RUINS OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN THE GRAND COURT OF THE

TEMPLE OF MEDINET ABOU.

During the Lower Empire the town or village of Medinet Abou was still inhabited, and upon the
introduction of Christianity the members of this Church converted one of the deserted courts of the
great Temple into a place for their own worship. The small columns which are seen in this view
once supported the rafters which were inserted into the ancient entablature. Under the shade thus
afforded the early Christians assembled, and continued until it was adopted into the Greek Church,
when the altar was placed against the wall at the east end facing the spectator, in a recess with
a semi-circular roof, built also out of the fragments of the heathen Temple. The ancient sculptures
with which the walls were covered they carefully plastered over with the mud of the Nile, to conceal
the idolatrous emblems of their pagan ancestors. To this circumstance we owe the preservation of
the sculptures and hieroglyphics which enriched the wall, from which the plaster has now been
removed.

There are small apartments at the back of this building which the Christian priests appropriated,
and houses of crude brick were erected on the ruins of the ancient village and within the precincts
of the Temple.

The size of the Church and the extent of the village prove its Christian population to have
been considerable, and shew that Thebes held a rank among the principal dioceses of the Coptic
Church. That it was the Church of a Greek see, and that the bishop resided here, there is little
doubt;—indeed, devices and inscriptions on the walls remove any. It has been conjectured that
this was Maximinianopolis, where the Christians had a large church until the period of the Arab
invasion. Wilkinson met with the name of a bishop of this diocese in the eastern desert; but
Pococke supposes this see to have been the modern Medamout, near Thebes.

With the inroad of the Arabs it is, however, certain that the Christians of Medinet Abou were
dispersed, and a period put to the existence there of a Christian Church. Its timid community
fled on the approach of the invaders to the neighbourhood of Esne, and their former dwellings
ceased to hold a place among the inhabited villages of Thebes.

Roberts's Journal. Wilkinson's Egypt and Thebes.