The Monastery of the Holy Virgin of Anba Bishoi in Sketis (nowadays known as Wadi al-Natrun, Egypt) was founded in the early sixth century. In the seventh century, a church was built that was decorated with artistically and iconographically important wall paintings. Probably at the end of the eighth century a group of Syriac monks from the region of Tikrit joined this Coptic community. It meant the beginning of a process of cultural interaction between Syriac Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox Christianity that would continue over the following five centuries and lead to the introduction of the unofficial name of the monastery as Dayr al-Suryan, under which it became renowned for its library. Not only this library became a testimony of the important position of the monastery as a centre of learning and culture, the church, dedicated to the Holy Virgin, also illustrates this in the mural paintings, stucco decoration, and woodwork that were produced during the period of Egyptian/Syriac cohabitation. The early tenth-century abbot Moses of Nisibis played a crucial role in the development of the monastery. The chapter gives an overview of this rich heritage and the gradual rediscovery of the paintings and text in the church of the Holy Virgin over the last twenty-five years.

Egypt has an abundance of well-preserved monastic settlements. The mudbrick structures provide ample evidence for examining domestic spaces associated with the daily household activities of food preparation through the acts of cooking, frying, and baking. While monastic literature presents a portrait of food scarcity in monastic communities, the archaeological evidence of kitchens and cooking spaces creates a more dynamic story of how monks interacted with ingredients, prepared meals, and considered the economy of space in designing areas for food preparation. The monastic movement required new habitations and ones in new locations to be set apart from the traditional and biological households. The importance of consumption habits within the family setting played a role in reinforcing one’s identity in a monastery or in a non-monastic family. The numerous examples of preserved monastic kitchens offer substantial evidence for a robust analysis that combines the theoretical models of household archaeology and spatial configuration to consider how monastic builders addressed the specific needs for food production within a homosocial community. The advent of new monastic settlements in late antique Egypt provides a unique opportunity to observe the evolution of cooking within an archaeological context.