By the mid-sixth century the pilgrimage center of St Menas had grown into a miniature city in extent, in its use of elements of urban planning and public architecture, and in the locations of distinct populations. There was a semi-circular courtyard on the south side of the crypt church for incubation (the practice of sleeping in proximity to a sacred place or relics in order to effect a cure). On the north and the east sides arranged around rectangular courtyards were buildings to house those working at the site. Another church, known as the Northern Basilica, has been interpreted as serving an anti-Chalcedonian community, in contrast to the Chalce-donians elsewhere at the site (Grossmann 1998b: 295). A small monastic settlement seems to have been located at the eastern edge of the city near another church. North of the great church complex were more ecclesiastical and administrative buildings lodgings for travelers (xenodocheia), public baths, and a colonnaded, processional street leading to a multi-use area consisting of residences, tombs of those able to arrange burial near the saint, and installations for light industry, such as wine presses and the pottery workshops that produced the clay flasks (ampullae) that pilgrims
Image not available in this electronic edition
Figure 45.8 Pilgrimage center of St Menas (Abu Mina), overall plan, mid-sixth century. After Grossmann: 1998. Copyright Dr Ludwig Reichert Verlag Wiesbaden.
Acquired as special souvenirs and which contained oil or water sanctified by proximity to or contact with the remains of the saint.
Menas flasks are impressed on one side with the image of the saint, identified by inscription as ‘‘Holy Menas’’ and represented standing with his arms raised in prayer between two kneeling camels. The scene, a visual reference to the episode in one of the saint’s legends when camels bearing his body refused to travel any farther, having recognized his burial place, can be difficult to decipher on these humble artifacts. The image of Menas is more clearly delineated on a carved, round ivory box (pyxis) of the
Figure 45.9 Ivory pyxis with Saint Menas, sixth century. The British Museum, M&ME 1879,12-20, 1AN34975001; Trustees of the British Museum. (1449) .
Sixth century (figure 45.9), found in the early Christian Church of San Paolo Fuori le Mure in Rome, and now in the British Museum (Buckton 1994: 74). On one side Menas is shown after his martyrdom, in an apse-like place of honor, indicated by the columns flanking him and the arch they support, in turn flanked by kneeling camels; Menas is haloed and suitably dressed for a soldier from a wealthy family in a rich cloak (chlamys) with the square insignia indicating high rank (tablion). Two women approaching from the left, and two men from the right, converge on the scene; they, too, are richly dressed. On the other side is a rare depiction of Menas wearing only a loincloth at the moment before his martyrdom. Inexpensive clay flasks made in multiple batches and a singular expensive ivory box including portraits of commis-sioner(s) and probably meant as a votive offering give some idea of the wide range of society that undertook pilgrimages and the strong need all felt to commemorate both the act of pilgrimage and the goal (Frankfurter 1998a).
Abu Mina is just one, albeit the largest by far, of the many early Christian shrines near and in Alexandria commemorating prophets, apostles, martyrs and other saints. In the late fourth century the Virgin Mary revealed to the Patriarch Theophilus places visited by the Holy Family on the Flight into Egypt. Theophilus recorded all he saw and heard, and the Holy Family’s sojourn across northern Sinai to Pelusium, sites across the Delta down to the Roman fortress at Babylon (nowin Old Cairo), and other sites in Middle and Upper Egypt, became part of the network of pilgrimage routes across the Holy Land (Gabra 2001). Also in the late fourth-century, a nun now known as Egeria described sites in southern Sinai associated with the Old Testament, and particularly Exodus. She wrote of her experiences on the arduous trek and the holy sites she saw for her ‘‘sisters,’’ possibly fellow nuns, back at home. She visited places that stood as testimonies to Christian history. These were natural features of the landscape, such as the cave where the prophet Elijah took shelter and the bush that had burned with God’s presence, which she saw still thriving in a garden near a church. At these special places, she read appropriate scriptural passages and prayed with her guides and the local monks. Egeria mentioned only briefly the architecture at these places; interestingly, she decribed no buildings enclosing the loca sancta she visited. Nor does the architecture seem to have been commemorative in character or in the functions it served. In Egeria’s account, churches were visited so that she might benefit from a local monk-priest’s performance of a partial or full celebration of the Eucharistic liturgy.
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