¹ Palladius, , The Lausiac History, trans. Meyer, Robert T. (New York: Newman Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Historie Lausiaque: Vies d'ascètes et des pères du désert, ed. and trans. A. Lucot (Paris: Picard, 1912), 2.1; 16. 3. (Hereafter cited as HL). Quotes are from Meyer unless otherwise stated.

² Carion was a married father of two children when he felt the desire to join the monastic community in Scetis. His young son, Zacharias, joined him. Due to the boy's beauty, rumors began about the two, and they coped by moving south to Thebes. Witnessing the same tension, they returned to Scetis and the boy, in frustration, submerged his body in the natron lake so his skin would be damaged by the salt. The story states that his body was unrecognizable. His self-harm is lauded in the text as a testament to his faithfulness, and he is deemed angelic for his purity and decision to end the rumors. This action was deemed necessary because too many rumors circulated regarding the beauty of the boy and what could be taking place within the cell of Carion. As a leper, there would no longer be speculations about what was happening within the confines of the cell.

Carion 2 from the Apophthegmata Patrum. The Apophthegmata Patrum exists in three collections: the alphabetical, the systematic, and the anonymous. (Hereafter the Alphabetical sayings will be cited as AP, followed by the monastic and the saying number, such as AP Moses 6.) All references follow Ward, Benedicta, trans., Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection (London: A. R. Mowbray and Co., 1975)Google Scholar. For the anonymous tradition, I follow Ward, Benedicta, trans., The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers: Apophthegmata Patrum from the Anonymous Series (Oxford: SLG Press, 1975)Google Scholar. Hereafter the Anonymous collection will be cited by N, followed by the saying's number found in the Greek Anonymous collection published in a series by, Nau, F., ed., “Histoire des solitaires égyptiens,” Revue d'Orient Chrétien 10 (1905): 409–14Google Scholar; 12 (1907): 48–68, 171–181, 393–404; 13 (1908): 47–57, 266–83; 14 (1909): 357–79; 17 (1912): 204–11, 294–301; 18 (1913): 137–46.

³ Wilfong, Terry, “‘Friendship and Physical Desire’: The Discourse of Female Homoeroticism in Fifth Century c.e. Egypt,” in Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World, ed. Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin and Auanger, Lisa (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2002), 304–29Google Scholar; Vivian, Tim, “Everything Made by God is Good: A Letter Concerning Sexuality from Saint Athanasius to the Monk Amoun,” Èglise et théologie 24 (1993): 75–108Google Scholar.

⁴ Moschos, John, Spiritual Meadow, 71. Moschos, The Spiritual Meadow, trans. Wortley, John (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1992)Google Scholar.

⁵ HL 16.1–6.

⁶ AP Moses 6.

⁷ A colloquium was organized by Victor Ghica in January 2009 entitled, “Ermitages d'Égypte au premier millénaire,” and held at the Institut français d'archéologie orientale in Cairo. At the sessions, several archaeologists working on monastic habitation discussed how to identify monastic spaces and how we might consider the function of particular spaces as monastic or not. The colloquium was the first conference of its kind dedicated exclusively to monastic archaeology in Egypt. A volume of the papers presented is forthcoming.

⁸ For an introduction to the range of artifactual evidence of monastic habitation in light of early monasticism, see Brooks Hedstrom, Darlene L., “Redrawing a Portrait of Egyptian Monasticism,” in Medieval Monks and Their World, Ideas and Realities: Studies in Honor of Richard Sullivan, eds. Blanks, David, Frassetto, Michael, and Livingstone, Amy, 11–34 (Leiden: Brill, 2006)Google Scholar. The article surveys some of the early archaeological evidence from the last fifteen years, although most sites have little material that may be firmly dated to the fifth century or earlier. An additional discussion of the limitations of the dichotomous forms of monasticism as either following Pachomius or Antony is found in Brooks Hedstrom, D., “Divine Architects: Designing the Monastic Dwelling Place,” in Egypt in the Byzantine World, ed. Bagnall, Roger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 385Google Scholar.

