desert hermits

The Desert Fathers of ancient Egypt were some of the world's first hermits. Despite the modern ideal of the hermit, these didn't live in total isolation. However, they did live a sparse, hard life in the country's early Christian monasteries. If women chose to enter their sphere, they would do so dressed as men. Who were these scholastic men of the desert, and how did their form of worship influence Christianity for millenia to come?

In the fourth century AD, Egypt was a province of the Roman Empire (in modern terms, an occupied territory) vital to Roman security, since the Nile valley supplied most of the grain for the "bread and circuses" that kept Rome's proletariat quiet. But that didn't get Egypt any preferential treatment. It was rigorously controlled, ruthlessly taxed; many small farmers, too poor to pay, abandoned their land, and Egypt's economy slowly deteriorated.

About The Author

Derek Bickerton

Derek Bickerton is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii. He is author of acclaimed works including Roots of Language, Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans and Bastard Tongues. Although his career has concentrated on linguistics, hs first degree was in history, and he has a lifelong fascination with the history of the Roman Empire. In the 1990s, he became interested in the Desert Fathers, and carried out extensive research on their period in preparation for writing historical novels about them; the first of these, The Desert and the City, was recently published.