Byzantine Egypt
Egypt’s dry climate has preserved a range and abundance of
architecture, sculpture, artefacts and texts unparalleled in other
parts of the Byzantine world. The survival of large numbers of
documents, such as contracts, petitions, tax receipts and letters,
provide insight into everyday experiences of elites and non-elites,
men and women.
The British Museum collection reveals aspects of the visual,
social, religious, administrative and economic lives of Egypt’s
inhabitants at the time when they became predominantly
Christian.
In the course of the fourth and fifth centuries AD, Christians
transformed the architectural landscape of pharaonic Egypt by
building monumental churches, martyrs’ shrines and monasteries,
often converting ancient temples, shrines and tombs for new
purposes. Pilgrims from around the empire flocked to Egypt to visit
sites mentioned in the Bible or associated with
saints. Coptic, the Egyptian language written in a modified
Greek script, flourished as a vehicle to translate the Bible and,
later, to compose an original Egyptian Christian literature.
At the same time, individuals and communities continued to
engage in many traditional Egyptian and Hellenistic practices. The
elite dead were buried in mummiform, swathed in textiles decorated
with motifs from classical mythology. Greek literature (for
example, Homer and Menander) continued to be copied and read, and
Greek poetry and philosophy flourished into the sixth century.
The Persian occupation (AD 619) and, later, the Arab conquest of
Egypt (AD 642) increasingly isolated the province from the rest of
the Byzantine Empire. From the ninth century Arabic began to
replace Coptic and Christians increasingly converted to Islam.
Today Egypt is home to a sizable Christian population known as
Copts, a term deriving from the Arabic transliteration of the Greek
word for Egyptian (Aigyptios).
Image caption: Wall painting of the
martyrdom of saints
From a building at the Coptic town of Wadi Sarga, Egypt. Coptic
period, 6th century AD