Vol.I - The Coptic Orthodox Church

CH. vii.] Desert Monasteries. 297
Makcir, as the natives call it, enclose one principal
and one or two smaller courtyards, around which
stand the cells of the monks, domestic buildings such
as the mill-room, the oven 1
, the refectory and the like,
and the churches. The mill-room, where they grind
their corn, is a square building, roofed with a large
dome :
the mill-stones are driven by cogs worked by
an ox or a donkey, and the flour, though very coarse
with the husk unsifted, makes a wholesome bread,
when baked as is the fashion in small round cakes.
The refectory is a long, narrow, vaulted chamber, with
a low stone bench or rather shallow trough running
down the middle : the monks sit on either side the
bench, while one of their number reads a portion of
1
Tischendorff, who visited these monasteries, is not more satis-
factory than Sir G. Wilkinson or other writers. He tells us a great
deal about the nitre, very little about the churches, and that little
mostly wrong. Here, for instance, he speaks of an '
oven behind
the sacristy' as being one of the peculiarities of arrangement which
struck him most ;
a remark upon which Neale, with his usual inac-
'
founds a statement to the effect that in some part of the
curacy,
Coptic church, especially in the Desert of Cells' a small
(sic),
'
building with an oven is attached to the east end of the sanctuary:'
as if sanctuary and sacristy were the same thing (Eastern Church,
Gen. Introd. vol. i. p. 190). As a matter of fact the place of the
sacristy in these churches is quite indeterminate, and so is the
place of the oven. Similarly Tischendorff speaks of a 'grotto
chapel '
at Dair-as-Suriani which certainly does not exist ; and calls
Anba Bishoi by the
'
odd compound St Ambeschun.' Of other
travellers, Russegger mentions two monasteries called '
Labiat '
and '
U-Serian '
(!) : Andrdossi gives the names Amba Bischay and
El Baramus : Sicard mentions four, and has the names nearly right.
See Travels in the East, by C. Tischendorff, tr. by W. E. Shuckard,
London, 1847, pp. 45, 46.
I have been at some pains to ascertain the names of the monasteries
correctly; and the names as given in the text may be taken as accu-
rate and final.