Monastic Life in Ancient Egypt

Egypt is revered as the home of the famous Desert Ascetics, who first embraced a monastic life and established homosocial communities on the borders of their urban centres in the Nile Valley. Regarded as angels and warriors, the wisdom of the Desert Ascetics formed part of the oral and literary tradition of wonder-working saints whose commitment to asceticism was legendary and inspirational. 

Desert Ascetics of Egypt (ARC Humanities Press, 2020) grounds the mythologized stories of Desert Ascetics in the materiality of the desert, demonstrating the closeness of the desert, the connections between non-monastic and monastic communities, and the exciting insights into lived monasticism through the archaeology of monasticism in Egypt.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review.

Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom is the Myra and Robert Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Associate Professor of Christian Studies at Brandeis University, the Senior Archaeological Consultant for the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project, and Co-Director of Monastic Archaeology in Scotland at Lindores Abbey.

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston.

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