Download - The saints of Sunbat, Appendix to Zuzana Skalova's 'If the Woman had been Weak in spirit'

if the Woman had been Weak in spirit:reflections on the restored Ottoman Coptic icon of

st. rebecca and her five Children,Agathon, Peter, John, Amun and Amunah,

by ibrahim al-nasikh, Cairo

Zuzana Skalova, with an appendix on Coptic martyrology by Renate Dekker

saint rebecca and her five children technique: Tempera and gold on primed canvas.date: Mid-eighteenth century. dimensions: Panel: 72 x 70.5 x 2.2cm. Painting: c. 45 x 60.5cm.condition: Twice retouched; restored in 2003.current location: Convent of st. George, harat Zuwayla, Cairo.probable provenance: Church of st. rebecca, sunbat, nile Delta. probable source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, arabe 277; Egypt, 1524, fols. 41r–74r.1

This Coptic icon was chosen as my tribute to the kindness that Gawdat Gabra extended to the female employees of the Coptic Museum, mothers and widows in particular, and for permitting me in the early 1990s to organize a haremlik laboratory (i. e., with female stu-dents only) in the museum for the purpose of teaching refined methods of icon restoration. his perceptive support for this pioneering Coptic icons Conservation Project 1989–2006 (CiCP), funded by the netherlands Development Programme, was invaluable.

Conservation history

in 1985, Otto Meinardus published a Coptic icon of sitt rifqah (rebecca) and her five children, which he spotted in the upper Church of st. George in the harat Zuwayla com-pound, Cairo, but which he linked to this family’s cult in sunbat (Fig. 33).2

in 1999, this painting, peeling and barely visible, was documented for a catalogue of icons in the Coptic collection by the icon Conservation Project 1999–2004 (iCP) and

1 This earliest surviving manuscript with a long account of the martyrdom of fourth century martyrs Agathon, Peter, John, Amun, Amunah, and their mother rebecca is, according to Khalil samir, from sunbat itself. For a précis of the legend, see samir 1991, 67–68 with bibliography, and the Appendix. i am very indebted to Father Dr. Ugo Zanetti for his scholarly comments on this unpublished text (kindly provided by the BnF). Two other manuscripts from sunbat, which i have not been able to consult are Coptic Patriarchate, Cairo, history 40; Egypt, 1558, fols. 93r–112v, Graf, no. 478, simaika, no. 608; and BnF, arabe 4777; Egypt, nineteenth century, fols. 122r–40r.

2 Meinardus 1985. Thanks to the Coptologist renate Dekker for finding this crucial article.

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atributed to ibrahim al-nasikh (Fig. 34).3 Painted on canvas, the image appears to be glued to the upper part of an inferior plain panel with a narrow border; a horizontal wooden strip (now lost) was fastened over a stroke of red paint, dividing the surface into two zones. The bottom area is covered with blackened varnish, possibly hiding a separate dedicatory text. The carpentry, the weakly primed textile, tempera technique, and pigments employed (black, white, orpiment, cinnabar, and azurite) are typical of the workshop practices of this Coptic painter and his younger partner, Yuhanna al-Armani.4 in 2003, with the permission of the Convent of st. George, the iCP undertook conservation and cleaning of the icon.5 st. rebecca’s true iconography has been revealed by the removal of modern varnish6 and “corrective” over-painting (Pl. XV).

3 inventory no. 015/17/1999. The icon Conservation Project was carried out in collaboration with the supreme Council of Antiquities and the Coptic Orthodox Church, administered by the Egyptian Antiquities Project of the American research Center in Egypt and directed by Dr. shawki M. nakhla and robert K. Vincent. Jr., with funding provided by the United states Agency for international De-velopment. none of this material is yet available for research. i therefore extend my grateful thanks to the ArCE director, Dr. Gerry D. scott, iii, for permission to publish this icon. some of the material in this study was included in a lecture which i presented at the netherlands-Flemish institute in Cairo, on 17 March 2005.

4 The Egyptian scholar Dr. Magdi Guirguis recently published the results of his research in the Otto-man registers and patriarchal archives on the careers of ibrahim al nasikh and Yuhanna al-Armani; see Guirguis 2004 and 2008.

5 The approach was technical. Members of the 2003 harat Zuwayla mission were sCA conservators sami Guirguis Asaad, who kindly clarified electronic issues; said Abd el-hamid; Abdel latif saady; and Merwat rizk (head), who, during discussions of the icon in the laboratory, drew my attention to the confused feelings which st. rebecca’s re-discovered image might have aroused. My role was limited to an evaluation of the results for Dr. nakhla, to whom thanks are due for inviting me to par-ticipate in this mission (unpublished report, dated 4 January 2004).

6 This was coloured Palaroid B72 varnish, commonly used from 1984 by the Egyptian restoration of the Archeological Churches in Cairo Project. Beginning in 1993, Dr. nakhla (then head of the sCA

Fig. 33 Icon of St. Rebecca and her five children, attributed to Ibrahim al-Nasikh, c. 1750, with initial, nineteenth century over-painting. Convent of the Holy Virgin, Harat Zuwayla, Cairo.

Fig. 34 The same icon showing secondary, twentieth century over-painting.


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looking at these three photographs, we can discern changing attitudes to this bare-breasted mother-saint, who functioned differently in Beylik-Mameluke Egypt than mod-ern viewers might expect. The painter wished to distinguish her from other holy mothers venerated in his time. To be memorable, rebecca had to transcend her peers, but still re-main within the bounds of the legend and conventional female behaviour. There can be no doubt that later the partial nudity of this holy mother amid her mature sons would have been shocking to some viewers. Very telling in this regard is the retouching process which occurred in stages. First, the bearded and moustached faces of Agathon, Peter, and John were over-painted to make them look like children, and then a few brushstrokes concealed their mother’s bosom (Fig. 33). later, the icon “darkened” (Fig. 34).

This earliest known historically and culturally specific image of st. rebecca raises a number of questions. Which source inspired the painter? Who commissioned the icon? Why at that particular moment and for which site? And what would be the visual associa-tions for the contemporaneous female viewer confronted with the saint’s bare breasts? Was it the titular icon for the renovated Church of st. rebecca in sunbat, from whence come the oldest known manuscripts about this family? Or is it a replica made for the Church of st. George in Cairo?7

it is of interest for this research that among the holy sites Alfred J. Butler described in his Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt was also the harat Zuwayla Church of st. George, to which people were drawn because of the miraculous healing power of its relics, cher-ished by many as objects of intimacy. in 1880 he recorded the behaviour then typical of the pious:

i have seen women sitting cross-legged about the floor on the old oriental carpet, with which it is strewn, gossiping together and taking it by turns to nurse the little silk-covered bolster of relics with simple faith in its miraculous virtues.

in front of st. George’s church, Butler visited a small Marian shrine (since lost) full of icons:

...within the screen a shelf some 7ft from the ground runs round the walls; on it are ranged many paintings of saints and martyrs, and in the midst a little shrine opens with latticed doors, revealing a picture of the Virgin Mary. Candles are lit before the picture on the days of solemn service of the sick, when the priests stand in the doorway of the screen, reading or chanting to the wild music of bells and cymbals. in the church, too, may be seen at times the ceremony of laying-on of hands upon sick people, i. e. such as are able to come to the church. This takes place on sunday morning, after the celebration of the Eucharist.8

conservation department) had the icon collection in harat Zuwayla surveyed by the Dutch-funded CiCP (under my supervision); the icon of St. Rebecca and her five children was not shown to us. For subsequent icon conservation projects at this site, see skalova 2006.

