Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 19 December 2025
memnonia: update
Jennifer Cromwell Keywords: Memnonia; Abraham of Hermonthis; Coptic monasteries; Dayr Apa Phoibammon; Dayr al-Baḥri; Dayr al-Bakhit; Dayr al-Madinah; Dayr al-Rumi; Dayr Epiphanius; Djeme; Excavations (Archaeology); Madinat Habu; Papyrology; Qurnat Mar‘i 1. Preface 2. Villages 3. Monastic Communities 3.1. Dayr al-Baḥri 3.2. Dayr al-Bakhit 3.3. Sheikh Abd al-Qurna 3.4. Other sites 1. Preface The Greek toponym Memnonia derives from the Colossi of Memnon, the colossal statues of Amenhotep iii that stood at the entrance to his mortuary temple on the west bank of Thebes. The name is used to refer to the entire region around the Colossi, but also more specifically to Djeme, as kastron Memnonion, the village located in and around madinat habu, the mortuary temple of Rameses iii (Timm 1984–2007: 1012–1034). In late antiquity, Djeme’s ancient pharaonic sacred monumental landscape was transformed into new patterns of secular and monastic occupation.
Since 1991 and the original Coptic Encyclopedia publication of Hishmat Messiha’s memnonia (Messiha 1991), considerable research has been undertaken on both the village of Djeme and the region of Memnonia more broadly, especially the monastic communities that were built in pharaonic temple complexes and royal and private tombs in the desert and mountains west of the cultivation’s edge.
Examination of both the material published over a century ago and newer evidence deriving from modern excavations has resulted in new understandings of life across the late sixth to late eighth centuries: the peak period of Christian occupation of this area to which the majority of textual and archaeological sources date. Notably, the sources also demonstrate how interconnected the different communities were, with letters and legal documents in particular revealing a range of relationships and dependencies across Memnonia, connecting villages, monasteries, and individual monks.
2. Villages Throughout the abundant textual material from across Memnonia, reference is made to multiple villages in the area. However, while the social and economic activities that connect these communities are clear, the site of only one village has been securely identified: that of Djeme, or kastron Memnonion. Built within and around Madinat Habu, the mortuary temple of Rameses iii, Djeme was almost certainly the principal settlement in Memnonia. Houses remained in situ until the 1920s, in the northern and western areas of the complex, as did the Holy Church of Djeme, located in the second courtyard of the pharaonic temple (Hölscher 1954). Today, traces of these houses survive upon the temple’s perimeter wall (fig. 1). © Claremont Graduate University 1 Jennifer Cromwell: Memnonia: Update 19 December 2025 Figure 1. Madinat Habu, showing remains of Djeme buildings on top of the temple’s perimeter wall (photography by J. Cromwell) During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, vast quantities of texts, on ostraca and papyrus, were discovered, such that Djeme is the best-documented Egyptian village of the eighth century, and the best-attested of any village in terms of its Coptic sources, attracting even the attention of scholars working in other areas of the early medieval world (Wickham 2005).
Despite the size of this textual record, significant studies on life in Djeme have appeared primarily only since the turn of the millennium, including on women in the village (Wilfong 2002), its administration (Berkes 2017), and its scribes (Cromwell 2017). Publication of its texts in collections across the world continues to add to the available evidence, especially on ostraca, where new editions of tax receipts in particular regularly appear (Delattre and Fournet 2014), but also on papyrus (Boud’hors et al. 2024).
3. Monastic communities 3.1. Dayr al-Baḥri The Monastery of Apa Phoibammon (dayr apa phoibammon) at Dayr al-Baḥri is the best-studied of Memnonia’s monastic communities. Even though its buildings were removed in the late nineteenth century to reveal the original pharaonic temple of Hatshepsut underneath, the history of the monastery is preserved in a large body of written sources, especially dating to the tenure of its founder and first superior, Bishop abraham of hermonthis.
Since the important study of the monastery’s history by Godlewski (1986), research into different aspects of life in the community has continued, particularly concerning the activities of its superiors (Dekker 2018; Garel 2020), and the practice of donating children to the monastery as recorded in an archive of legal documents (Papaconstantinou 2002a; 2002b; Richter 2005; Schenke 2016; see donation of children). The number of texts that remain unpublished from the site (see o’connell 2006) means that more remains to be learned about life in the community. Additionally, excavations at Dayr al-Baḥri continue to bring material to light from the monastery, albeit in small amounts, and contribute to the relatively limited evidence for its physical features, such as glass windowpanes (Kucharczyk 2021). Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 2 Jennifer Cromwell: Memnonia: Update 19 December 2025 3.2. Dayr al-Bakhit The Monastery of Apa Paul has been known from textual sources since the publication of legal texts recording its activities in 1932 (Schiller 1932). It has now been securely identified with dayr al-bakhit, the complex located on top of the hill of Dra Abu el-Naga. The monastery consisted of a central walled complex, external units, its necropolis, and surrounding pharaonic tombs that were occupied by individual monks.
The study of life at the community is part of continuing research, based on a significant body of evidence comprising buildings, interior fittings, small finds, and texts (Beckh 2013; Beckh and Chameroy 2019; Beckh and Eichner 2021; Eicher 2019; Hodak 2016; Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (2011–2014); Veldmeijer 2017).