⁹ For the purposes of this discussion, I will utilize artifactual evidence from physical monastic space in the broadest sense. A wide array of monastic archaeological evidence is preserved in Egypt for examination, however, the bulk of the remains postdate the life of Antony and his contemporaries of the Delta, the Desert Fathers. Additionally, documentary evidence provides some assistance in developing a thicker description of the cell and how early monastics may have regarded the cell. While it is tempting to correlate extant physical remains as artifactual testaments of early monasticism, the material dates a century or two after the authorship periods of the literature under review here. The value of the cell in early Egyptian monastic literature points to the rhetorical devices employed to remind the community of the need to use the cell as a confining metaphor in the greater embodiment of ascetic living. The discussion that follows, therefore, rests exclusively within the realm of spatial discourse of monastic authors who shaped a particular view of the cell. I am currently examining the physical remains in a separate study that will bring together the archaeological evidence with sixth, seventh, and eighth century documentary evidence. This study will demonstrate that some of the same themes of sacrality of place and space were embedded into the physical cells of the monks.

¹⁰ Foucault, Michel, The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, vol. 3 (New York: Vintage, 1986), 54–65Google Scholar. For specific applications of Foucault's thought within a Christian and monastic setting, see Humphries, Michael L., “Michel Foucault on Writing and the Self in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and Confessions of St. Augustine,” Arethusa 30.1 (1997): 125–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kobet, Paul R., “Athanasius, the Psalms, and the Reformation of the Self,” Harvard Theological Review 99.1 (2006): 85–101Google Scholar; Hadot, Pierre, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Chase, Michael (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995)Google Scholar. The most recent and effective application of Foucault for Egyptian monasticism is Schroeder, Caroline, Monastic Bodies: Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Brown, Peter, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 91–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage, 1977), 200–209Google Scholar.

¹³ Knott, Kim, “Spatial Theory and the Study of Religion,” Religion Compass 2.6 (2008): 1102–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ Ibid., 78.

¹⁶ For Bourdieu the “habitus is the product of the work of inculcation and appropriation necessary in order for those products of collective history, the objective structures … to succeed in reproducing themselves more or less completely, in the form of durable dispositions, in organisms (which one can, if one wishes, call individuals) lastingly subjected to the same conditions of existence.” Ibid., 85.

¹⁷ Bourdieu, Pierre, “Habitus,” in Habitus: A Sense of Place, ed. Hillier, Jean and Rooksby, Emma, 2nd ed. (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005), 45Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Giddens, Anthony, The Construction of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuralism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ For an archaeological examination of the importance of the monastic dwelling as a cell, see Brooks Hedstrom, Divine Architects, 368–89. For an analysis of the art historical evidence of heaven, see Bolman, Elizabeth, “Depicting the kingdom of heaven: paintings and monastic practice in late antique Egypt,” in Egypt in the Byzantine World, 300–700, ed. Bagnall, Roger, 408–36 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Space and place have very distinct meanings for Lefebvre, and I adopt those definitions as explained above. Lefebvre further explains that space “implies, contains and dissimulates social relationships—and this despite the fact that a space is not a thing but rather a set of relations between things (objects and products).” For Lefebvre, space needs to be examined not as a thing itself but as the area in which social relationships are embedded. He seeks to ask the question of how one space is differentiated from another, concluding that spaces are determined by how they are used, perceived, acted up, and maintained by those within the spaces. Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 82–83Google Scholar.

²¹ Bachelard, Gaston, The Poetics of Space (New York: Onion Press, 1964), 6Google Scholar.

²² For descriptions of the itinerant monks and travelers, see Caner, Daniel, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Dietz, Maribel, Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims: Ascetic Travel in the Mediterranean World, a.d. 300–800 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

²³ For a detailed discussion of the way in which practices shape Bourdieu's sociology of the built environment, see Gebauer, Gunter, “Habitus, Intentionality, and Social Rules: A Controversy between Searle and Bourdieu,” SubStance 93 (2000): 68–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Ibid., 75.

²⁵ Adler, Judith, “Cultivating Wilderness: Environmentalism and Legacies of Early Christian Asceticism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 48 (2006): 4–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²⁸ Patrich, Joseph, “Monastic Landscapes,” in Recent Research on the Late Antique Countryside, ed. Bowden, W., Lavan, L. and Machado, C. (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 413–46Google Scholar.

