Al-Ahram Weekly Online 1 - 7 November 2001 Issue No.558
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Believing in layers

EGYPTOPHILES are used to digging for the treasures of past cultures through the strata of several millennia. Islamic monuments lie over Coptic and Graeco-Roman, which in turn are stripped away to reveal relics of the Pharaonic age. Last week, evidence emerged to prove this layering was sometimes merely figurative. Two rock tombs discovered in Borg El-Arab, near Alexandria, were used at different times, and for different purposes. They appear to have been built as Ptolemaic tombs; they were then used as houses by Copts and, later still, by Muslims as places for prayer.

Gaballa Ali Gaballa, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Nevine El-Aref that a large cross was found on the northern wall of one of the tombs of a cemetery which was being excavated. "It suggests that the tombs were a safe haven for Christians escaping from Roman persecution in the 4th century," he said.

The Egyptian mission which made the discovery found that the two tombs were architecturally similar, each having a square open court and six limestone steps leading to a small corridor. This gave access to an empty burial chamber.

Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, head of lower Egypt antiquities, said that many ancient tombs were occupied by early Christians, but what made the discovery unusual was that a mihrab (Muslim prayer niche) was found on a side wall in the burial chamber of each tomb. "It is a most unusual discovery," Abdel-Maqsoud said. "We don't know exactly why the prayer niches were there, but they may have been used as places of seclusion."

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