On the north side of Dra Abu el-Naga, excavations of pharaonic tombs have also revealed monastic activity in this area, notably in the adjacent tombs TT (Theban Tomb) 147 and 233, located approximately 200m from the larger monastery. Over the course of the sixth to eighth centuries, a small group of monks who resided within this cluster can be identified (Choat 2016), attesting to an active monastic community in this northern part of Memnonia. 3.3. Sheikh Abd al-Qurna For much of the twentieth century, the best-known hermitage located among the pharaonic tombs at Sheikh Abd al-Qurna (fig. 2) was the Monastery of Epiphanius (see dayr epiphanius), with the publication of its architectural and material remains (Winlock and Crum 1926) still being one of the most important reference works for late antique Theban monasticism. Since the 1990s, several other monastic cells and hermitages in the tombs of this area have been studied. Many of these monastic remains were already identified by Winlock and Crum, but had not been excavated.
Figure 2. Sheikh Abd al-Qurna, from the northwest, with the Monastery of Epiphanius in the foreground (photography by J. Cromwell).
Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 3 Jennifer Cromwell: Memnonia: Update 19 December 2025 The following list gives an indication of the scale of monastic reoccupation of the pharaonic landscape, primarily in the seventh and early eighth centuries (for tombs without bibliographic notes, the primary reference remains Winlock and Crum): TT 29 (Bavay 2007a; 2007b; Bavay and Laboury 2012; Boud’hors and Heurtel 2010); several tombs clustered around TT 65, including TT 66, 67, tt-nn-7, 8, and 24, which together formed the Monastery of Cyriacus (Bács 2000; 2009; Hasznos 2013); TT 68, the location of a monk’s burial (Seyfried 1991); the courtyards of TT 72 and 75; TT 84; TT 85 (Behlmer 2007); TT 87; TT 94; TT 95 (Underwood and Behlmer 2016; Underwood 2017); TT 96; TT 97; TT 99 (Behlmer 2003); C3 (Bavay 2010); K85 (Loprieno-Gnirs et al. 2021; Müller 2021).
The large volume of ostraca from TT 29 provides considerable information about the lives of its occupants, especially the monk to whom the majority of the texts relate, Frange (Boud’hors and Heurtel 2010). Letters written to and from Frange indicate personal networks that crossed Memnonia (e.g., the monastery of Epiphanius and the village of Djeme) and extended further afield, notably to his hometown, Petemout, approximately 10km away on the west bank. However, the networks between other monks and hermitages on Sheikh Abd al-Qurna are more difficult to determine, due to the more limited datasets that have survived relating to them.
Removed from these cells, in the western end of Sheikh Abd al-Qurna at the base of the mountains, is a monastic hermitage, mma 1152, which has been excavated since 2003 (Górecki 2004; 2005; 2007; 2010; 2011; 2013). From this hermitage, which would have been home to a couple of monks simultaneously, a diverse range of objects survives, including craft items, cooking utensils, and ostraca which attest to the range of activities that took place at the monastery (Górecki 2014, 2017; Boud’hors 2017; 2018; 2020). Excavations have also revealed books, including an “Encomium on Pisentius of Coptos” (Dekker 2010; 2011; see also pisentius, saint), which constitute the best-preserved Coptic literary works in western Thebes.
3.4. Other sites At some sites, what survives is too scant to determine the nature of any associated community; for example, the graffiti, ceramics, and evidence of a church in the Ramesseum (the mortuary temple of Rameses II) are insufficient to conclude whether the site was home to a secular or a monastic community (Lecuyot 2000). However, archaeological, epigraphic, and papyrological research at other monastic locations across Memnonia has increased our knowledge of sites that had been known for a long time, but about which little had been published.
The pharaonic temple of Hathor at dayr al-madinah is covered in Coptic and Greek inscriptions (Heurtel 2004) attesting to late antique activities at the site, which was probably used as a church from the sixth to the early eighth centuries. On the hill of qurnat mar‘I, the religious institution known as the topos of St. Mark has been known since excavations by the French Oriental Institute (ifao) in the early 1970s. Of the approximately 1,400 Coptic ostraca and few dozen papyrus fragments discovered during that time, 440 texts have been published by Boud’hors and Heurtel (2015), which document the topos’s economy and administration between the early seventh and mid-eighth centuries, and highlight the network of monastic communities and churches that existed at that time, and of which it was an important part.
In the Valley of the Queens, the site of dayr al-rumi is home to the best-preserved monastic complex still standing in the Theban region. The original excavation reports from the early twentieth century have never been published, but reexamination of the site since 1988 has produced plans of the complex and published small finds and texts that have improved understanding of life there (Delattre et al. 2008; Lecuyot 1992; 1996; 2016). This community incorporated not only the monastic buildings themselves, but also pharaonic tombs occupied Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 4 Jennifer Cromwell: Memnonia: Update 19 December 2025 by hermits in a form of loose congregation, similar to those observed elsewhere in the region. Built on the slopes of a hill, the monastery overlooks a plain leading towards Djeme, located approximately one kilometer away, and texts from the monastery attest to connections between the two locations (Delattre and Lecuyot 2015; Müller 2020; Pezin and Lecuyot 2007).
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