Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 29 January 2016 © 2016 Claremont
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Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 29 January 2016 DAYR AL-SURYAN: NEW DISCOVERIES Karel C. Innemée Keywords: Art, Iconography, Monasteries, Churches, Wādī al-Natrūn, Coptic, Syriac 1. Introduction 1.1. History of the monastery DAYR AL-SURYAN was founded by monks from the neighbouring DAYR ANBA BISHOI in the 6th century when a dispute over the human nature of the body of Christ caused a split in the community of that monastery. Those who held the orthodox view that Christ had a human body and therefore the Virgin Mary was his mother in the physical sense, left and founded a new community at a close distance. To underline their theological conviction, the monastery and its church were dedicated to the Holy Virgin. This Monastery of the Holy Virgin of Anba Bishoi became later known as the Monastery of the Syrians (Dayr al-Suryan), after a group of Syrian monks settled here. Until recently this was believed to have happened after a sale of the monastery to a group of Syriac monks at the beginning of the 8th century, but we now know this may have happened around or shortly after the year 800. Before 817, the monastery was attacked by Berbers and must have suffered considerable damage. The monastery was restored and surrounded by a defensive wall, probably with the support of the newly arrived Syrian monks. A mixed population of Coptic and Syrian monks inhabited the monastery from the ninth century onward. During the ninth and tenth centuries, the monastery collected an exceptionally rich library of Syriac (and later also of Arabic) manuscripts. Moses of Nisibis, an abbot of the monastery in the beginning of the 10th century, played an important role in these acquisitions. He commissioned the wooden doors with ivory inlay in the church and possibly also commissioned wall-paintings in the church (see SYRIAN INFLUENCES ON COPTIC ART). The Syrian population of the monastery gradually died out in the course of the 16th and 17th century and Coptic monks remained as the inhabitants of the monastery. 1.2. History of the church building The Church of the Holy Virgin must have been built in the middle of the 7th century. It was designed as a three aisled BASILICA with a wooden roof. It had an element that was new for its time: a KHURUS (from the Greek choros, which means choir). This is an area of the church functioning as a transition between the NAVE and the sanctuary (HAYKAL). This khurus was built with two half-domes at the northern and southern ends and a dome over the middle. It possibly had an APSE at the eastern end. An additional half-dome was constructed at the western end of the nave in a later stage. These four half- domes were later decorated with paintings. The church had a wooden roof that was supported by two rows of five columns and two piers with attached half-columns in the west of the nave. The walls of the nave probably had seven windows on each side, north and south. These were later blocked and plastered over just like the four windows in the 2016 Claremont Graduate University 1 K. Innemee, Dayr al-Suryan: New Discoveries khurus. We know that when the church was built, the defensive wall of the monastery did not yet exist, because the windows in the southern wall lost their function when this wall was constructed directly against the church. With its columns, wooden roof, and many windows, the church must have made a much lighter impression than it makes now. Numerous modifications were made to the building in the beginning of the 10th century. Paintings were added in the upper part of the khurus, two sets of wooden doors with ivory inlay were constructed, one between the khurus and the haykal (914) and a second set between the nave and the khurus (926/27 CE). The abbot Moses of Nisibis (first mentioned 906, d. 943) was the driving force behind these additions. It was most probably at his initiative that the sanctuary was reconstructed. The new haykal took the shape of a square room surmounted by a dome. The inner walls were decorated with delicate stucco works, probably done by artists from Syria. They have certain similarities with stucco work in the mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo as well as stucco work from Samarra. The current shape of the building is largely the result of much later reconstructions, done between the 16th and the 18th centuries. The wooden roof was replaced by a barrel-vault and in order to support its weight, it was necessary to include the columns into the heavy piers and walls that are now dominating the interior of the nave. In 1782 the church was re-consecrated1, which means that it had been out of use, probably for renovation work. This must have included a number of activities, such as blocking the windows in the barrel-vault over the nave, but it certainly included the re- plastering of all the walls, except for the three semi-domes. This situation remained unchanged until 1991, when the painting of the Annunciation in the western semi-dome was discovered after a fire had severely damaged the painting of the Ascension that had been painted on a layer of plastering covering it. In 1995, the first tests were made to investigate the possible presence of other paintings underneath the 18th century plaster. This has resulted so far in the discovery of a number of superimposed layers of painting. 2. The Mural Paintings on Layer 1 Shortly after the church was finished, its interior was decorated with simple, mostly decorative paintings in red and yellow ochre. Remains of these paintings are visible in a few places, though later layers of plaster have covered most of them. Some of the clear examples are the orange crosses that can be seen on the upper parts of the walls of the khurus. 3. Paintings on Layer 2 3.1. Dado One of the first, if not the first, part of the paintings of layer 2 was a dado decoration that must have covered the lower part of the walls in the whole church. So far this dado has been found on the walls of the khurus (Fig. 1) and of the southern nave. It consists of a Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 2 K. Innemee, Dayr al-Suryan: New Discoveries two-meter high painted imitation of slender columns supporting an architrave that consists of triangular pieces in different colors, probably meant to imitate marble and granite inlay. There are rectangular surfaces that imitate marble inlay work between the columns. Fig. 1 This dado was the basic decoration. Over it, higher on the walls, several panels with mostly representations of saints were painted in the years afterwards. The main reason for choosing this system of decoration seems to be that the figurative paintings would be out of reach. 3.2. The half-domes. The church has three half-domes in the south, west, and north. The western half-dome must have been added later, possibly constructed for the main purpose of containing the painting of the Annunciation. It seems likely that originally the church had an eastern apse as well. The 13th century paintings in the half-domes form a cycle with four scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin, divided over three half-domes. These scenes are partly a repetition of the earlier cycle of paintings in the half-domes, originally four in number. The Annunciation in the western half-dome was followed by the Epiphany in the northern conch, possibly by an Ascension in the eastern apse and by a final scene in the southern conch that may have been Pentecost. Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 3 K. Innemee, Dayr al-Suryan: New Discoveries 3.2.1. The Annunciation. Discovered in 1991, after a fire that made it necessary to detach the superimposed painting of the Ascension, this painting is one of the most extraordinary ones in Christian Egyptian art (Fig. 2). The central part shows the Virgin seated on a throne, approached from the right by the archangel Gabriel. The Annunciation itself is flanked by four Old Testament prophets. To the left there are Moses and Isaiah, to the right there are Ezekiel and Daniel. Each of them holds an opened scroll in his hands. These scrolls contain texts from their writings that foretell the birth of the Messiah in the Christian interpretation. Three of the four prophets are dressed in the traditional late-antique tunic and pallium, while Daniel wears the oriental dress of a short tunic with trousers and a Phrygian cap, referring to his stay in Babylon. The backdrop of the scene must represent the town of Nazareth. The architecture is surprisingly symmetrical, which is slightly obscured by the large lacuna in the middle of the painting. This way of representing architecture resembles some of the details in the mosaics of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, made at the end of the 7th century. Between the pagoda-like towers and roofs of the town there are two trees. The left one, behind Moses, has red lines around its branches to evoke the burning bush, an image often use as a symbolical parallel to the virgin conception: God's fiery presence in the bush did not damage it, just like his incarnation did not affect the virginity of Mary. Fig. 2 Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 4 K. Innemee, Dayr al-Suryan: New Discoveries 3.2.2. The Epiphany. The northern half-dome contained a 13th century painting of the DORMITION of the Virgin, part of the decorative program of the same century (Fig.