7 in Meinardus’s first list of the harat Zuwayla relics (Meinardus 1965), he does not mention those of re-becca, but they appear in his second, updated list (Meinardus 2004). For rebecca’s inclusion in the collage The Heavenly Paradise, see Meinardus 2007, with illus.

8 Butler 1970, 271–72. The modernized Church of st. George is now devoid of old icons. raouf habib complained that ‘the last change foolishly introduced into this church has effaced many of its ancient remains’ (habib 1967, 99).


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A century later, Otto Meinardus, who admired Butler’s work, left a similarly pensive re-cord about the shrine of st. rebecca, located in the south sanctuary chapel of her sunbat church:

The pilgrims gather in front of the icon of st. rebecca and her five children and offer prayers for blessings upon their children. Barren women beseech the ‘mother-saint’ to grant them sons, and young mothers repair the icon in the expectation to have enough milk for their children.9

A description of the restored painting in the upper zone

six haloed figures stand in a row, arranged from right to left (in concordance with the Arabic script). The four sons are distinguished by age, rather than by physiognomy. Aga-thon is depicted as a fully-bearded magistrate holding a palm branch and cross; next to him stand moustachioed Peter with a folded manuscript, and John bearing a palm branch and cross, while beardless Amun has only a cross (now over-cleaned); the youngest child, the girl Amunah, holds a palm branch and turns in the attitude of an orans to her mother rebecca, the largest figure. The family of martyrs is placed in the gilded void of heaven, represented by three Coptic crosses, or stars, alluding to resurrection and the afterlife (Pl. XV).

The attention of the viewer is drawn to lady rebecca spreading a red mantle around Amunah and touching her in a gesture of consolation – all the while accepting the inevita-bility of her daughter’s martyrdom. Then, suddenly, the viewer notices the mother-saint’s naked breasts. Although rebecca’s head is covered, black tresses (an established sign of mourning) are visible, falling on her shoulders, as is also, extraordinarily, her bare bosom in a deep-cut bodice. she wears a simplified “rococo” dress – but without the typical dia-phanous blouse, with Christian jewellery (a pearl necklace with a golden quatrefoil cross, still obscured by over-painting), a golden belt, and pink shoes. her short figure and her costume seem influenced by Greek Ottoman art.10 in contrast, Amunah’s black shawl or veil is a milaya, an item of Egyptian women’s clothing.11

9 Meinardus 1985, 477; see also Viaud 1979, pl. iV/A (undated), with an Arabic inscription on the shrine where the body was displayed in an open coffin, which reads: ‘Contribute for renewal of sitt rifqah’s sitar (veil) and the church renovation’. For a typically Coptic sitar, see skalova 2005.

10 see Tanja Tribe’s pioneering study placing ibrahim al-nasikh’s art in larger, post-Byzantine context (Tribe 2004). see also my chapter ‘Patriotic icon Painting: ibrahim Al nasikh and Yohanna Al Armani (1740s–80s)’ in skalova and Gabra 2003, 137–40.

11 henein 1988, 206, pls. 55a and c. i am indebted to Dr. nessim henry henein for his opinion on this matter. see also Abu-lughod 1987, 134–38. This outstanding anthropological study of the Bedouin Awlad ‘Ali women of Egypt’s Western Desert, especially the section ‘The Meaning of Veiling’ in Chap-ter Four, makes one wonder if her findings might not also be valid for Coptic fellahas. see also notes 23 and 24 in this study.



The painter and his models

ibrahim al-nasikh, his generation’s most distinguished scribe, illuminator, iconographer, and supervisor of church renovations, came to Cairo from isnit, in the Delta province of Qalyubia – to the south of sunbat. his aunt was the abbess of st. Theodore’s convent, in the harat al-rum (Melkite) quarter of Cairo, the see of the Coptic Patriarchate from 1666 to 1799.12 There he lived and worked with his family, closely linked to the religious hier-archy, and to the mighty civilian notables, the de facto authority in the Church. his icon painting and renovation activities span four decades, coinciding with a time of very specific historical transformation in neo-Mamluk Egypt, starting in the late 1740s.

in Magdi Guirguis’s study of the vicissitudes of the Coptic community in the second half of the eighteenth century, he explains that the (foreign) Mamluk beys who were able to appropriate the major tax revenues from the sublime Port in istanbul, needed local Arabic speaking scribes (mubashirin):

relationship based on common interests developed between the military elite and the Coptic notables, which allowed the Coptic notables to exploit the influence of their employers. The huge fortunes that were accumulated by these Coptic notables allowed them to extend their power and to carry out generous charitable and religious projects for the community, which further established their influence among the ordinary Copts and priests as well … The value of Patriarchal authority was affected … Both the Patriarch and the Church disappeared completely from the government discourse.13

These laymen represented the Coptic minority (a shockingly sparse population of some 200,000 souls in a dozen dioceses). They were the elite, responsible for renovating and refurbishing, with manuscripts, icons, and murals, the remaining churches and monas-teries in Cairo and in the provinces. The art of this extensive revival reflects a culture identified, perhaps for the first time, by factors other than strictly religious thoughts and practices. The patriarchal Coptic Church and society had very few iconic images of female saints, indigenous or otherwise. now, married lay donors, teachers, scribes, priests, even the painters themselves, commissioned and donated icons to the churches and monaster-ies. Well-to-do Coptic families were hiring icon painters and copyists to work in their homes.14 Female saints, among them st. Dimiana and her forty virgins, and many holy mothers, became popular and were commemorated by pilgrimages.15 The icon of St. Re-becca and her children is another manifestation of this trend. By 1811 napoleon’s occupa-tion of Egypt and Muhammad Ali’s ascent to power had destroyed the Mamluk beylicate.

