al-Qasr wa as-Sayyad () is a village in

Nag Hammadi Nag Hammadi ( ; ) is a city and Markaz (administrative division), markaz in Upper Egypt. It is located on the west bank of the Nile in the Qena Governorate, about north-west of Luxor. The city had a population of close to 61,737 . History ...

district of

Qena Governorate Qena () is one of the governorates of Egypt. It is in Upper Egypt, the southern part of the country. It covers a stretch of the Nile valley. Its capital is the city of Qena. Overview The rate of poverty is more than 60% in this governorate but ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

. An early center of

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...

in the

Thebaid The Thebaid or Thebais (, ''Thēbaïs'') was a region in ancient Egypt, comprising the 13 southernmost nome (Egypt), nomes of Upper Egypt, from Abydos, Egypt, Abydos to Aswan. Pharaonic history The Thebaid acquired its name from its proximit ...

Roman Egypt Roman Egypt was an imperial province of the Roman Empire from 30 BC to AD 642. The province encompassed most of modern-day Egypt except for the Sinai. It was bordered by the provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica to the west and Judaea, ...

, a site frequented by

Desert Fathers The Desert Fathers were early Christian hermits and ascetics, who lived primarily in the Wadi El Natrun, then known as ''Skete'', in Roman Egypt, beginning around the Christianity in the ante-Nicene period, third century. The ''Sayings of the Dese ...

from the 3rd century and the site of a monastery from the 4th, it was earlier known as Chenoboskion (

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

"geese pasture"), also called Chenoboscium , Chenoboskia (, ) and Sheneset ('','' ). Wilkinson, John Gardner, Sir The

Nag Hammadi library The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the Chenoboskion Manuscripts and the Gnostic Gospels) is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. Thirteen leather-bound papyrus c ...

, a collection of 2nd-century

Gnostic texts Gnosticism used a number of religious texts that are preserved, in part or whole, in ancient manuscripts, or lost but mentioned critically in Patristic writings. There is significant scholarly debate around what Gnosticism is, and therefore what ...

discovered in 1945, was found at

Jabal al-Ṭārif Jabal al-Ṭārif is an archaeological site in the cliffs along the Nile, located in Egypt's Qena Governorate (before 2013 in the Red Sea Governorate), about 5 km north of Nag Hammadi, and about the same distance west of Hamrah Dawm. It is th ...

in the Nile cliffs to the north-west.

History

At Chenoboskion, St Pachomius was converted to Christianity in the 4th century. Pachomius retreated to this place, having ceased his military activity sometime around 310-315 (the approximate figure given is 314), and converted to Christianity whilst dwelling in the desert. There is a

monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of Monasticism, monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in Cenobitic monasticism, communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a ...

located at Chenoboskion that is dedicated to St Pachomius. People moved to the region to be near Saint

Anthony the Great Anthony the Great (; ; ; ; – 17 January 356) was a Christian monk from Egypt, revered since his death as a saint. He is distinguished from other saints named Anthony, such as , by various epithets: , , , , , and . For his importance among t ...

. A monastic community formed around the saint for the purpose of spiritual guidance, beginning in Pispir and from there moving eastward. The mountainous area east of Pispir is the place of the present

Monastery of Saint Anthony The Monastery of Saint Anthony is a Coptic Orthodox monastery standing in an oasis in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, in the northern part of the Red Sea Governorate close to the border with the Suez Governorate. Hidden deep in the Red Sea Mountai ...

. The settlement of Chenoboskion created from this eastward movement began in the

.good brother Matthais W.Wahb
stmarystlouis.bizland.com web-site
his references originally from the San Francisco Coptic Orthodox church of St Antonio etrieved 2011-09-25/ref>

History

See also

References

Further reading