²⁹ Hippolyte Delehaye was extremely skeptical of using hagiographic material for writing history. See his caveats for this body of literature in The Legends of the Saints, trans. Donald Attwater (New York: Fordham University Press, 1962), 170–86. For more recent assessments of the methodological concerns needed in reading biographies and hagiography, see Coon, Lynda, Sacred Fiction: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Heffernan, Thomas J., Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographies in the Middle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Patlagean, Evelyne, “Ancient Byzantine Hagiography and Social History,” in Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History, ed. Wilson, Stephen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 101–21Google Scholar; Krueger, Derek, Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lifschitz, Felice, “Beyond positivism and genre: ‘hagiographical’ texts as historical narrative,” Viator 25 (1994): 95–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ My theoretical applications are shaped, therefore by cognitive archaeology, which seeks to identify physical markers of religious acts within the archaeological record. For this discussion, I interpret the literary and hagiographical material as the self-constructed view of the cell as one part of the monastic discourse of space. I do not believe monastics actually practiced asceticism as expressed in the ascetic literature, as the ideas found in these texts reflect ideals or desires to which monks could or should aspire. A similar argument for the recognition of ritual behaviors within the physical remains is espoused by cognitive archaeologists such as Renfrew, Colin, “The Archaeology of Religion,” in The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology, ed. Renfrew, Colin and Zubrow, Ezra B. W. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 47–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ Derek Kreuger expresses the codification of ideals as the way in which authors “inscribed themselves into their writing at the edges of their narratives” and writing through the lens of their own asceticism. Kreuger, , “Hagiography as an Ascetic Practice in the Early Christian East,” The Journal of Religion 79.2 (1999): 218Google Scholar.

³² Tweed, Thomas A., Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 61–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ For a discussion of the use of the founders for establishing the authority or credibility of a saying, see discussion by Gould, Graham, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community, Oxford Early Christian Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burton-Christie, Doug, Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. For a recent assessment of the historicity and the difficulties of interpreting the Sayings see Brakke, David, Demons and the Making of the Monk (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 145–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ The Lives of the Desert Fathers: The Historia Monachorum in Aegypto, trans. Norman Russell (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980). (Hereafter cited as HM).

³⁵ Cassian, John, The Conferences, trans. and annotated Ramsey, Boniface (New York: Paulist, 1997), 43Google Scholar; The Institutes, trans. Gibson, Edgar C. S., in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Schaff, Philip and Wace, Henry, 201–90 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1964)Google Scholar. (Hereafter cited as Inst.) Stewart, Columba, Cassian the Monk (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

³⁶ This discussion is not intended to assess the authenticity of these ideas in the lived experience, as the textual and archaeological material for the fourth century is unfortunately very sparse. Once we move into the fifth and sixth centuries, greater evidence is available in terms of documentary evidence (including dipinti, inscriptions, papyri, and so on) and material remains (as addressed below) for tracing the threads of sacrality present in the early literary traditions.

³⁷ Athanasius of Alexandria, Vie d'Antoine, ed. and trans. Bartelink, G. J. M. (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1994)Google Scholar. The Life of Antony, trans. Tim Vivian and Apostolos N. Athanassakis (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Press, 2003). I quote from Vivan and Athanassakis unless otherwise stated (hereafter cited as VA). For the Sahidic Coptic life see The Coptic Life of Antony, trans. Tim Vivian (San Francisco: International Scholars Publication, 1995).

³⁸ See the discussions of the Life of Antony in three chapters by Averil Cameron, “Form and Meaning: The Vita Constantini and the Vita Antonii,” 72–89; Philip Rousseau, “Antony as Teacher in the Greek Life,” 89–110; and Rubenson, Samuel, “Philosophy and Simplicity: The Problem of Classical Education in Early Christian Biography,” 110–40 in Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity, ed. Hägg, Tomas and Rousseau, Philip (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

³⁹ Iamblichus, , “Life of Pythagoras,” in The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, trans. Guthrie, Kenneth (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Phanes, 1987)Google Scholar. (Hereafter cited as Vit. Pyth.) Urbano, Arthur Jr., “‘Read it Also to the Gentiles’: The Displacement and Recasting of the Philosopher in the Vita Antonii,” Church History 77:4 (2008): 877–914CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rubenson, Samuel, “Antony and Pythagoras: A Reappraisal of the Appropriation of Classical Biography in Athanasius' Vita Antonii,” in Beyond Reception: Mutual Influences between Antique Religion, Judaism, and Early Christianity, ed. Brakke, David, Jacobsen, Anders-Christian, and Ulrich, Jörg (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2006), 191–208Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ In Rubenson's analysis, the Life of Antony is an anti-Pythagorean treatise. Fifteen points of comparison throughout the lives of Pythagoras and Antony illustrate Rubenson's assertion that “It is not merely a question of borrowing passages and images, but an entire understanding of what belongs to the development of a holy man” (“Antony and Pythagoras,” 205).