12 Guirguis 2004, 775, n. 163.13 Guirguis 2004, 209; see also Guirguis 2005. 14 Guirguis 2008, 44–45; see also Tribe 2004, 79, n. 76 with reference to henein 1988, 334–35, n. 3, about

the icons painted in 1865 by Astasi al-rumi from Jerusalem, in the village of Mari Girgis. 15 For the icon St. Damiana and her forty virgins by Yuhanna al-Armani, the hanging Church, Old

Cairo, dated 1776, see skalova and Gabra 2003, 234–40 (cat. no. 31). see also Guirguis 2008, 44, n. 58, who provides an English translation of the inscription explaining that the icon was originally painted for a private home. For Ottoman culture in Egypt, see hanna 1998.


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Guirguis tersely concludes: ‘The Coptic Church adjusted to these changes and posted the clergy again to the forefront of Coptic affairs.’16

Between the late 1740s and 1785, the hagiographer ibrahim signed hundreds of sacred pictures. A number of them, including the present icon and his masterpiece, The great martyr Julius of Aqfahs, the hagiographer of martyrs, and his son and his brother, painted in 1757 for the Church of st. Mercurius in the monastery of the same name (Deir Abu seifein), near Old Cairo,17 seem very personal, with a new emphasis on family ties – in scriptoria, icon workshops, and on icons. Already in 1524, the Coptic copyist of the sunbat manu-script mentions that the life of st. Agathon, Peter, John, Amun, Amunah, and their mother rebecca, was authored by the blessed Julius of Kbahs (Aqfahs), who had attended the trial, purchased the bodies of the executed family members, and, when Constantine became em-peror, deposited them in the church, built above their burial in the town of al-Baqrina, the first site of their veneration (BnF, arabe 277, 69r–73r).18 Another detail on this key icon of Julius of Aqfahs is relevant: Julius’s brother presents a folio with the lives of saints Abali and Justus and their mother, and Cosmas and Damian, their brothers, and mother.

An icon of Ss. Cosmas and Damian, their brothers Anthimus, Leontius, and Euprepius, and their mother Theodota (Tudata) in the Church of st. Barbara, Old Cairo, signed by ibrahim and dated 1743 (AM 1459), is very probably a prototype for Rebecca and her five children (Pl. XVia).19 By contrast, in 1777 (AM 1493), Yuhanna al-Armani, in the Church of the holy Virgin, called the hanging Church (Al-Muallaqa) in Old Cairo, clad The-odota in a purple maforion and red shoes, apparel reminiscent of the Byzantine Mother of God. she stands devoid of emotion amid her four grown sons, as their equal. The healers, conforming to their eastern iconography, hold medical boxes, but their mother and broth-ers display prominent latin crosses (Pl. XVib).20 These hieratic icons with conventional depictions of Theodota in the patriarchal churches of Old Cairo were never retouched!

That the image of rebecca’s family is a collage reusing the representations of other locally-venerated family groups from the Coptic Era of the Martyrs, whose portable icons were in demand from ibrahim’s workshop, can be demonstrated by comparison to a sec-ond example. Amunah is copied (reversed) from a titular icon with the three-year-old holy child, St. Cyriacus and his mother Julitta, painted by ibrahim for their church in

16 Guirguis 2004, 211; see also Crecelius 1998.17 For this icon, see skalova and Gabra 2003, 230–31 (cat. no. 29); Tribe 2004, 81–82, fig. 3.1. For Julius of

Aqfahs, the Upper Egyptian martyr-saint, who is revered by Copts for helping Christian martyrs, col-lecting their remains and recording their biographies to ensure their commemoration, see Baumeister 1970, 116–17; Youssef 1993; and for the Era of the Martyrs, Papaconstantinou 2007.

18 The Coptic Arabic Synaxarium calls this burial place naqraha (in al-Buhaira, the diocese of Masi) for which see the Appendix.

19 Today this icon is missing its fine frame. nabil selim Atalla photographed Coptic icons for decades for the pure love of them, and by doing so in the period before their gradual damage by would-be restor-ers (beginning in 1983), left an invaluable visual archive of color slides, only partly published. Thanks to M. Guirguis for his help with the date in abuqti numerals. For the legend, see Papaconstantinou 2001, 129–32 with bibliography. ibrahim’s second icon of this family (unpublished) is in the Church of st. Mercurius, Deir Abu seifein, Old Cairo.

20 The patron was Muallim Abeid Abu Chozam, the superior of the hanging Church. The translation and date are credited to M. Guirguis. These three icons would direct their viewers to the relics in the reconstructed church of saints Cosmas and Damian (popularly known as “The Five and their Moth-er”) at Manyal sihah, in Giza. Their reputation as healers of nervous disorders, especially epilepsy, attracted many pilgrims. For the church, see syriany and habib 1990, 160 (no. 210).



Tahta, Upper Egypt, where these foreign martyrs were revered from early times (Pl. XViii).21 Amu-nah’s figure is thus an established Byzantine image for a child who became a martyr-saint, but the black milaya signals her female gender, distinguishing her as a young local girl (not a boy, the youngest son of Theodota, Euprepius, and older than Cyriacus).22 The icon of St. Rebecca and her five children is of con-siderable significance for our understanding of how adroitly so many sacred pictures were produced. it would be interesting to compare in detail the Coptic Arabic acts of aforementioned family groups for bor-rowings. Perhaps ibrahim’s inspiration to collage his icons came from a scriptorium practice.

The religious symbolism of the black veil for Ot-toman Coptic women and adolescent girls, prompt-ed by earlier art in the levant, needs more consid-eration.23 An example which ibrahim might have known is the thirteenth century Crusader-era syrian

icon of St. Sergios, in the collection of the Greek Monastery of st. Catherine, Mount sinai, with a tiny female supplicant who wears a long black veil. lucy-Anne hunt interprets her figure as the person who commissioned and owned the icon, a Frankish widow in semi-mourning, whose veil ‘is a symbol of the personal contract made by the woman with the saint for her wellbeing’ (Fig. 35).24 hunt investigated widowed women’s reliance on icons and female patronage in the medieval society of the Eastern Mediterranean, developing an approach ‘considering icons from the perspective of the viewer’.25

images of powerful equestrians to whom widows and anguished mothers, as secondary figures, plead for protection, were also painted in Egypt at that time, and Ottoman icon painters continued this iconography.26 however, rebecca (widowed?), with Amunah un-der her tutelage, represents a break from this long established custom. (Moreover, it is the sons who seem of secondary importance on the icon and in the 1524 vita from sunbat.) Publicly displayed for private use, the holy mother functioned as a trusted local saint; through her, the worshipper could pray directly. For women in particular rebecca’s bared breasts would signal fertility, motherhood, safe childbirth, and undisturbed lactation, but also mourning. now as then, Egyptians considered infertility as evidence of God with-holding his blessings and thus a social disgrace. Before the advent of modern healthcare,

21 syriany and habib 1996, 83–84. For the Coptic vita, see husselmann, 1965 and also Papaconstantinou 2001, 107 (iOYliTTA), 133 (KYPiAKOC), with bibliography.

