Vol.I - The Coptic Orthodox Church

26 Ancient Coptic Churches. [CH. i.
structure lies in the fact that a Coptic church has
three chapels eastward, shut off either by a single
continuous screen or by three screens in the same
line, and requiring therefore a continuous choir.
The choir then in all cases extends the whole
breadth of the church, and is even drawn out
along the transepts, where such exist, as at Kadisah
Burbarah. There is a very curious arrangement
in some of the churches in the Natrun valley,
for example at Al 'Adra Dair-as-Suriani, where the
choir is entirely separated from the nave by a wall
reaching the whole height of the building, and open-
ing from the nave only by a central doorway fitted
with folding-doors. One may remark also that these
monastic churches have often low screens of solid
stone instead of the lofty lattice screens of the Cairo
buildings.
The choir-screen is sometimes, though not always,
adorned with a series of pictures ranged along the
top: the subjects are either sacred scenes or figures
of apostles and saints ; but it seems a fixed rule that
the central painting over the choir door should represent
the crucifixion. The analogy with the western
practice is the more obvious when we remember that
in later times at all events the rood was generally
a crucifix. It was before this door, in the Coptic as
in the Roman ritual, that processions made a station
while singing antiphons. A rood proper or cross of
wood is sometimes, though rarely, found on the choirscreen,
as in the chapel of St. Antony at Abu-'s-Sifain.
At Al'Adra Harat-ar-Rum, which has no choir-screen,
a large rood with pictures of Mary and John attached
rests upon a rood-beam fastened between the two
piers, which in the ordinary arrangement
would be