Deir Anba Hadra 2016

The announced workshop is to present the research project (B-4-6) Deir Anba Hadra. Sociocultural and economic significance of a holy place in Upper Egypt from late antiquity up to the early Mamluk period.

Deir Anba Hadra is one of the best-preserved medieval monasteries of Egypt. Its massive architectural remains attest to its former importance. Recent activities are centered around some hundreds of Coptic and Arabic inscriptions left by inhabitants and visitors of the monastery from the 10th to the 15th century. Private memorial inscriptions bear some valuable evidence for issues such as the history of the usage of places, their local and transregional semantics and significance, feelings of local inhabitants and visitors towards those places, and the appropriate ways of communicating such feelings in a public environment.

The ongoing work on the monastery, a cooperation between the German Archaeological Institute, Dept. Cairo, and Topoi Area B further expands on the architectural history of the church, its painted decoration, the economic buildings of the monastery, and archaeo-botanical research.

Program