22 For traditional iconic images of children (not holy and still living), see hennessy 2003, 157.23 Abu-lughod 1987, 159–67; see n. 11, above, as well.24 hunt 1991, 123 n. 18, quoting Abu-lughod 1987, 101 n. 17, 123.25 Two other examples are the widow Euphemia and her icon of the Archangel Michael, in the sixth cen-

tury encomium of Eusthatius and, in the early thirteenth century, a charitable Coptic widow, Melokh, who paid for a copy of this famous story as a donation to the Church of st. Michael, south of Old Cairo, a ‘memorial for the salvation of her soul’. her donation came about ‘through the command and foresight of the venerable and holy Patriarch Apa John’ (hunt 2003, 206–7 with notes).

26 For example, the icons with st. Theodore stratelates by ibrahim al-nasikh, in Atalla 1998, 103 and 108.

Fig. 35 Icon of St. Sergios, thirteenth century, Monastery of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai.


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child mortality in Egypt was a sad fact of daily life, accepted as God’s will (no statistics exist). The image of the Coptic mater tutela protecting her youngest was meant to offer hope and con-solation to the worshipper. Of course, this pre-Christian iconography of the “Venus Protetrix” would be interpreted by the Coptic viewer as intimacy between the mother and her daughter. rebecca’s pose and red mantle derive from the latin Virgin of Mercy iconography and attest to ibrahim’s wide repertoire. A regional example can be seen in the Gospels of the Armenian Cili-cian Prince Vasak, produced in the 1240s (Ar. Patr., Jerusalem, 2568, fol. 320).27

Due to the decline in number of traditional pagan goddesses of fertility and health venera-ted until the early Christian era, women in Egypt would turn to the Mother of God, visua-lized in her various eastern iconographic types. For this survey, the image of the nursing Mary would seem to be of major interest to women. in her ground-breaking work on the Coptic Galaktotrophousa, Elizabeth s. Bolman studied this iconographic type (in the monastic con-

text). she concluded that nursing should be understood as spiritual, and lactation seen as a means of salvation.28 notably, representations of a nursing Virgin Mary on portable votive icons were not in demand during the Coptic revival headed by ibrahim al-nasikh.29

new italian Madonna prints introduced (to Ethiopia as well as Egypt) by missionaries proselytizing Unia, or brought home from pilgrimages to the holy land, replaced me-dieval art, as many Ottoman-era icons attest. Much admired must have been the miracu-lous Madonna Salus populi romani, displayed in rome’s fifth century Basilica of st. Maria Maggiore. This church was built on the site of a pagan temple dedicated to the goddess of bodily and spiritual health, salus (Greek: hygeia), who protected people’s general well-being. The ancient icon was repeatedly renewed, adorned, and displayed in a ciborium; reproduced (over-painted with a votive golden crown and pendant cross) in eighteenth century prints, it was used by ibrahim as a model (Fig. 36).30 rebecca, Theodota, and Ju-litta wear comparable jewels (Fig. 34; Pls. XVia, XVii).

27 nersessian 1970, 187–202, figs. 646, 647. Belting-ihm 1976, 69, n. 43, pl. V (for Venus) and pl. XiX a/b (for the Virgin Mary). see also langener 1996.

28 Bolman 1997, 2004a and 2005. i am indebted to Dr. Bolman for allowing me to read her unpublished thesis.

29 For the late medieval Galaktotrophousa icon, see skalova 2003; skalova and Gabra 2003, 71, ill. 15. 30 skalova and Gabra 2003, 129, ill. 49. The original icon was rediscovered by restoration in the 1950s;

Wolf 1999, fig. 20; Amato 1988.

Fig. 36 Ancient icon of The Virgin “Salus populi romani” before cleaning, St. MariaMaggiore, Rome.



in Margaret r. Miles’s study God’s Love, Moth-er’s Milk, the theological historian observes that in Europe, bared breasts had become increasingly “secularized” by the sixteenth century through their use for portrayals of classical figures such as Venus and leda and of women in the Old Testament – rachel, susanna, and the Queen of sheba – as well as in the new Testament (Eva, Mary Magdalena, or the lamenting mothers of the holy innocents of Bethlehem). in 1593, the Council of Trent rejected “inappropriate” images in religious painting. Miles reports that she was unable ‘to find a single religious image of the breast painted after 1750. By that time it was impossible to symbolize God’s love by de-picting a nursing Virgin.’31 The influence of these European secularized images, circulating as prints ‘beyond the boundaries of cultures for which they were created’ is apparent on some icons in Egypt.

in Old Cairo, Copts would view with compas-sion The Massacre of the Innocents in the Church of st. Barbara, painted in the mid-seventeenth century on canvas by an Armenian artist. The dishevelled

figures of rachel and bereaved mothers, baring their breasts in grief for their sons baptized in blood, came to be regarded as the first martyrs of the Church, dying as they did in place of Christ, who was himself saved by the flight of the holy Family to Egypt (Fig. 37).32 We can only wonder if ibrahim al-nasikh knew this large italianate holy picture when he individualized st. rebecca. Does she mourn her children whom she nourished?

Consider that this was the titular icon in sunbat, the focus for the festival (mulid), the anniversary of the saint’s death or re-“birth”, with pilgrims from a wide area crossing the nile canal on feluccas from Mit Damsis, where another larger mulid commemorating st. George would have just concluded.33 imagine the flowing waters, the atmosphere redo-lent of the timeless ritual of fertility, as the celebration coincides with the harvest period. At night there would be feasting, music, dancing, fires – and magic.34 here we enter the realm of anthropology and ethnography within living popular religious practice. in this context, the bare-breasted image of st. rebecca could be seen as a local echo of the pre-Christian

31 Miles’s research is known to me only from an internet abstract which is the basis of my remarks in this paragraph (http://www.religion-online.org, accessed november 2009).

32 Dimensions: 115 x 80cm. Atalla 1998, 26 (during restoration in 1984). see also my chapter ‘Armenian “Baroque icon” on Canvas’ in skalova and Gabra 2003, 124–27, 218–19 (cat. no. 23).

33 Viaud 1979 with bibliography (16 Masri or 22 August).34 MacPherson 1941.

Fig. 37 Icon of The Massacre of the Innocents, Armenian painter, ca. mid-seventeenth century, Church of St. Bar-bara, Old Cairo.


