Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 12 May 2025
berenike, port at the red sea
Gawdat Gabra Keywords: ‘Aidhab, Athanasius, Beja tribes, Berenike, Coptos, Eastern Desert, India, Nabis Bishop of ‘Aidhab, Red Sea, Roman Period, Synaxarion A Coptic-Arabic manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Scala copte 44, identifies Berenike with ‘Aidhab (Munier 1930: 162, no. 44; Khouzam 2006: 135, no. 44). This is understandable, for both ports lay in the same region at the Red Sea. Berenike is located south of the latitude of aswan (23º 58" N); ‘Aidhab lies a bit further south (22º 20" N), and both ports served as major regional gateways for commerce. The Arabic synaxarion of the Copts commemorates nabis, the fourth–fifth century bishop of ‘Aidhab, on 22 Kiyahk (Basset 1909: 499–505). As Jacob Muyser has pointed out, this Arabic text on Nabis bears all the indications of being a translation from Coptic (Muyser 1944: 137). The medieval translator of the Coptic text into Arabic rendered the ancient Berenike as ‘Aidhab. However, the latter port was founded in the ninth century and played an important role in Egyptian commerce through the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean from the tenth to the fourteenth century (Gibb 1960; Garcin 1972; Timm 1984: 96– 98; Labib 1978).
According to the Synaxarion text, Bishop Nabis resided in a small church at Coptos and used to send, in turn, a priest and a deacon to ‘Aidhab, as this town is far from Coptos: more than thirteen days’ travel in the Eastern Desert. When it was necessary for Nabis to go there himself, men of the beja tribes carried him and the church objects on their camels, in return for payment for the hire of their beasts. Study of the events and the names of Nabis’ contemporaneous bishops mentioned in his Synaxarion entry has shown that Bishop Nabis must have lived in the late fourth century and early fifth century. The Synaxarion informs us that Nabis died when he was ninety years old and that he had been a bishop for forty years. His episcopal ministry must thus have been in the last decades of the fourth century and the first decades of the fifth (Gabra 1986: 231ff.; Gabra 1991). Bishop Nabis took care of his community in that remote region. He had good relations with merchants and sailors, interceded on behalf of members of his congregation who were in prison, and took care of the sick in his diocese (Gabra 1986: 233; Gabra 1991). Thus, Nabis’ Synaxarion commemoration provides evidence for a Coptic diocese in that region extending in the Eastern Desert between Coptos and Berenike which dates back at least to the fourth and fifth centuries.
It was not until 1994 that archaeological fieldwork began and continued for a number of seasons at the site of the port of Berenike (Sidebotham and Wendrich 1995–2000; 2001/2). A fifth-century ecclesiastical complex including a church was discovered there, as well as a number of Christian artifacts such as crosses and lamps. One of the lamps bears the Coptic text: “Jesus: Forgive me!” (Sidebotham and Wendrich 2001/2: 32–35). Concerning the church at Berenike, the excavators say: “The church is substantially larger than any of the other non-Christian religious centers now known from Berenike, which may suggest the relative popularity of various cults in the city in the late Roman period” (Sidebotham and Wendrich 2001/2: 34). About the port at Berenike they say: “Long distance commercial contacts have been recorded between Berenike and the Persian Gulf, southern Arabia, India, Sri Lanka, the Kingdom of axum, many areas of the © Claremont Graduate University 1 Gabra, G.: Berenike, Port at the Red Sea 12 May 2025 Mediterranean basin, central Europe and Near East…The peak periods of Berenike’s long distance trade were in early Roman (first century AD) and late Roman (mid-fourth to fifth centuries) times” (Sidebotham and Wendrich 2001/2: 23). Berenike was abandoned in the first half of the sixth century (Bagnall and Rathbone 2004: 291; Sidebotham and Wendrich 2001/2: 23).
Bishop Nabis must not have been the first bishop of this diocese. The Synaxarion tells us that he was worthy of episcopal dignity over the churches of ‘Aidhab (Berenike), and that he inherited such remote places in his diocese. The diocese to which Berenike belonged would have been established by Patriarch athanasius (328–373), during whose pontificate philae in nubia became a residence of a bishop. It was also Athanasius who appointed Bishop Frumentius as the first metropolitan in Ethiopia (Gabra 2010: 48).