing quarrels, sending an enemy away "into the desert," and desiring to have a child. To obtain an oracular response,44 the client is advised to say a certain prayer at the rising of the morning star. The papyrus even gives a procedure for laying a foundation, employing a wax figure with amuletic texts written on it, and one for purifying a cistern,45 using texts written on a pot to be thrown into it. Could such procedures have been followed at the monastery's beginnings, on laying its foundation and blessing its water source? In any case, most of the magical ingredients used in the spells, such as pitch, vinegar, salt, oil, palm leaves, dates, and honey, are also mentioned in the papyrus letters and ostraka and/or actually found in trace amounts on site.46 Epiphanius continued, in true holy-man fashion, to work his wonders after his death (cf Ep. 1214). Besides the invocations of him given by Crum, an unpublished Coptic parchment frag­ ment in the Princeton University Library attests, I believe, to the cult of the wonder-working properties of his body buried in its 42See Ep. 121,207; not published by Crum et al. but in 1930-31 by Angeli­ cus Kropp; transl. by David Frankfurter in Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith, Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (San Francisco 1994) 270-273 no. 128. See Frankfurter, Religion (supra n.13) 258-259 with n.60. 43 Also embalming salts, used by the monks in their burials. 44 For oracles in Christian Egypt, see Arietta Papaconstantinou, "Oracles chretiens dans l'Egypte byzantine: Ie temoignage des papyrus," ZPE 104 (1994) 281-286. 45 On the monastery complex's water supply see Ep. 1149. 460ther spells use bat and dove blood; and both "bat" and "dove" are listed on Ep. no. 621, a papyrus containing bird names. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. L. S. B. MACCOULL 319 tomb (PLATES 1_2).47 The text of this fragment,48 which appears to be a hymn from a later period, tells the story of a woman wanting to bring her sons as oblates to serve (hmhal)49 the mon­ astery, which appears deserted (sh6f ... laaue seep erof, "deserted ... nothing remains of it") long after the founder's death. Finding this situation she cries out and weeps "fit to burst," lamenting that neither Father Epiphanius nor God in Heaven is present. 50 "She wept and besought God and our father Epiphanius; her tears flowed down upon the grave ... God took pity on her, the grave opened, she looked down upon the honored body of our father" (side A lines 11-15). This narrative may have been com­ posed in the period after the Arab conquest of Egypt, prompted perhaps by an accidental discovery of buried bodies at the 47Princeton GD (Garrett Deposit) NS 19, Manuscripts Division, Princeton University Library; bought from the Cairo dealer Maurice Nahrnan in 1929, dated by an earlier cataloguer 10th/11th century. I am grateful to Dr Rosalie Cook of Columbia University; Dr Don C. Skemer and Ms. Anna Lee Pauls of the Princeton University Library, for photographs and permissions; and Dr Todd Hickey of the University of Chicago, who is preparing the Princeton Coptica for imaging in the APIS project (Advanced Papyrological Information System). 48 I opt for the identification with Epiphanius of Thebes (despite Crum's un­ certainties in Ep. I 217), rather than Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis in Cyprus, who (pace Hickey) does not seem to have been the object of a pilgrimage cult in Egypt, though there is a Coptic commemoration of the translation of his relics to Cyprus (M. de Fenoyl, Le sanctoral copte [Beirut 1960] 156) on 28 Pachon. See also C. Rapp, "Epiphanius of Salamis: The Church Father as Saint," in 'The Sweet Land of Cyprus'; Papers at the 25th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies (Nicosia-Birmingham 1993) 169-187. Since no place of origin is attached to the "Father Epiphanius" in the Princeton text, Thebans would, in the absence of contradictory local details, have assumed that this was "their" Epiphanius. 49See Leslie S. B. MacCoul1, "Child Donations and Child Saints in Coptic Egypt," East European Quarterly 13 (1979) 409-415. soTwice the text uses the unattested Greek word ErncrK£mov, apparently meaning something like "visitors' shelter" near the burial place. Etymo­ logically it may imply a place where one viewed (episkepein) the preserved body of the saint. Still to appear is the paper of J. M. H. Smith, "Women at the Tomb: Access to Relic Shrines in the Early Middle Ages," in The World of Gregory of Tours, edd. K. Mitchell and I. Wood (forthCOming). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 320 PROPHETHOOD, TEXTS, AND ARTIFACTS monastic cemetery site giving rise to a renewed impulse to re­ animate the pilgrimage shrine.51 Viewed as a whole, the Monastery of Epiphanius presents the historian of late antiquity with a marvelously interrelated set of written texts and material remains both built and portable. This assemblage was excavated before the First World War, and published soon after the spectacular golden Pharaonic treasures of Tutankhamen's tomb had dazzled the world; humble Coptic remains were treated with disdain.52 Two years earlier, in 1924, Francis Kelsey of the University of Michigan had begun excavating the village site of Karanis, emphasizing not precious objects of the elite but the ordinary people's level of daily life, with texts and artifacts interrelated.53 However, this polarization between expensive "high art" ("power art") and humble objects thought appropriate to provincial, un­ worldly Christian believers was to prove both erroneous and misleading. In 1894, the controversial Austrian art historian Josef Strzygowski,54 at the age of 32 newly appointed to a chair at the University of Graz, accepted a summons from Gaston 51 The Epiphanius monastery is thought to have ceased to exist after the conquest: Peel (supra n.2) 801; cf. Ep. I 103. However, if the references to silver currency (rare, as Crum remarked ad loc.) in ostrakon 525 in fact refer to Arab silver dirhems, that would support the hypothesis that it survived. 52 William H. C. Frend, The Archaeology of Early Christianity (London 1996) 144-150. 53 Stephen L. Dyson, Ancient Marbles to American Shores: Classical Archae­ ology in the United States (Philadelphia 1998) 187; Florence Friedman et al., Beyond the Pharaohs: Egypt and the Copts in the 2nd to 7th Centuries A.D. (Providence 1989) 90-124. 54 For all of this I have derived a great deal from the essay by Suzanne L. Marchand, "The Rhetoric of Artifacts and the Decline of Classical Humanism: The Case of Josef Strzygowski," H&T Beih. 33 (1994) 106-130. However, although Marchand terms Strzygowski "relatively obscure" (106), for Cop­ ticists not a day goes by still that we do not have recourse to his Koptische Kunst of 1904, a monograph that records many objects no longer extant. Long before Marchand's essay I had discovered Strzygowski's "Nordic" theories in the Library of Congress. R eproduced w ith perm ission of the copyright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout perm ission. COPTIC PARCHMENT PRINCETON GD NS 19: SIDE A By permission, Princeton University Library ~ >­n n o ~ r "V r' :J> I-j tTJ ..... R ep ro du ce d w ith p er m is si on o f t he c op yr ig ht o w ne r. F ur th er re pr od uc tio n pr oh ib ite d w ith ou t p er m is si on . ..J :5 o ~ ~ ~ ~