Shenoute of Atripe and the Christian Destruction of Temples in Egypt: Rhetoric and Reality

CHAPTER SEVEN SHENOUTE OF ATRIPE AND THE CHRISTIAN DESTRUCTION OF TEMPLES IN EGYPT: RHETORIC AND REALITY Stephen Emmel Universität Münster Depending to some extent, of course, on just how one defines the term “destruction,” the list of cases of “temple-destruction” that we know of in Egypt is remarkably short, and only very few of these cases are at all well documented. But there is one item in the list of relevant evidence that looms larger than most of the rest: the works of Shenoute provide us with a relatively thick dossier of evidence that is directly relevant to the theme of this volume, and one of his works in particular is of extraordinary interest in this regard. Since this work has not been published up until now (see the appendix to this chapter) and largely un- known, I assume that it will be entirely new to any readers who do not already know a paper that I read in Leiden in 1998, “From the Other Side of the Nile: Shenute and Panopolis,”1 and even for those who do know that article it might still be news that in May 2002 I happened upon a third manuscript of this work, more complete than the two that I knew before, and this new manuscript adds some extraordinarily inter- esting new information to the dossier on Shenoute and his crypto-pagan archenemy Gesios.2 But let me first sketch in some of the background against which the new information has to be understood. Shenoute was the charismatic leader of a large monastery in Upper Egypt from 385 until his death in 465. His extensive corpus of writings includes a number of works that 1 Emmel 2002. Since the delivery and publication of that paper, I have reverted to my preference for the spelling Shenoute rather than Shenute (Coptic ϣⲉⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ). A recent study of Shenoute’s anti-pagan activities by an ancient historian is Hahn 2004, 222–269 (unfortunately, this important study suffers from having been written over a decade ago [see p. 8], and from the most recent work on Shenoute not having been fully incorporated into the analysis), especially pp. 240–242 and 254–257. 2 Also known as Kesios and (Flavius Aelius) Gessius, or Gessios. 162 stephen emmel refer to violent actions taken against pagan worship in the surrounding area, in particular in a village called Atripe (a little south of modern Sohag), and in Panopolis (Coptic Šmin, modern Akhmim), the local metropolis, on the eastern bank of the Nile, opposite Shenoute’s monastery. The references in Shenoute’s own writings to anti-pagan activities can be supplemented with several related stories from the encomiastic tradition about Shenoute, that is, the literary tradition that culminated in the work now generally known as the Vita Sinuthii, the “Life of She- noute” that survives in Coptic (completely only in the Bohairic dialect) as well as in Arabic, Ethiopic, and Syriac.3 In my previous paper on the present topic (which I will refer to here for simple convenience as “my Leiden paper”), I sketched out a hypo- thetical chronology for Shenoute’s anti-pagan activities, and I take the liberty of quoting myself as a basis for the present continuation of that investigation: There is still much work to be done with regard to the details and chronology of Shenute’s anti-pagan activities, especially when so much relevant material is not yet adequately published or studied, but probably we will not be too far wrong if we place their beginning (probably the cleansing by fire of the temple in Atripe) soon after news of the destruction of the Serapeum in 391 [or 392] reached Panopolis, that is, well within the first decade of Shenute’s tenure as head of his monastery; their middle (the persecution and exposure of Gesios) around 400, when the first wave of imperial encouragement of and support for pagan-bashing was at its peak; and their end (confiscation of pagan cult objects in nearby villages) around 420, when the wave had already crested and was receding.4 One piece of the evidence for the relative order of this chronology is Shenoute’s own brief listing of his activities, a kind of curriculum vitae pertaining to his most violent acts outside the monastery—although presented precisely in order to claim that he nonetheless avoided dis- order (Coptic ⲁⲧⲁⲝⲓⲁ and ϣⲧⲟⲣⲧⲣ): For I have done nothing in a disorderly fashion (ϩⲛⲟⲩϣⲧⲟⲣⲧⲣ): neither the time we burned the pagan temple in Atripe; nor the time we went with the Christians who were taken before the judge in Hermopolis and Antinoopolis when the priests lodged a complaint against them because 3 The so-called “Life of Shenoute” and its traditional attribution to Besa, Shenoute’s successor as head of his monastery, have been fundamentally reexamined by Lubomi- erski 2005 (cf. her preliminary reports, Lubomierski 2006 and 2007). 4 Emmel 2002, 113. On the date of the destruction of the Serapeum, see Hahn’s contribution to this volume on the topic, and also Hahn 2006..

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