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goddess of fertility and health.35 her full breasts could be emblematic of her maternal bodily love, as well as signaling the devastating impact of loss.36

Women, bowed down by bereavement, would come to make supplications to God – and to be com-forted by gazing at the mother-saint who lost her children.37 Coptic visual culture does not have many images of female saints with their children; the icon must therefore have been all the more appreciated and memorable. lamentation of the dead and the comfort-ing of mourners were strongly ritualized, and remain so today among peasant Arab women – Christian and Muslim alike.38 There is no more persuasive argument for this interpretation than a harrowing photograph of a nameless iraqi mother grieving for her son, killed in 2004 by a stray bullet in najaf: while her head is veiled as is proper for a modest woman, she has torn her gal-labia to expose her bosom: ‘Woe is me,’ we almost hear her ululate, ‘i gave him life, with these breasts i

nurtured him’ (Fig. 38).39 A “gendered reading” for rebecca’s vernacular image suggests the possibility that the harat Zuwayla icon was commissioned either by a woman, or in memory of a wife or child.

Of substantial interest in this context is a small double-sided pendant diptych from late seventeenth century Ethiopia, in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. The central panel shows The Virgin Mary at Dabra Metmaq, a site of pilgrimage in Gondar, on the front and, on the back, two bare-breasted female figures (Pl. XViiia).40 Both images have cov-ers; carved on the outside with three beneficial crosses, they are painted on the inside with the Archangels Michael and Gabriel (front) and three standing monks (back). When open, the object functions as a votive diptych; closed it could be suspended as an amulet. The

35 Meinardus (1985, 477) noted that sunbat was built on an ancient settlement, skhem Perti, the city of the ancient Egyptian god, seth Typhon; he concluded that ‘st. rebecca and her five children have as-sumed cultic roles which may well go back into the pharaonic ages’.

36 For a converging of multiple meanings see schroer 2008, 883–89, fig. 2 (nimrud, neo-Assyrian la-menting women) and fig. 4 (Judah, a Bronze Age so-called pillar figure) www.lectio.unibe.ch, accessed December 2009.

37 The only personal recollections of a sitt rifqah mulid i recorded was by Osiris Gabriel, son of a Coptic priest from Zagazig, (b. 1932; retired vice-director of the Coptic Museum). he remembered how his mother, who had lost her oldest son to illness, reciting slowly in verse, narrated to the saint a haunting version of what had happened. During his childhood, the family stayed every year in the boat on the nile canal for an entire week.

38 Much has been written about the religious and profane aspects of pilgrimage feasts in Egypt. Further inter-religious research is needed to assess the influence of the sufis on Coptic-Ottoman culture – an extensive and sensitive subject i prefer not to touch.

39 Adapted from the photograph, published on 11 August 2004 in the Dutch nrC Handelsblad. 40 Dimensions: 8.09 x 8.25cm (central panel), open 11.11 x 25.7cm. For the text and color photographs

see www.walters.org. i thank Elizabeth Bolman for calling my attention to this diptych and Marilyn heldman for comments and cautioning that the inscriptions are not original (e-mail dated 19 January 2010). see also Cat. Baltimore 2001, 134–35 (cat. 26).

Fig. 38 Iraqi mother mourning for her son.



unidentified, beautifully coiffed saints recall late Antique imagery. The iconography of the double-sided central panel is significant: proximity of the bare-breasted saints to the Virgin Mary links them to the Festival of Dabra Metmaq, which was important to women, and the commissioner/owner of this object might have been female.

returning to the Church of st. rebecca in sunbat, we may appreciate the fact that it has a sanctuary with two altars. The central sanctuary is dedicated to the saint; that to the north, to the Virgin Mary, and in the southern one, which functioned as a shrine, the relics were displayed until recently. The linkage of the locally venerated holy mother, as the bearer of the martyr-saints, to the God-Bearer suggests the icon’s religious depth, not yet fully fathomed.

A “false speech” of the Maccabean mother – a scriptural source for an Ottoman Coptic image?

Otto Meinardus did not comment on the hagiological tradition of Christian mothers who, together with their children, preferred martyrdom to apostasy, finding it ‘fanciful to argue that the martyrdom of the faithful Jewish mother and her seven sons (2 Macc. 7:1–42) would have been inspiration for st. rebecca or a model for the later Coptic hagiographers.’41 however, his prescient allusion to this scriptural story, known in many versions, deserves our attention.42

The Fourth Book of the Maccabees (8–18:24), included in the Septuagint, was very influential.43 The Christian festival commemorating the Maccabean “saints” was estab-lished early in the fourth century and is noted in Monophysite, Western, and Maronite liturgies. homilies and sermons were written by the church fathers.44 scholars infer from Chrysostom’s sermons that Christians, especially women, believed that the tomb of these hebrew saints was situated in Antioch.45 The dispersed relics gave rise to the erection of many churches and to the legend providing inspiration for hagiographers and artists. here two representations suffice.

The earliest surviving portrayal of the Maccabees, the scribe Eleazer, the seven sons and their mother, salomone, as martyrs venerated by Christians, may conceivably be the fresco in Alexandrian style from c. 650, in s. Maria Antiqua, rome (Pl. XViiib).46 in this church of the Greek community, mural icons of the three holy mothers with their children – Mary with the infant Jesus, flanked by Anne with the young Mary, and Elizabeth with the child

41 Meinardus 1985, 475; schiffman 1988, 828–29; Baumeister 1972, 35–37, n. 18.42 see Tania Tribe’s inspiring observations on a continuing rhetoric trend in eighteenth century Egypt,

Tribe 2004, 82–83. i also thank Prof. h. Murre van der Berg for advising me to reconsider this Old Testament story.

43 For the English translation, see hadas 1953, esp. 853–55. For Coptic references, see Aranda Perez 1991,166.

44 Gregory of nazianzus’s discourse (PG 35.911–934) and John Chrysostom’s four homilies on the mar-tyrs (PG 50.617–628) are of interest for this essay as they treat the hebrew Maccabeans as Christian protomartyrs (stowers 1988, 844).

45 Delehaye 1933, 201–202; hadas 1953, 112, n. 47.46 The occidented church, buried in the ninth century by an earthquake, was excavated in 1900. A nice

detail is that st. salomone was adorned with a votive object, probably brooch.


