Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 31 December 2021
dayr anba hadra, funerary stelae of
Lena Sophie Krastel Keywords: Archaeology; Aswan; Burial; Churches; Coptic Language; Dayr Anba Hadra; Epigraphy; Hadra of Aswan; Inscriptions; Monasteries; Monks; Prayers; Stele (Archaeology); Stonemasonry; Tombs.
The Corpus of Coptic Funerary Stelae and Their Research History dayr anba hadra is located on the west bank of the Nile opposite the ancient town of Syene (modern aswan) in Upper Egypt. It is situated about one kilometer inland from the riverbank on a sandstone plateau overlooking the so-called Wadi Saman. During surveys and excavations carried out on the site from the late nineteenth century onward, at least 145 Coptic funerary stelae1 or fragments thereof were found in the debris of the monastery (Figure 1) and its immediate surroundings.
Figure 1. Photograph of the monastic church taken by Ugo Monneret de Villard in 1924–1925 (Photo: Ugo Monneret de Villard, © Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, Rome, Fund Monneret de Villard, Inv. no. 65801).
© Claremont Graduate University 1 Lena Sophie Krastel, Funerary Stelae of Dayr Anba Hadra 31 December 2021 A first stela (Munier 1930–1931: no. 94) was copied by Pellegrino Matteucci (1877: 479) at the cemetery outside the monastery (see van Loon 2020). Some years later, in 1883, it was either found in Dayr Anba Hadra or purchased at the antiquities market in Aswan by Gaston Maspero (cf. Maspero 1883: 368–369; Maspero 1886: 91; Maspero 1887: 225–226). It was published by Urbain Bouriant (1884: no. 14) one year later.
Twenty-nine stelae (in 34 fragments; Figures 2a, 2b) were excavated by Jean Clédat in 1903 (Clédat 1903; Meurice 2014: 119), of which a total of 28 were published by Biondi (1907) and Clédat (1908). Only one fragment (Clédat 1903: 87, no. 28) remained unpublished.
(a) (b) Figure 2. Funerary stela of the blessed Aron found in the sanctuary of the church in 1903 (Photo: Jean Clédat, © Musée du Louvre, Département des antiquités égyptiennes, section copte,
E27427).
a) Photograph taken by Jean Clédat in 1903.
b) Clédat’s copy of the inscription (Clédat 1903: 89, no. 34).
Fragments of 107 funerary stelae2 were found by Ugo Monneret de Villard between 1924 and 1926 (Monneret de Villard 1927; Monneret de Villard 1928: 272–273) and were published by Munier (1930–1931). A still unpublished fragment uncovered by the Italian mission will be discussed by Michael Zellmann-Rohrer (in preparation).
Eight further fragments3 were found by the Dayr Anba Hadra Project of the German Archaeological Institute Cairo in 2016–2018 (Krastel, in preparation b).
More than 100 additional pieces from poorly documented excavations or the antiquities market can also presumably be added to this corpus. However, their circumstances of discovery are not known, and they are assigned to the monastery only for internal reasons, such as the formulary of their inscriptions or the material of the stelae.
Among such pieces assigned to Dayr Anba Hadra are, for instance, a funerary stela found by Ludwig Burckhardt in the “convent of St. Lawrence”4 in 1813 (Burckhardt 1819: 131–132; Munier 1930–1931: no. 39bis), some funerary stelae that were either found at the cemetery of Dayr Anba © Claremont Graduate University 2 Lena Sophie Krastel, Funerary Stelae of Dayr Anba Hadra 31 December 2021 Hadra (Figure 3) or purchased in Aswan by Gaston Maspero in the 1880s (Maspero 1883: 368; Maspero 1887: 225–226) and published by Urbain Bouriant (1884); and stelae coming from the antiquities market (e.g., Khalil 2019). Moreover, 40 still unpublished stelae or fragments thereof mentioned in the 1937 Journal d’entrée of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo are assigned to “St. Simeon.” As some of them seem to have a find number, it is not unlikely that they were found by Monneret de Villard and remained unpublished due to their small size or poor state of preservation.5 Most funerary stelae from Dayr Anba Hadra were brought to Cairo after their discovery. While Maspero’s stelae were transferred to the Greco-Roman Museum in Alexandria, the bulk of the remaining stelae were kept in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and were later sent to the coptic museum in Cairo, where they are stored today. Three funerary stelae found by Clédat were sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1910 (Inv. nos. mma 10.175.13, 10.175.14, and 10.175.17; Figure 4+6).
