Coptic Cairo

A guided tour at "the hanging church"

A couple of weekends ago Leah and I went with three other teachers to Coptic Cairo, the christian part of town. As you can see it is quite the party spot. harhar. We rode quite comfortably in the womens' car of the subway. I really like the subway, but two factors have made the novelty of it quickly disappear: the continual, steadfast stares and the fact that it's always too crowded get a seat... Anyway, Coptic Cairo looks just like every other area of town, well, except the tops of buildings have crosses instead of moons.



The red "M" is the metro sign. Our destination was just outside the subway and across the street. It's pictured here, on the left side of the photo. Yeah, the building with all the white people streaming out of it.


Our first stop was the Al Moallaqa Church known as the hanging or suspended church.

Just inside this large, stone archway is a small courtyard leading to the entrance of the church. Several mosiacs surround the tourists, the colored tiles shimmering in the bright, afternoon sun.

First, this was the sight of a roman temple, then a roman church, and finally a coptic church. Carbon dating shows wood from the church dates back to 140-150 B.C. But some historians believe it to be even older because of the pre-christian wall frescos of roman pagan gods.

The "hanging church" was built on top of a roman fortress. Wood from palm trees and a layer of stones serve as the foundation on top of the roman fortress that it was built on top of. The church's nickname becomes most poinent when visitors discover the two small sections of glass floor used to freak out tourists who peer down into the empty cave-like rooms below. In 1984 they discovered an additioinal small room under the tiles of the east end of the church which they believe was used as a catacomb and had a stairway leading to the mountain during the time of persecution of the church.



Unfortunately, it was quite dark and no flash could be used inside the building, so these photos are blurry.... but hopefully you get an idea of what it is like. You can really tell from this photo how badly the building is in need of rennovation. They've been working on restoring it for several years.

The icons were beautiful, but my favorite part of the church was the delicate, intricately carved wall-sized panels made of walnut and cedar wood, inlaid with ebony and ivory. They're dated from about the 10th century.

After the hanging church, we walked a couple of blocks to another nearby church.
The call to prayer sounded out, longer since it was the weekend, and much louder than the one near our home (each mosque sounds different) but this seemed somehow appropriate considering where we were.

This church was much larger and had well-kept, green grounds to walk around, including a cemetary with many old family tombs - some of which are in pretty bad shape and look as if people had broken into them to find a place to sleep.
The groundskeeper had his laundry hung out on a line tied around a headstone.

At the back of the grounds is a small chapel built on the sight of the Holy Family's Egyptian home. Mary, Joseph and Jesus lived in Egypt for four years in exile. It's pretty amazing to think about how old and loaded with meaning all this stuff is...

Well, that concludes our tour of Coptic Cairo.

Tune in next week for vacationing in Hurghada.

Ramadan is soon coming to an end and the feast celebrating this, The Eid, gives us a school holiday, and Leah and I the opportunity to escape to the Red Sea for a few days. We found an incredible deal through a friend, and some diving lessons might even be included! We'll ride the sleeper train to Aswan where, if we're lucky, we'll arrive in time for a rare occurance. Oct and Feb 23rd, twice a year, the sun sets, lighting up ancient sculptures inside the back tomb of a temple.
Sounds very "Indiana Jonesish", huh?