Posted on

St. Anthony’s Find

Egypt’s Al Ahram is upgrading its site, so it’s redirecting to Google pages. Last week’s edition has a nice piece on “the world’s oldest monastery,” the Monastery of St. Anthony. It’s essentially a rehash of a story that’s a couple months old, but it does include some photos. Egypt’s had some real PR debacles recently — with the weird non-unveiling of Maimonides’ synagogue and the violence at Nag Hammadi. So we’ll probably keep hearing this good-news story again and again.

During restoration work, archaeologists stumbled upon what is believed to be the ruins of the original monks’ living cells dating from the fourth century. The ruins are now protected under a glass floor that leaves it visible to pilgrims.