Zuzana skalova144

st. John the Baptist – were also displayed on the right side of the edifice, the matroneum, re-served for women – attesting to the early ven-eration of female saints by women.47

The second representation is the early eigh-teenth century icon in Quaraqesh near Mosul, a witness to the enduring cult of the Maccabean mother in syria; moreover, it is comparable in format, technique, and style to many icons in Egypt, grouped around a triptych in the Mon-astery of the syrians, Wadi natrun, signed by the enigmatic Matari (arguably from eastern syria), who was active in the decades prior to ibrahim al-nasikh (Fig. 39).48

From the perspective of Ottoman Copts, the Maccabeans were less relevant, but eru-dite ibrahim al-nasikh would have appreciated an Old Testament link and the common literary pattern of both martyria: especially the passages in the Fourth Book of the Mac-cabees and the BnF, arabe 277.49 in both Jewish and Coptic stories, the family was arrested for practicing their faith; as the children are tortured, one by one, the mother offers them encouragement, and watches them die. For overcoming her natural maternal emotions in the service of the lord during this psychological martyrdom, the Old Testament mother is honored as an equal to her sons, as the “woman with the soul of Abraham”, and thus as an exception to her gender.50 rebecca, wrote the Coptic scribe:

seeing the blood of her children pouring out as water, thanks the lord and prays him to accept them as ‘a sacrifice (qurban) on the altar, as incense, as he accepted Abraham’s offer of his son isaac ...’ (BnF, arabe 277, fols. 47v–48r).51

Another common aspect of both narratives is the purity of the children, whose victory in martyrdom can be attributed to their religious upbringing by their mothers. The siblings were nourished by their mother, both physically and morally.52 The Old Testament heroine remembers: ‘i have carried you nine months in my womb, nourished you for three years …’ (2 Macc. 7:2.). There is one particularly moving passage in the Fourth Book of Maccabees, dubbed by scholars a “false speech”, when the author argues for dramatic effect:

47 Osborne 2003, 142–43, n. 45.48 Chaillot 1998, photo on p. 136 (no dimensions). For the syriac sources, the madrasha on the Mac-

cabees by Ephrem the syrian and the sixth Book of the Maccabees, a rhymed homily (memra), on Marta or “lady” shamoni, the mother of the Maccabees, see Peterson 2006, 20. Matari’s signature was published in skalova and Gabra 2003, 135, illus. 59a.

49 For the Maccabees, see rouwhorst 2004 with all biblical references. 50 Young 1991, 76.51 i thank Father Zanetti for his help with the accurate translation of paragraph quoted here. i also thank

Dziad Baban, Dr. Essam hafoudh, and the Arabist Marie hafoudh-horáková (Prague), who all gave generously of their time to answer my many questions concerning the sunbat manuscript and other Coptic hagiography in Arabic.

52 i was influenced in this paragraph by Young 1991, 67–81.

Fig. 39 Icon of The Maccabeans, early eigh teenth century, Quaraquesh, Syria.



if the woman had been weak in spirit – being, as she was, a mother – she would have lamented over them, and perhaps have spoken as follows: ‘Ah, miserable woman that i am, repeatedly wretched time and again! seven children have i borne, and i am the mother of none. in vain were my seven pregnancies; futile the ten-months burden borne seven times; fruitless the nursing, and wretched the suckling’ (4 Macc. 16:5–11).53

in 1524, the Coptic scribe – referring to the “eyewitness”, Julius of Aqfahs – records re-becca’s “direct speech”:

… while they were dragging them to the place of their martyrdom, the blessed rebecca, their mother, has followed them saying: ‘Go, my children! Blessed be the womb which carried you and the breasts which suckled you. This day i rejoice at the birth pain i endured for you, because Christ and his angels will come to meet you’ (BnF, arabe 277, fol. 68v).54

There are no icons without sources! here we have a textual inspiration for ibrahim al-nasikh’s deeply religious portrayal of rebecca, on whom he bestowed maternal physiog-nomy to honor her as biological bearer who encouraged her children unto immortality, in their “second birth” as martyrs for Jesus Christ.

her adamant words would be recited aloud and heard by both men and women in the church, and in every audience women would identify with this Egyptian mother-saint, spiritually and emotionally.55 The sixteenth century source stresses that rebecca and her children converted some 20,000 to Christianity, just at one trial! in volatile Beylik Egypt, the major function of the icon would be to strengthen the faith of the viewers, should anyone tempt them to convert.56 rebecca’s sacrifice was an example for holding fast to her faith when martyred, even to the point of death.

The icon’s historical and cultural significance

The breasts provide a point of access for a historical reading of the icon and its conserva-tion history.57 ibrahim’s (seemingly) secularized icon fits into the contemporary cultural

53 hadas 1953, 227; Young 1991, 78; stowers 1988, 853–54. it would seem that the aspiring Christian martyr saint rebecca – if she was a Jewish Christian, as suggested by her name – was herself influenced by the Old Testament archetype of the Maccabean mother.

54 ... djadhabúhum ilá makán djihádihim wa-t-tûbaniya rifqá ummhum tabacthum qájilah imshú yá aw-ládí tûba l-l’batn alladhí hamalatkum wa-l-thadayn alladhí radacatkum aná afrahu-l-yawma bi-t-talqát alladhí qabaltuhum cankum fa inna-l-masíkh wamalá‘ikatuhu jakhrudjú li liqá‘ikum. This transcrip-tion (and verbatim translation) is credited to M. hafoudh-horáková, who helped me to find this crucial passage. Dr. Zanetti proposed the translation quoted here; however, the interpretation is mine.

55 For the popularity of female saints among both men and women, and the paradox of “women of mas-culine spirit” in Byzantine tradition, see rapp 1996, 322–29.

56 Magdi Guirguis (personal communication) speaks about many conversions in that period. For the function of images in Coptic churches, see Zanetti 1991, 78–80, quoting two thirteenth century au-thors. see also Bolman 2004b, 8.

57 Many nineteenth and twentieth century photographs show Egyptian peasant women with bared breasts. see also Dobrowolska 2005 for remarks on the breast-emblem on the lady nafisa’s sabil from the late eighteenth century in Cairo.


Zuzana skalova146

environment characterized by the diminishing control of the “canon” in icon painting in the Mamluk beylicate of Egypt. This trend, however, can be observed in post-Byzantine culture in all orthodox countries under the Ottoman dominion, as elsewhere.

it is feasible that rebecca’s unusual likeness posed not only a dogmatic problem in the nineteenth century. One possibility is that when the shortened version of the very lengthy sunbat legend was introduced, the image ceased to be understood.58 The first over-painting, arguably by Astasi al-rumi from Jerusalem, who was active in Egypt between 1836 and 1871, transformed the adult sons into children, in contradiction of the legend (Fig. 33).59

it is equally probable that rebecca’s persona was an embarrassment even for women towards the end of the late nineteenth century. s. h. leeder noted that members of the Coptic Women’s society which had branches in several towns toured the country-side ravaged by disease, teaching peasant women hygiene (and modesty).60 Mothers were strongly discouraged from nursing their babies in church or lamenting in the traditional way with bared breasts, disheveled hair, and indigo-smeared faces.61 still today women are seldom seen cradling the bolsters that contain relics.

Conclusion

A method of understanding of the rich Ottoman Coptic artistic heritage, in its interaction with local traditions, unpublished sources, the surrounding Muslim culture, and imported latin, post-Byzantine, and Ottoman art, has yet to be fully developed. in fact, this is the first in-depth study of an icon by ibrahim al-nasikh. some of his icons attest that, in his time, holy mothers, as a distinguished group, were respected and venerated by men and women alike.