⁴¹ Seven letters, originally written in Coptic, penned by the theologically trained Antony, provide a stark contrast to the mythologized peasant-turned-Christian-monastic-philosopher. See Rubenson, Samuel, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995)Google Scholar. The seven letters also demonstrate that Antony was versed in some Neo-Platonic thought and that Origenist ideas were not a later introduction to Egypt but were evident in the writings of one of the first monastic practitioners.

⁴² For commentary on Athanasius's use of the Life of Antony as a political work to defend his teachings, see Brakke, David, Athanasius and Asceticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1998)Google Scholar. His final chapter, “The Spirituality and Politics of the Life of Antony,” thoroughly explores the issues surrounding Athanasius's adoption of Antony as a typos of the ideal monk and orthodox believer.

⁴³ Vit. Pyth, 16.

⁴⁴ Brooks Hedstrom, Divine Architects, 384. The performative nature of rituals and religious actions is explored in Bell, Catherine, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 72–76Google Scholar; Brown, Gavin, “Theorizing Ritual as Performance: Explorations of Ritual Indeterminacy,” Journal of Ritual Studies 17.1 (2003): 3–18Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Durkheim, Émile, Elementary Forms Of The Religious Life, trans. Fields, Karen E., (New York: Free Press, 1995), 312Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 313–18.

⁴⁸ van Gennep, Arnold, The Rites of Passage (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Turner, Victor, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man,” 90.

⁵⁰ VA 8.

⁵¹ VA 41.

⁵² VA 8. A general study of the use of the desert for spiritual encounters is Lane, Belden, The Solace of Fierce Landscape: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Lane, , “Desert Catechesis: The Landscape, and Theology of Early Christian Monasticism,” Anglican Theological Review 75 (1993): 292–314Google Scholar.

⁵³ Brakke, Demons, 32.

⁵⁴ Frankfurter, David, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Brakke, Demons, 216–26. Brakke's discussion examines the ways in which monks appropriated legitimacy through their occupation of temples—the realms of demons as manifestations of the ancient pagan deities. He is careful to note that the reactivation of cult centers as part of a Christian landscape was not necessarily by force; he writes that the temples “fell into neglect and abandonment, and perhaps much later were devoted to a new use, whether as a church or a monastic dwelling” (218). See also Brakke, , “From Temple to Cell, from Gods to Demons: Pagan Temples in the Monastic Topography of Fourth-Century Egypt,” in From Temple to Church: Destruction and Renewal of Local Cultic Topography in Late Antiquity, ed. Hahn, Johannes, Emmel, Stephen, and Gotter, Ulrich (Leiden: Brill, 2008)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ VA 14.

⁵⁷ Coptic VA 14.

⁵⁸ Frank, Georgia examines the trope of luminosity as an indicator of ritualized sacredness in The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims of Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 94, 160–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In particular her discussion of the fourth-century text of the Apocalypse of Paul, written in an Egyptian setting, has several overt representations of the sacred body evinced by a shinning face. See also Miller, Patricia Cox, “Desert Asceticism and ‘The Body from Nowhere,’” Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994): 137–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁹ Brakke makes a similar observation, stating: “Athanasius self-consciously appropriate the language of paganism for the depiction of the ideal Christian” (Demons, 33).

⁶⁰ Rousselle, Aline, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988)Google Scholar; Barton, Tamsyn S., Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics and Medicine under the Roman Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶¹ VA 14.

⁶² VA 14. This citizenship motif is found in the letter to the Hebrews where Christians were identified as citizens who belonged to the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb. 12:22–23, cf. Phil. 3:20).

⁶³ VA 48.

⁶⁴ Incubation was a popular practice in the classical and late antique worlds whereby individuals would reside in sanctuaries or near them with the hope of obtaining a dream that would show the individual how to be healed. See Grossmann, Peter, “Late Antique Christian Incubation Centres in Egypt” in Salute e Guarigione nella Tarda Antichita, ed. Brandenburg, H., Heid, S., Markschies, C. (Vatican: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 2007), 125–40Google Scholar; Grossmann, , “The Pilgrimage Center of Abu Mina,” in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, ed. Frankfurter, David (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), 281–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hamilton, Mary, Incubation of the Cure of Disease in Pagan Temples and Christian Churches (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1906)Google Scholar; MacCoull, Leslie S. B., “Dreams, Visions and Incubation in Coptic Egypt,” Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 22 (1991): 123–28Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ VA 49.