The current depository of some stelae is still unknown.
Although some funerary stelae from Dayr Anba Hadra had already been published by Giacomo Biondi (1907) and Jean Clédat (1908), the main corpus of stelae was published and analyzed for the first time by Henri Munier (1930–1931). In his article, Munier not only identified 178 Coptic stelae belonging to Dayr Anba Hadra, but also recognized the uniform formulary of their inscriptions, which he divided into three diachronically successive versions or redactions. This formulary has been further discussed by Martin Krause (1975: 76–82) and Jacques van der Vliet (2011: 187–197) in analyzing the formulary of Christian stelae from nubia. As a part of new investigations of the monastery by the Dayr Anba Hadra Project, initiated and financially supported by the German Archaeological Institute Cairo, its Coptic funerary stelae are being re-examined and documented at the Coptic Museum in Cairo (Krastel 2017; Krastel 2020: 176–179; Krastel, Olschok, and Richter forthcoming; Krastel, in preparation b).
Figure 3. The cemetery of Dayr Anba Hadra, view from southeast (Photo: Lena Krastel © Dayr Anba Hadra Project).
© Claremont Graduate University 3 Lena Sophie Krastel, Funerary Stelae of Dayr Anba Hadra 31 December 2021 Figure 4. Funerary stela of the monk Markos kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Inv. No. mma 10.175.17) (Photo: Andrea Achi, © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
Textträger: Material and Production All the stelae from Dayr Anba Hadra are made of local sandstone, which has a color spectrum ranging from reddish-brown to yellowish-brown to yellowish-white. They are rectangular or square in shape with one single exception: one stela (Munier 1930–1931: no. 101; Figure 5) has a rounded top. The fronts of these stelae are generally well smoothed (Figure 6a). Surface irregularities are commonly caused by weathering or later damage. Their backs (Figure 6b) and the larger parts of their sides usually show rough chisel marks, while the surfaces of the sides are smoothed only on the frontmost one or two centimeters (Figure 6c). This result corroborates the suggestion that these stelae were inserted into the superstructures of tombs, a procedure that is known from other Late Roman and Christian cemeteries in Egypt and Nubia, such as Terenouthis (Kom Abou Billou; see Hooper 1961: 1–3, pls. iiib, IVa) or faras (Griffith 1927: pl. liii.1). The stelae from Dayr Anba Hadra show hardly any decoration. They are decorated only with simple ornaments, different kinds of crosses, and occasionally a frame surrounding the inscription. © Claremont Graduate University 4 Lena Sophie Krastel, Funerary Stelae of Dayr Anba Hadra 31 December 2021 The use of local sandstone and the homogeneously used formulary of the funerary inscriptions of Dayr Anba Hadra seem to hint at local production of the stelae.
Since there is no evidence for a stonemason’s workshop in Dayr Anba Hadra itself, such a workshop must have existed in the surroundings of the monastery.
In such a stonemason’s workshop, the stelae were probably cut and smoothed and occasionally carved with fine structuring lines to facilitate the engraving of the inscription (Figure 4). In addition, some stelae indicate that letters were occasionally carved into the stone in a first step and carefully chiseled in a second step, while on other stelae it appears that the formulaic parts had been prefabricated before individual elements such as name, title, and date of death were added. After the engraving, the letters and crosses were usually painted in red to highlight the inscription. Most stelae were made for one person and contain only one inscription, but four stelae (Munier 1930–1931: nos. 71+93, 106, 112, 116+120) were engraved with two (Figure 7) or three (Figure 8) inscriptions, visually separated from each other, one for each male or female deceased. On only one stela (Munier 1930–1931: no. 106) do the two owners, the deacon Stratelates and his mother Charis, share the funerary inscription. Apart from Stratelates and Charis, who are related to each other and died in the same month, it remains unexplained why some of the deceased, who moreover died in different years, share a stela. This phenomenon is also common to stelae from other sites, for which preliminary explanations have been proposed (e.g., dayr apa jeremiah in Saqqara; see Wietheger 1992: 141–142).