St. Rebecca and her five children belongs to sunbat. it was inspired by the passage in the Coptic Arabic manuscript, which was copied in sunbat in 1524. This unpublished source is attributed to st. Julius of Aqfahs, who also features in the narrative; it belongs in the cycle of lives of local saints, which were originally written in Coptic (not in Greek) as they would have been intended for local circulation.62 The Arabic text reflects the oral and the bookish devices.63 A scriptural prototype is the story of the seven Maccabean martyrs and their mother (4 Macc. 16:5–11).

The painter, residing in cosmopolite Cairo, but a family man with a cultural back-ground in the Delta, must have been a sensitive observer. his theologically-charged bare-breasted mother-saint was in harmony with the local oral heritage and folk customs. Ex-actly when his vision of st. rebecca ceased to be understood in contemporaneous religious life is undocumented, except by the icon’s technical history. Fortunately, the discarded

58 Cf. The Coptic Arabic Synaxarium version (Basset 1907, 239–40 and the Appendix here) with the 1524 sunbat ms. The contemporary version of the legend, accessible on the internet and in pamphlets, does not include these quotations.

59 Meinardus 1970/1971.60 leeder 1918, 126; see also Armanios 2002.61 simaika 1943; Bishop Thomas 2004.62 see reymond and Barns 1998, 2–10.63 nelly hanna (hanna 1998), while not mentioning Copts, provides the larger cultural context for the

transfer of oral traditions into writing in Egypt, beginning in the sixteenth century.



icon survived in Cairo where it was preserved (though not displayed since the late 1980s), and finally rediscovered when restored anew as part of the ArCE/sCA Project.64

The present study should be seen as an attempt to interpret, rehabilitate, and endear ibrahim’s moving rendering of st. rebecca to today’s viewer. if unacceptable for religious life, nevertheless this Coptic masterpiece would surely be an asset to the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo, as it provides many clues, both spiritual and secular, for further research.

Post scriptum65

in the nicely modernized Church of st. rebecca in sunbat, the tiny old shrine in the south chapel of the sanctuary, where the coffin with the body of the titular saint was commemo-rated, ceased to meet the needs of the ever-growing cult. Three large twentieth century revised representations in an italianate style, the oldest still displayed in a ciborium, con-tinue to have the family as their subject: rebecca, her sons, and her daughter holding latin crosses (introduced on icons by Yuhanna al-Armani); the figure of a priest in full dress, st. Abanub, has been added (Pl. XiXa). The group recalls the arrangement of the seventh century Maccabees with the scribe Eleazar in s. Maria Antiqua, rome (Pl. XViiib).

in 2009, a massive new shrine was completed in the south annex of the church. The fourteen velvet-covered bolsters of relics are displayed at eye level. Between them stand vials available to pilgrims wishing to perfume the shrine as their prayers waft towards heaven, in remembrance of the pleasant scent that emanated from the martyrs’ bodies. The reliquary-shrine is crowned with an impressive wooden relief reminiscent of ivory carvings. The mother saint is placed in the center amid her four adult sons and adolescent daughter; they are flanked by two holy newcomers in priestly robes, Abanub and Yu-hanna, as well as six other martyr-saints from the Era of the Martyrs, venerated in sunbat: Piroou and Athom, John and simon, and Abuda and isaac of Tiphre (Pl. XiXb).66 This altered iconography belongs to the current remarkable Coptic revival, fostered by the Pa-triarchate. renate Dekker’s observations in the Appendix go a long way towards demon-strating that this modern imagery is retrospective and of great interest for future research into sunbat’s glorious Christian past.

notably, the main screen of this sole surviving church in sunbat incorporates salvaged fragments from carved doors of late Fatimid date, attesting to the former glory of this locality (Pl. XX).

64 The icon deserves full cleaning under the microscope. The harat Zuwayla compound has an impres-sive modern icon conservation policy supervised by Dr. nakhla.

65 i thank Abuna Joseph and Wadea Boutros for arranging my visit to sunbat on 10 December 2009. 66 Their relics were transferred from destroyed churches to sunbat in the thirteenth century (Meinardus

1985, 477). see also the Appendix.


APPEnDiX

The Martyrdom of the Coptic saints Agathon, his Brothers Peter, John, and Amun, his sister Amunah, and their Mother rebecca

Renate Dekker

This appendix provides some background information on the Coptic tradition behind the eighteenth century icon in the monastery of st. George, harat Zuwayla, Cairo, which, according to Otto F.A. Meinardus, 1 the iCP Coptic conservators, and the analysis of Zu-zana skalova as detailed above, depicts st. rebecca and her five children.

it soon became clear to me that no Coptic sources about Agathon, Peter, John, Amun, Amunah, and their mother rebecca are known while the Arabic manuscripts containing their martyrology are unpublished. As a coptologist without access to these Arabic manu-scripts, i shall present here a preliminary survey of the material and highlight some aspects that merit further study.

The Arabic sources

The Copto-Arabic Synaxarion, which was compiled in the fourteenth century, is the old-est (albeit shortest) known source that commemorates the martyrdom of the family of st. rebecca (Tut 7/september 17).2 A more elaborate account of the death of these saints is preserved in three unpublished Arabic manuscripts from sunbat: Bibliothèque national de Paris, arabe 277 (AD 1524); Coptic Patriarchate, Cairo, history 40 (AD 1558); and Bibliothèque national de Paris, arabe 4777 (nineteenth century).3

Agathon and his family

notably, Agathon, rather than his mother rebecca, is the main figure in the Synaxarion, as well as in the martyrology, for he is mentioned first. Another interesting detail is the fact that Amunah is a girl. some scholars assumed that rebecca only had sons,4 but the titles of the martyrologies that are kept in the Bibliothèque national are translated as ‘Martyre de saint Agathon, de ses frères Pierre et Jean, de ses soeurs Amūn et Amūna et de leur mère rafīqa’.5 likewise, Graf speaks of ‘frères et soeurs’ when mentioning st. rebecca’s chil-dren in his description of the manuscript at the Coptic Patriarchate.6 The iconography of

1 Meinardus 1985, 476. 2 Basset 1907, 239–40. For the dating of the Copto-Arabic synaxarion, see Coquin 1991, 2171; Atiya

1991, 2173, and also the notice in the Ethiopic synaxarion (Budge 1928, 27–28; Maskaram 7).3 Troupeau 1972–1974, v. 1, 244–45, no. 277 (2) and v. 2, 27–29, no. 4777 (7); Graf 1934, 183–84, no. 478

= simaika 1942, 274, no. 608 (8); cf. samir 1991, 67. According to Troupeau (ibid.), the latter was prob-ably copied from a manuscript in the Coptic Patriarchat; cf. samir, ibid.