⁶⁶ VA 53.

⁶⁷ A comparison of the proximity between late antique settlements in Middle Egypt and Pharaonic tombs would suggest tombs were only a minimum of .5–1.5 km from a village. In Upper Egypt, the banks of the Nile, the width of the flood plain, and then the rise of the desert cliffs would determine the variation in distance between settlements and the location of tombs. For a now outdated summary of the tombs, see Badawy, Alexander “Les Premiers Établissements Chrétiens dans les Anciennes Tombes d'Égypte,” Publications de l'Instiut d'études orientales de la bibliothèque patriarcale d'Alexandrie 2 (1953): 67–89Google Scholar, and figs. 1–24.

⁶⁸ The west bank of Thebes, for example, is now witnessing an active investigation of monastic reuse of Pharaonic monuments. The majority of the sites, however, post-date the monastic literature under examination here. A bibliography of current work until the 1990s is still Wilfong, Terry, “The Western Theban Area in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries,” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 26 (1989): 89–147Google Scholar. The recent archaeological work on monastic and Christian settlement is rapidly expanding. The following represent a selection only. For Deir el Bachit: Eichner, Von Ina and Fauerbach, Ulrike, “Die spätantike/koptische Klosteranlage Deir el-Bachit in Dra' Abu el-Naga (Oberägypten). Zweiter Vorbericht,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo 61 (2005): 139–52Google Scholar. For Deir el Medina: Gabolde, L., Le temple de Deir al-Médîna. Cairo: Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 2002Google Scholar; Monastery of Epiphanius: Thirard, Catherine, “Le Monastère d'Épiphane à Thèbes: Nouvelle interpretation chronologique,” Études Coptes IX (2006): 367–74Google Scholar; Gurnet Marai: Gascou, J., “Documents grecs de Qurnat Mar'y,” Bulletin de la Institut français d'archéologie orientale 99 (1999): 201–15Google Scholar; el Medîna, Deir: “Étude de la céramique du couvent de Saint Marc à Gournet Mar'ei, fouille de G. Castel, 1970–1971,” Bulletin de la Institut français d'archéologie orientale 105 (2005): 449Google Scholar. For Ramesseum: Lecuyot, Guy, “Le Ramesseum à l'époque copte à propos des traces chrétiennes au ramesseum,” Études Coptes VI (2000): 121–34Google Scholar; Sheikh abd el-Gurna Tomb 1152: Górecki, Tomasz, “Sheikh abd el-Gurna (Hermitage in Tomb 1152): Preliminary Report, 2005.” Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean XVII. Reports 2005 (2007): 263–72Google Scholar; Monastery of Kyriacus: Bács, Tamás, “The So-called ‘Monastery of Syriacus’ at Thebes,” Egyptian Archaeology 17 (2000): 34–36Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ The communities in Middle Egypt have not been systematically excavated or surveyed. Gertrud J. M. van Loon is currently undertaking a project to document the extant evidence of the monastic habitation at Deir Abu Hinnis and at Sheikh Said. For older documentation of the settlements, see Martin, Maurice, La laure de Der al Dik à Antinoé (Cairo: Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 1971)Google Scholar; Jones, Michael, “The Early Christian Sites at Tell El-Amarna and Sheikh Said,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 77 (1991): 129–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁰ I propose four main categories of monastic settlement: adaptive reuse of temples; adaptive reuse of tombs; adaption of natural caves; and purpose-built environments. The latter refers to those structures that are built entirely anew for monastic living and are not salvage constructions. Brooks Hedstrom, Divine Architects, 372–73.

⁷¹ Heurtel, Chantal, Les inscriptions coptes et grecques du temple d'Hathor à Deir al-Médîna (Cairo: Institut françaois d'archéologie orientale, 2004)Google Scholar.

⁷² Broze, Michèle, Les aventures d'Horus et Seth dans le Papyrus Chester Beatty (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters, 1996)Google Scholar; Sadek, Ashraf I., “Du désert des pharaons au désert des anachorètes,” Le Monde Copte 21–22 (1993): 5–11Google Scholar

⁷³ Sadek, “Du désert des pharaons,” 10.

