Vol.I - The Coptic Orthodox Church

CH. in.] Dair Abu-s-Sifain. 77
The church is an oblong building, roughly about
ninety feet long and fifty broad, but beset on the
north side with various irregular chapels. The
northern aisle is cut off from the body of the church,
and serves merely as a passage. Just inside the
doorway a space with a groined vaulting forms a sort
of porch, northwards of which a door opens to the
mandarah or guest-room, where worshippers meet
after the service, talk, smoke, and take coffee toge-
ther. Half of the guest-room is open to the sky,
half roofed by cloven palm-trunks, over which are
laid loose pieces of board, wattled palm-sticks, &c.
Round the walls are ranged some old benches : over-
head is the chapel of St. Mary of which hereafter.
It should be noticed that the guest-room lies outside
the shell of the church. In the porch itself is another
bench, and on the left the patriarchal throne, the high
chair of lattice-work found in all Coptic churches. A
little further on in the passage, still on the left, are
seen double doors of open woodwork and above
them a rude painting of an ancient anchorite. This
is Barsum al 'Arian, and these are the doors at the
head of a short steep staircase of stone by which
one descends to his shrine a small dark under-
ground chapel. The chamber, roughly
about ten
feet square, is vaulted and the walls cemented, but
the water oozes in when the Nile rises. There is
no ornament of any kind, not even a niche eastward
; the altar stands in the centre of the little
chapel ; it is of stone, but the altar-board is square
instead of oblong as usual. The priest told me
that Barsum lived 400 years ago, that he abandoned
great riches to become a hermit, and passed
eighteen years on the roof of Abu-'s-Sifain without