l, grey houses and beneath the lowering arches, I came at last to the
Coptic church.

Near it, in the street, were several Copts--large, fat, yellow-skinned,
apparently sleeping, in attitudes that made them look like bundles. I
woke one up, and asked to see the church. He stared, changed slowly from
a bundle to a standing man, went away and presently, returning with a
key and a pale, intelligent-looking youth, admitted me into one of the
strangest buildings it was ever my lot to enter.

The average Coptic church is far less fascinating than the average
mosque, but the church of Abu Sargah is like no other church that I
visited in Egypt. Its aspect of hoary age makes it strangely, almost
thrillingly impressive. Now and then, in going about the world, one
comes across a human being, like the white-bearded man beneath the
arch, who might be a thousand years old, two thousand, anything, whose
appearance suggests that he or she, perhaps, was of the company which
was driven out of Eden, but that the expulsion was not recorded. And now
and then one happens upon a building that creates the same impression.
Such a building is this church. It is known and recorded that more than
a thousand years ago it had a patriarch whose name was Shenuti; but it
is supposed to have been built long before that time, and parts of it
look as if they had been set up at the very beginning of things. The
walls are dingy and whitewashed. The wooden roof is peaked, with many
cross-beams. High up on the walls are several small square lattices of
wood. The floor is of discolored stone. Everywhere one sees wood wrought
into lattices, crumbling carpets that look almost as frail and brittle
and fatigued as wrappings of mummies, and worn-out matting that
would surely become as the dust if one set his feet hard upon it. The
structure of the building is basilican, and it contains some strange
carvings of the Last Supper, the Nativity, and St. Demetrius. Around the
nave there are monolithic columns of white marble, and one column of
the red and shining granite that is found in such quantities at Assuan.
There are three altars in three chapels facing toward the East. Coptic
monks and nuns are renowned for their austerity of life, and their
almost fierce zeal in fasting and in prayer, and in Coptic churches
the services are sometimes so long that the worshippers, who are almost
perpetually standing, use crutches for their support. In their churches
there always