Pbow was a
cenobitic
Cenobitic (or coenobitic) monasticism is a monastery, monastic tradition that stresses community life. Often in the West the community belongs to a religious order, and the life of the cenobitic monk is regulated by a Monastic rule, religious ru ...
monastery established by
St. Pachomius in 336-337 AD. Pbow is about north of
Luxor
Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt. Luxor had a population of 263,109 in 2020, with an area of approximately and is the capital of the Luxor Governorate. It is among the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited c ...
in modern
Upper Egypt
Upper Egypt ( ', shortened to , , locally: ) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the Nile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel North. It thus consists of the entire Nile River valley from Cairo south to Lake N ...
.
It was one of the nine
Pachomian monasteries.
Name
Pbow is a
Coptic name. The Arabic "Faw" in "Faw al-Qibli" ("South Faw") derives from the Coptic Pbow.
Other spellings include "Bau", "Pboou", and "Phbow".
History
Pbow was founded as an administrative center for Pachomius's monastery in 336–337. Although not much is known about the traditions of these monks, we do know that they would annually meet two times a year at Pbow. Catechumens would often be baptized at this monastery on Easter.
Pbow would also go on to become the residence of Pachomius prior to his death.
The center included the
Basilica
In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica (Greek Basiliké) was a large public building with multiple functions that was typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek Eas ...
of St. Pachomius. Pachomius died in Pbow in 347.
Very little is known about the history of Pbow after the 6th century AD. Around the time of the reign of
al-Hakim, Pbow was either destroyed by al-Hakim, or it was already ruined.
Archaeology
The first descriptions of Pbow by Western archaeologists were from
B.T.A. Evetts,
Alfred J. Butler,
Michel Jullien, and
Louis Massignon, around the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Louis-Théophile Lefort described Pbow in ''Les premiers monastères Pachômiens'', published 1939.
Pbow was somewhat recently discovered buried underneath two newer churches in 1989. According to William Harmless, it was about twenty-four meters wide and forty-one meters long. This church included a section known as an apse, presumably meant for meetings of monks from affiliated monasteries.
Outside communal buildings for monks were further discovered on the grounds of the once standing monastery.
Peter Grossmann has been a primary investigator of the archaeology of Pbow, starting in the 1970s. According to Grossmann, three different primary churches were built at Pbow over time, superimposed one over the other.
References
Further reading
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External links
Images of Pbow remains at modern Fāw Qiblī
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pbow
Christian monasteries established in the 4th century
Archaeological sites in Egypt
Coptic Orthodox monasteries in Egypt
Pachomian monasteries
Buildings and structures in Sohag Governorate