Figure 5. Funerary stela of Kalole (Coptic Museum, Cairo, Inv. no. 7718) (Drawing: Isa Böhme, © German Archaeological Institute, Cairo).
© Claremont Graduate University 5 Lena Sophie Krastel, Funerary Stelae of Dayr Anba Hadra 31 December 2021 a) The stela’s smoothed front. b) The stela’s back, showing rough chisel marks as well as a reference to the registration in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo: Ass(ouan) 27.8.1905.
c) The stela’s sides.
Figure 6. Funerary stela of Chresaphios (Inv. no. mma 10.175.14) (Photos: Andrea Achi, © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
© Claremont Graduate University 6 Lena Sophie Krastel, Funerary Stelae of Dayr Anba Hadra 31 December 2021 Figure 7. Stela with two funerary inscriptions (Coptic Museum, Cairo, Inv. nos. 7780+9799) (Drawing: Isa Böhme, © German Archaeological Institute, Cairo).
© Claremont Graduate University 7 Lena Sophie Krastel, Funerary Stelae of Dayr Anba Hadra 31 December 2021 Figure 8. Funerary stela for three deceased (Coptic Museum, Cairo, Inv. no. 9651) (Drawing: Isa Böhme, © German Archaeological Institute, Cairo).
© Claremont Graduate University 8 Lena Sophie Krastel, Funerary Stelae of Dayr Anba Hadra 31 December 2021 Figure 9. A Coptic funerary stela reused as a threshold in the monastic church of Dayr Anba Hadra (Photo: Lena Krastel, © Dayr Anba Hadra Project).
Formulary and Content As mentioned above, most funerary stelae from Dayr Anba Hadra show a main formulary, which can be subdivided into three redactions. This standard formulary often gives an invocation to Jesus Christ before starting with the characteristic introductory formula ⲡⲉϩⲟⲟⲩ ⲙⲡⲣⲡⲙⲉⲉⲩⲉ “The day of remembrance.” The identification of the deceased is usually introduced by general attributes, such as ⲡⲙⲁⲕⲁⲣⲓⲟⲥ (μακάριος) “the blessed,” followed occasionally by monastic ranks like ⲥⲟⲛ “brother” or ⲉⲓⲱⲧ “father” before the deceased’s name is mentioned. A filiation or place of origin is only rarely attested. The formulary is frequently followed by the owner’s monastic and/or ecclesiastic titles. After an optional death formula, the date of death is mentioned in the first and oldest redaction according to day, month, and indiction year (Figures 4, 6a). While the second redaction adds an absolute date according to the diocletian Era (Figures 2a, 5, 7), the third © Claremont Graduate University 9 Lena Sophie Krastel, Funerary Stelae of Dayr Anba Hadra 31 December 2021 and youngest redaction also adds a prayer for the deceased’s soul at the end of the inscription (Figures 8).
In addition to this main formulary, further formularies are attested. Three of these resemble the monastery’s main formulary but add the word ⲛⲕⲟⲧⲕ “passing away” in the opening formula (Munier 1930–1931: nos. 138, 140, 166). Two other stelae (Munier 1930–1931: 114, 176) refer to a formulary that was especially common in Nubia, emphasizing the event of death in the introductory formula (see Krause 1975: 76–82; Mina 1942), while two further epitaphs seem to belong to the so-called Totenklage-type discussed by Maria Cramer (Cramer 1941: 33–34, no. 14 = Munier 1930–1931: no. 177; Zellmann-Rohrer, in preparation).
Persons Commemorated on the Stelae Most of the persons commemorated on the stelae from Dayr Anba Hadra are men, but some women are also attested, while children are not recorded in the epigraphic material of the monastery at all. It should be noted, however, that the funerary inscriptions merely note a date of death, and a reliable conclusion about the age of the deceased is therefore not possible.
While most of the men bear a monastic and/or ecclesiastic title, the women do not. They are, however, usually referred to as ⲥⲱⲛⲉ “sister” or ⲙⲁⲁⲩ “mother,” which can be interpreted either as an expression of kinship or a religious relationship.