4 samir 1991, 66–67; Meinardus 2007, 285, ‘mother of four sons’; cf. Meinardus 1970, 187, n. 3.5 Troupeau 1972–1974, v. 1, 244–45, no. 277 (2) and v. 2, 27–29, no. 4777 (7). 6 Graf 1934, 183–84, no. 478.


149Appendix: The Martyrdom of the Coptic saints

the icon of St. Rebecca and her five children in Cairo, after over-painting as well as initially, depicted Amunah as a girl (see P. 136 above).

The more detailed Arabic sources state that the family lived in the time of Diocletian and Maximian (ca. 300). Agathon is called ‘a God-loving man, an archon, from a village in the district of the town of Qūs in the province of the sa‘īd’, i. e., from Upper Egypt.7 The Copto-Arabic Synaxarion also mentions the district of Mamuniyya, in the province of Qus, as his place of origin.8 however, it has been argued that the family came from sunbat, a vil-lage in western lower Egypt, the place where a mulid celebrates rebecca and her children.9 Accordingly, Mamuniyya would be read samnutiyya – another name for sunbat – and Qus would then probably refer to Jazira Qusaniyya, an old name for the district where sunbat is located. These emendations would change the information provided by the Synaxarion considerably, whereas the Arabic texts clearly point to Qus or Upper Egypt.10

The martyrdom of Agathon and his family according to legend

in the Copto-Arabic Synaxarion, Christ appeared to Agathon and his family, exhorting them to receive the crown of martyrdom at shubra, near Alexandria.11 Their bodies would be brought to Taqraha (naqraha) in al-Buhaira, in the diocese of Masil, lower Egypt.12 They did as they were told, distributed their possessions to the poor, and went to the town of Qus, in order to confess their faith in the presence of the governor Dionysius.13 he ordered their torture, first the mother and then the children, but he grew tired of mak-ing them suffer, and sent them to Alexandria. Their example led many people to convert to Christianity, to confess their faith in Christ, and to become martyrs. in Alexandria, Agathon and his family were presented to the governor Armenius, who happened to be in its suburb shubra, and he had them severely tortured. They were mutilated, thrown on a chauldron, tormented with flesh-hooks, and crucified upside down, all of which they survived. Eventually, they were beheaded, and their bodies were loaded on a ship with the intention of throwing them overboard. however, God sent his angel to an archon from naqraha, informing him that he should take care of the holy bodies. After bribing the guards, the archon took the corpses and placed them in a church at naqraha. After perse-cution ceased, a splendid church was built and dedicated to this saintly family, and many miracles were ascribed to their relics. in the Middle Ages (when most of the churches vanished) these relics were transferred to sunbat, shortly before the compilation of the Copto-Arabic Synaxarion.14

7 see the incipit in Graf 1934, 183–84, no. 478 (Arabic); for an English translation, see samir 1991, 67.8 Basset 1907, 239; cf. Meinardus 1985, 476.9 samir 1991, 66–67, with further references.10 Basset 1907, 239, manuscript A: ‘Mamuniyya’; manuscript B: ‘the district of Qamula’.11 Basset 1907, 239–40; Meinardus 1985, 476–77. see also Timm 1984–1992, v. 5, 2390–91 (Šubrā (iii)).12 Timm 1984–1992, v. 4, 1781–82 (niqrihā).13 Meinardus 1985, 476 n. 1, remarks that ‘Dionysius was the “logistes” of Asyût, who appears in nu-

merous passions in the cycle by Julius of Aqfahs’. if correct, the family’s origin in Upper Egypt could be confirmed. skalova informs me that the oldest manuscript containing the legend of Agathon and his family (BnF arabe 277) mentions st. Julius of Aqfahs as the archon who buried the bodies!

14 Basset 1907, 239; Caraffa 1962, 343; Meinardus 1985, 476.


150 renate Dekker

The saints of sunbat

sunbat (Coptic Tasempoti) is also known as the resting place of four other martyr-saints who are nowadays venerated alongside st. rebecca and her children in her titular church, the only surviving church in this location. The brothers Piroou and Athum came from Tas-empoti, and after their deaths, a church was built there to house their relics, as well as those of the physician Abba noah, whom they had buried before their martyrdom. (Piroou and Athom are commemorated on Abib 8/ July 15.15) The bodies of two other saints, the cous-ins John and simon from sharmulus, were also transferred to sunbat/ samnutiyya (Abib 11/July 18).16

it is significant that the martyrologies of these four saints are preserved together in a Bohairic manuscript dating from the thirteenth or fourteenth century,17 as in the sixteenth century Arabic manuscripts containing the martyrdom of Agathon and his family men-tioned above.18 The fact that the Bohairic manuscript does not include the martyrology of Agathon’s family needs to be considered. in the two sixteenth century Arabic manuscripts from sunbat, the martyrologies of all the saints of sunbat were combined, suggesting that they were already venerated together at that time. The cult was apparently localized at the church of Piroou and Athom, since at least one of the two manuscripts was copied for that church.19

The earliest known mention of the church of st. rebecca in sunbat dates to the eigh-teenth century. An Arabic manuscript that is kept at the Monastery of st. Mena in Cairo records that this church was visited in AD 1758.20 its dedication to st. rebecca suggests that it was not only intended to house her relics and those of her children, but also that by that time, she had become more popular than her eldest son Agathon, who was the main figure in the earlier (Arabic) sources.

This preliminary review suggests a remarkable shift from Agathon to his mother rebecca as the most prominent member of their family. it also demonstrates that the tradition of this family of martyrs, initially one among several in sunbat, eventually became the most popular, particularly because of the growth of rebecca’s role as a “mother-saint”. These two developments merit further study. As for a link with the Maccabean mother as an important source for the icon, explored above Pp. 143–45, i expect that a thorough study of the Arabic martyrdom of st. Agathon and his family will reveal a strong literary and rhetorical dependence upon the hebrew story.

15 Basset 1907, 634–36. Piroou and Athum are depicted in the nave of the church of the Monastery of st. Antony and commemorated as ‘the martyrs of sunbat, “from” the north’, cf. Coquin 1978, 268–70.

16 Basset 1907, 644–47.17 Vatican library 60; hyvernat 1886, 135–201, esp. 173 n. 1 for the date of the Bohairic manuscript.18 Troupeau 1972–1974, Vol. 1, 244–45, no. 277 and Vol. 2, 27–29, no. 4777; simaika 1942, 274, no. 608.19 simaika 1942, 274.20 Khater and Khs-Burmester 1967, 35, no. 133; cf. Timm 1984–1992, Vol. 5, 2276.


151if the Woman had been Weak in spirit

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