Vol.I - The Coptic Orthodox Church

62 Ancient Coptic Churches, [CH. n.
disused, and lies in pitch darkness ; it contains a few
decaying and worm-eaten paintings.
From the south end of the choir a door leads into
a long vaulted passage running east and west. At
the east end of the passage is a baptistery, with a
small font arranged in the usual fashion,
round cauldron-like stone basin sunk in a bench
i. e. a
of masonry. The whole passage is vaulted, but
the baptistery is lighted by a small, oblong, open
shaft of brickwork, quite thirty feet high. Three
old pictures, a small aumbry in the wall for oil
and incense, a bronze cross, and a gospel-stand, are
the only ornaments of this curious dim little recess.
The gospel -stand is a sort of high, four-legged,
oblong table ; it upon in the centre a small frame
is nailed, making a lidless box, in which the silver
gospel rests during the baptismal service ;
and round
the outer edge is another frame, set with prickets for
tapers to give light at the ceremony. Details vary
a little, but the gospel-stand as here described is as
much an appanage of the baptistery as the lectern
is of the choir in Coptic churches.
Outside the baptistery in the passage one may
notice a rather curious picture of St. John greeting
the child Christ, and then pass on into the light
to the church of the martyr Mari Banai, which lies
to the south of this passage, and is divided by it
from the main building. The arrangement is rather
like that of the chapels of St. John and St. James at
Abu-'s-Sifain : for there are really two chapels side
by side, each chapel consisting of three parts west,
middle, and east or haikal. Each of the west parts is
railed off for the women, and the two are divided
by an open screen ; the haikals are of course shut