⁷⁴ Hoffmeier, James K., Sacred in the Vocabulary of Ancient Egypt: The Term dsr, with Special Reference to Dynasties I–XX, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985)Google Scholar is dedicated to answering Morenz's call for a detailed investigation into the meaning of d = sr in Egyptian religious theology.

⁷⁵ Hoffmeier, Sacred, 87; Brovarski, , “The Doors of Heaven,” Orientalia 46 (1977): 107–14Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ “On Hermits and Desert Dwellers,” in Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook, ed. Vicent L. Wimbush, trans. Joseph P. Amar (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 72. A critical edition of the text is Beck, Edmund, trans., Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Sermones (Louvain: Secretariat du Corpus SCO, 1970)Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ Recent surveys of Egyptian wadis around the Theban Valley of the Queens and the Middle Egypt site of Abydos demonstrate that our knowledge of human occupation of caves by Christians will be significantly expanded. See Dawn McCormack, “The Search for Monastic Activity in the Upper Desert of the Abydos Region,” American Academy of Religion Meeting, presentation November 2007 in San Diego, Calif.; Pantalacci, Laure, “Travaux de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale en 2004–5: Ermitages de la montagne thébaine,” Bulletin de la Institut français d'archéologie orientale 105 (2005): 450–51Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Smith, Jonathan Z., To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 104Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Lukken, Gerard and Searle, Mark, Semiotics and Church Architecture: Applying the Semiotics of A. J. Greimas and the Paris School to the Analysis of Church Buildings (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1993), 75Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Poemen 96. Poemen's sayings make up the largest quantity of utterances attributed to a single monastic leader. See William Harmless, S. J., “Remembering Poemen Remembering: The Desert Fathers and the Spirituality of Memory,” Church History 69 (2000): 483–518CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸¹ Gould classifies the cell's main function as educative and argues against Philip Rousseau in maintaining the cell did not “function as a means of enforcing ‘privacy’ at all, either in an earlier or a later phase of monastic development” (Gould, Monastic Community, 156). In Gould's discussion of the relationship between building and maintaining monastic community and the desire to flee community, the cell is an intermediary space to which monks may retreat for further education, but the cell does not, in his reading, ever hold enough value to be regarded as the sole realm of monastic living.

⁸² AP Moses 6.

⁸³ Caroline Schroeder discusses the lack of sources on the importance of churches for ascetics. Her examination of the sources for the fourth to sixth centuries produces sources only by Shenoute, Paulinus of Nola, and two anonymous authors from the Pachomian order. See Schroeder, Monastic Bodies, 90–92, 118–25.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 91.

⁸⁵ Schroeder explicates Shenoute's teachings in which he equates the church building with the body “that houses both the spirit (God) and the flesh (its material construction)” (Ibid., 92). Within the architectural framing of the corporate body of the federation, Shenoute is able to assert the necessity of proper behavior and adherence to rules.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 106.

⁸⁷ N 204. The idea is further emphasized when Antony states that just as fish will die physically without water, so a monk without his cell will die spiritually. Antony 10.

⁸⁸ Inst. 15.

⁸⁹ HL 2.2. A partial fast here means that the monk did eat, but at irregular intervals, and then it was only a vegetarian diet with water. Several monks also adopted severe fasts in which they abstained from all food and water. For a full discussion of the history of early ascetic meals, see McGowan, Andrew, Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁰ Serinus 1.

⁹¹ Sisoses 27.

⁹² Silvanus 2.

⁹³ A regional analysis of Pharaonic and later Graeco-Roman Christian Thebes is found in the publication Sacred Space and Sacred Function in Ancient Thebes, ed. Peter F. Dorman and Betsy M. Bryan (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Cairo, 2007). Riggs, Cristina presents evidence of Roman cemeteries being syncretistic constructions that draw upon Greco-Roman ideals of mortuary design and the sacredness of the Egyptian tomb and its contents in The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ HL 49, 35 and HM 1.4.

⁹⁵ John the Little 27. Compare HL 19. 7–8. Some monks viewed standing in prayer as a more devout form of supplication as with Moses who refused to lie down or even bend his knees during prayer for six years while living in his cell.

