Bishoi Monastery

After the buffet breakfast at the hotel, we boarded the bus to begin the ride to Alexandria. We took the desert road, a limited-access toll road that is faster than the road that follows the Nile and passes through many small towns. We were surprised to see the makeshift stands selling pop, snacks and cigarettes before and after the toll booths. Our guide, Heba, said that such stands were never seen before the 2011 revolution. Now they are all too common. Cars and trucks that stopped to purchase merchandise were slowing traffic.

After about two hours, we arrived at Wadi El Natrun, a village known since ancient times, when it provided embalming salts. Today it is just a small Egyptian town with a distinctly third-world feel. There were lots of shopkeepers of none-too-prosperous shops waiting for business. Car repair seemed to be a local specialty, although there were few cars actually being repaired.

However, on the west side of the village is a Coptic monastery dating from the 5th century. This is a large, prosperous, sprawling complex that includes a large modern cathedral and irrigated agricultural fields for selling vegetables into the local market. The heart of the complex is a small 5th century church where we were asked to remove our shoes before entering. One of the monks, dressed in a black robe with a black-and-white hood tied under his neck, gave us a personal tour.

The monastery of Dier Anba Bishoi is named after a monk who lived in solitude at this site. His “uncorrupted” remains are kept in a coffin on the site and are venerated by Christians from all over Egypt. As we entered the ancient church, a group of about 20 Egyptians, mostly men and a few women, were singing as they gathered around his coffin, touching it. The monk invited us into the sanctuary as they completed their hymn. He explained to us that St. Mark had visited this area in about 58 A.D. and was the patron saint of Egypt. The holy family had traveled to this area as they fled Israel to avoid Herod’s wrath, as described in the Matthew. The sincerity and goodwill of the monk were almost palpable as he described the ancient Christian history of the area.

He took us into an old refectory that is now a dusty museum of ancient icons and artifacts of the monastic community. It made me wonder what ancient manuscripts they may have tucked away in corners of the monastery that have not seen the light of day. He then led us to a typical monastic cell, a very spartan pair of rooms, where the monks lived their lives. He coached us in singing a hymn from a Coptic hymnbook. We sang the chorus, about the Virgin Mary, while he sang the verses.

Our next stop was the sarcophagus of Coptic pope Shenouda III, who had died a couple of months earlier. Vestments and photographs of Shenouda III adorned the walls. Our monk-guide described to us the process of electing a new Coptic pope, in which the electors of the church narrow the field of about 17 candidates down to three. Then a blindfolded boy chooses the name of the new pope at random from among the three finalists. The Coptic church is about two months away from selecting a new pope. As we left the chapel where the sarcophagus lay, we could hear the ululations of Coptic women rising heavenward.

Some of us then went up a flight of stairs and across the drawbridge into the medieval fortress of the monastery, designed to protect the monks from raiding Bedouins. The fortress had its own bakery, which included a well as a source of freshwater. Apparently the monks’ predecessors had withstood several Bedouin sieges in medieval times. From the top of the fortress were panoramic views of the entire complex.

We boarded the bus and drove another two hours into Alexandria for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the fishing and yacht harbor. There were significantly more small fishing boats than sailboats. Our restaurant was next door to the medieval castle that was built on the site of the ancient lighthouse. We had a lunch of grilled fish and calamari before boarding our bus to go to the Alexandria library.

On the way to the library we passed the courthouse, where some policemen were on trial for the deaths of some demonstrators in Alexandria during the 2011 revolution. Today, police in riot gear held a small group of demonstrators at bay. The police outnumbered the demonstrators by a ratio of about 5 to 1, so we did not feel threatened. Alexandria residents seemed to regard the demonstration as an unwelcome traffic obstacle more than anything else.

The Alexandria library is a thoroughly modern affair meant to recapture some of the glory of the library that burned in ancient times. The library has about 1.5 million volumes in print and many more online, including access to every webpage created on the internet since 1996. I took advantage of the free wi-fi to check email. I tried using one of the library’s many computers, but the keyboard typed out the Arabic alphabet, which was of no use to me.

We checked in at the historic Cecil Hotel, built in 1929 and now owned by Sofitel, the French hotel chain. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery had stayed in the hotel during World War II, before and after his great victory at El Alamein. The hotel has named a bar in his honor, although my internet research indicates that Monty did not drink. We were one of the few parties in the hotel dining room, although the Monty Bar had a few patrons.