ⲙⲟⲛⲁⲭⲟⲥ (μοναχός) “monk” is the most common title and is frequently attested in combination with an ecclesiastic title, such as ⲡⲣⲉⲥⲃⲩⲧⲉⲣⲟⲥ (πρεσβύτερος) “priest” or ⲇⲓⲁⲕⲱⲛ (διάκονος) “deacon.” In addition, some of the men bear the title ⲡⲓⲥⲧⲟⲥ (πιστός) pistos, which may denote novices or other persons holding a rank between laymen and monks (see Garel 2018: 250–253). High-ranking titles, to the contrary, are rare: two superiors of Dayr Anba Hadra (Munier 1930– 1931: nos. 116+120c, 176), called ⲡⲣⲟⲉⲥⲧⲟⲥ (προεστώς) proestos, as well as an ⲟⲓⲕⲟⲛⲟⲙⲟⲥ (οἰκονόμος) oikonomos of a church (Munier 1930–1931: no. 53) are attested. Among the funerary stelae assigned to the monastery, at least two bishops (ⲉⲡⲓⲥⲕⲟⲡⲟⲥ; ἐπίσκοπος) are also mentioned: Bishop Pousi of philae (Maspero 1883: 368–369, no. 5415; Bouriant 1884: no. 22; Hasitzka 1993: no. 789; Brunsch 1994: 24, A11806) and Bishop Tab […] (Munier 1930–1931: no. 145). Other persons, in contrast, do not bear any of the titles mentioned, but are occasionally referred to as ⲁⲛⲟⲩⲃⲁⲥ/ ⲁⲛⲟⲃⲁⲥ/ ⲁⲛⲱⲃⲁⲥ “Nubian,” a primarily ethnic term (see Munier 1930– 1931: nos. 7, 26, 28+170, 39bis, 49, 50, 127).
Dating of the Stelae Since the earliest stelae lack absolute dating, they can only be vaguely placed to the late seventh and eighth centuries, assuming the redactions follow each other chronologically. From the eighth century onward, these stelae are absolutely dated according to the Diocletian Era, starting with the year 716 CE (Munier 1930–1931: no. 53). All funerary stelae of the second redaction are dated to the eighth century, while the epitaphs showing the third redaction were mainly engraved in the ninth century. The latest stela from Dayr Anba Hadra was produced for Maria, daughter of Johannes, who died in December 990 CE (Munier 1930–1931: no. 117).
The tradition of erecting a funerary stela in Dayr Anba Hadra thus seems to end in the late tenth century CE. At that time, the monastery was still inhabited, as suggested by the secondary © Claremont Graduate University 10 Lena Sophie Krastel, Funerary Stelae of Dayr Anba Hadra 31 December 2021 inscriptions (de Morgan et al. 1894: 129–140; Clédat 1915; Krastel 2020), and the extension of the monastic church in the tenth century (see Lehmann 2021; Lehmann, forthcoming). The reasons for the lack of funerary inscriptions dating later than the tenth century thus remain unclear. Reuse of Funerary Stelae Most fragments were uncovered in the debris of the monastic church and not a single stela was found in situ. It seems that the stelae were removed from the cemetery and reused as building material in the extension or a renovation of the church shortly after the latest funerary stela was erected at the end of the tenth century. This theory had already been expressed by Monneret de Villard (1927: 31–32) after he found related fragments of a stela in various areas of the church and even in different buildings of the monastery, and was confirmed in spring 2017 when the Dayr Anba Hadra Project uncovered a fragment of a Coptic funerary stela serving as a threshold for a door leading from the southern aisle into an adjacent room to the south (Figure 9).
A secondary use of funerary stelae has also been recorded at other Christian sites in Egypt and Nubia, such as dayr al-naqlun (Godlewski and Łajtar 2006). Why the Dayr Anba Hadra stelae were removed from the cemetery and whether a natural or military event might have precipitated such an action remains unexplained.
Due to their largely secured find context and their number, the Coptic funerary stelae of Dayr Anba Hadra form a closed corpus, which is significant not only for the study of this monastery, but also for the analysis of Coptic funerary stelae from other archaeological sites in Egypt and Nubia.