⁹⁶ Poemen explains further that by sitting in the cell and remembering one's sins the Lord will come and offer help (Poemen 162).

⁹⁷ Evagrius 1. John of Lycopolis used prayer, hymns, and contemplation to maintain his visions of God (HM 1.45).

⁹⁸ Stewart, Columba, “Imageless Prayer and the Theological Vision of Evagrius Ponticus,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 9:2 (2001): 173–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Stewart examines the intellectual and theological shaping of Evagrius's ideas. He does not take this discussion into the realm of the locative consideration where place and prayer may interact for Evagrius.

⁹⁹ When one examines the physical residences of the monks in Egypt, such as those at Kellia, Bawit, and Esna, with their complex painted programs of saints, Christ enthroned, and mnemonic devices for prayer, one can appreciate Evagrius's words that one would truly see heaven if he stayed in his cell. Bolman, Elizabeth S., “Joining the Community of the Saints: Monastic Paintings and Ascetic Practice in Early Christian Egypt,” in Shaping Community: The Archaeology and Architecture of Monasticism, ed. McNally, Sheila (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2001), 41–56Google Scholar; Bolman, , “Mimesis, Metamorphosis and Representation in Coptic Monastic Cells,” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 35 (1998): 65–77Google Scholar, plates 1–7.

¹⁰⁰ Georgia Frank constructs the late antique pilgrim as one seeking to encounter “embodied sanctity” in “destinations conceived as people.” Frank, Memory of the Eyes, 81–101; Frank, , “Miracles, Monks and Monuments: The Historia Monachorum in Aegypto as Pilgrims' Tales,” in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, ed. Frankfurter, David (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 483–505CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰¹ Carruthers, Mary, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 225Google Scholar. Carruthers considers fully the use of architecture in the High Middle Ages in Europe as a mnemonic devise for allowing one to travel to holy places within one's imagination.

¹⁰² Inst. Pref. 3.

¹⁰³ Or 1.

¹⁰⁴ Daniel 5.

¹⁰⁵ Poemen 173, 298; Syncletica 112.

¹⁰⁶ Syncletica 19.

¹⁰⁷ Evagrius of Pontus, The Greek Ascetic Corpus, trans. Robert E. Sinkewicz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Casiday, A., Evagrius Ponticus (Longon: Routledge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁸ HL 23.2 states, “I had not disclosed this matter [his desire to leave the monastery] to my neighboring monks or to my teacher Evagrius.”

¹⁰⁹ HL 38.2.

¹¹⁰ HL 38.3 and Sozomen, EH 6.29.

¹¹¹ Several of the letters identified as from Evagrius's hand were to Melania, who had encouraged him to return to the ascetic life.

¹¹² HL 38.10.

¹¹³ Rodolphe Kasser noted at least 1,500 structures during his survey although only 900 of these appeared to be still structurally intact for possible excavation, Kellia: Topographie II (Genève: Georg, 1972).

¹¹⁴ Kasser, Rodolphe, Kellia 1965 I, (Genève: Georg, 1967), 13–19Google Scholar. The more densely populated areas are also later in date, sixth to eighth centuries.

¹¹⁵ Evagrius, , The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, trans. by Bamberger, John Eudes (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1981)Google Scholar. Praktikos 12, above, begins with a reference to the “noonday demon” who was a spirit of despondency that would strike monks at midday. On the noonday demon, see Arbesmann, Rudolph, “The ‘Demonium Meridianum’ and Greek Patristic Exegesis,” Traditio 14 (1958): 17–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹⁶ Brakke, Demons, 66.

¹¹⁷ Evagrius references the Life of Antony, although his interest is selective as Athanasius's account describes demons.

¹¹⁸ Praktikos 12.

¹¹⁹ Praktikos 28.

¹²⁰ Evagrius 1.

¹²¹ Bamberger, “Introduction,” in The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, xciii.

¹²² Ibid.

¹²³ Brakke classifies Evagrian akedia as a demonic desire to leave the cell (Demons, 66). Evagrius is likely criticizing the popularity of non-communal forms of monasticism, which would ascribe superiority to those who live alone and wander between temporary shelters and rely upon the hospitality of communal monasteries and churches.

¹²⁴ Brakke, Demons, 53; and Praktikos 86 and 89.

¹²⁵ Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 294.

¹²⁶ Evagrius, Praktikos 28.

