Saint Anthony monastery is an ideal monastery, an ideal Coptic monastery. It's like a small village. The monasticism spread out of Egypt in all Europe and everywhere from here.
We are trying to do a very scientific restoration, not only for the painting, but also for the architecture. Saint Anthony church painting is the unique painting in Egypt, because the church is complete, the walls are completely covered with painting. And it gives the idea of the medieval iconography of the Coptic art.
This art was covered with white plaster. We have a chance to take down the white plaster to discover this very early paintings of sixth or seventh century.
In 2003 we started to do restoration with the Supreme Council of Antiquities for the monastery and when we worked inside this church under the floor, we discovered very, very early monastic cell and another church from sixth century.
This is the service room, where we have the covered stone floor and the stone is there from the mountain. And there we have the oven, this is the last oven, where they made the bread. And then here we can find Coptic inscription written on the plaster. It is very interesting here to see in the inner room how there's a small pot inside still in the good condition, we can see.
What's interesting here for this excavation – it was a big challenge, because the excavation is inside the used church. This is ideal excavation project to let the people think about how we can excavate and at the same time display for the visitors in the protected way.
Saint Anthony died in 356 here and he was buried here in the monastery, but we don't know exactly where he is. Now in our process to discover the tomb of Saint Anthony we discovered another structure under the church of Saint Anthony, the entrance is from this church. And we are waiting now to just to have time to continue our excavation. Maybe, we hope we will discover the tomb of Saint Anthony under the altar of Saint Anthony.
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