¹²⁷ Evagrius, Chapters on Prayer, 113.

¹²⁸ Giddens, The Constitution of Society, 147.

¹²⁹ Sheridan, Mark, “The Development of the Interior Life in Certain Early Monastic Writings in Egypt,” in The Spirituality of Ancient Monasticism, ed. Starowicyski, Marek (Cracow: Tyniec, 1995), 96Google Scholar; Sheridan, , “Il mondo spiritual e intelleltvale del primo, monachesimo egiziano,” in L'Egitto Cristiano, ed. Camplani, A., 177–216 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1997)Google Scholar. Mark Sheridan underscores the value of Paul's texts when he states “they are precious testimony to what the monks themselves thought about spiritual goals, about the meaning of their life, and what they taught their disciples” (Sheridan, “Development of the Interior Life,” 96). The treatises of Paul can be read alongside the better-known works of Evagrius to consider monastic ideals of the first centuries of Egyptian monasticism. While scholars have suspected a writer in Middle Egypt would inherit fewer ideas from the intellectual traditions of Alexandria, Sheridan has argued convincingly that Paul was strongly influenced by the allegorical school of Alexandria despite his distance from this intellectual center.

¹³⁰ Paul of Tamma is not mentioned in any sources that were transmitted outside of Egypt: AP, Lausiac History, History of the Monks or the works of Cassian. Paul's memory and that of his disciple, Ezekiel, have been faithfully preserved in the liturgical service of the Coptic Church. In the liturgy the monks are mentioned during the Commemoration of the Saints, in which their names are preceded by Bishoi (Pishoi) and followed by the two Roman saints, Maximus, and Domitius, . See The Coptic Liturgy of St. Basil (Victorville, Calif.: St. John the Beloved Publishing House, 1992), 251–55Google Scholar.

¹³¹ Tito Orlandi, ed. and trans., Paolo di Tamma: Opere (Rome: C. I. M., 1988). Orlandi argues in Opere for an early fourth-century date for the texts attributed to Paul. His works are far fewer in comparison to those of Shenute (d. 466), the famous abbot of the White Monastery in Akhmim, whose Coptic texts were also not known outside of Egypt.

¹³² For a translation of On the Cell, see Vivian, Tim and Pearson, Birger, “Saint Paul of Tamma on the Monastic Cell (de Cella),” Hallel 23.2 (1998): 86–107Google Scholar. (Hereafter cited as On the Cell and reference is to the line numbers provided by Vivan and Pearson.) Paul's other works On Humility, On Poverty, Sitting in the Cell, and a letter are found in Vivian, Tim, “Saint Paul of Tamma: Four Works Concerning Monastic Spirituality,” Coptic Church Review 18:4 (1997): 105–16Google Scholar. (Hereafter these works cited by title and the line numbers provided in Vivan's 1997 translation.) Other possible texts written by Paul are discussed by Pezin, Michel in “Nouveau fragment copte concernant Paul de Tamma (P. Sorbonne inv. 2632),” in Christianisme d'Égypte, ed. Rosenstiehl, Jean-Marc (Louvain: Peeters, 1995), 15–20Google Scholar.

¹³³ On the Cell 1.

¹³⁴ Ibid., 36–37.

¹³⁵ Ibid., 39; 58; 72; 106.

¹³⁶ Sitting in Your Cell 108–11; 113; 115; 117.

¹³⁷ Ibid., 102–3.

¹³⁸ On the Cell 93.

¹³⁹ Ibid., 12; 13a.

¹⁴⁰ Ibid., 15.

¹⁴¹ On Humility 6.

¹⁴² On the Cell 2; 34.

¹⁴³ Ibid., 86; 89.

¹⁴⁴ This inversion is unexpected as one sees a plethora of churches in the fifth and sixth centuries, as attested in Grossmann's, Peter catalogue of sites Christliche Architektur in Ägypten (Leiden: Brill, 2002)Google Scholar. One might expect that given monastic resistance to ecclesiastical hegemony that an expression of resistance might be the elevation of the individual cell over that of the cell of the church.

¹⁴⁵ On the Cell 52–55.

¹⁴⁶ MacCoull, Leslie, “Paul of Tamma and the Monastic Priesthood,” Vigiliae Christianae 53.3 (1999): 316–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴⁷ On the Cell 43–45; 47–51.

¹⁴⁸ Ibid., 77.