The Holy Family in Egypt
The Holy Family in Egypt is the Coptic tradition that Jesus, Mary and Joseph, fleeing Herod as the Gospel of Matthew records, crossed Sinai, passed through the Delta and travelled up the Nile as far as the spot where Deir al-Muharraq now stands, near al-Qusiya in Assiut, before returning to Palestine. The Coptic Orthodox Church keeps the Entry of the Lord Christ into Egypt on 24 Bashans, which is 1 June. The Egyptian state treats the route as a national tourism project.
Key facts
- 24 Bashans, which is 1 June
- Matthew 2:13 and 2:20, read with Isaiah 19:1 and Hosea 11:1
- 20 on the Patriarchate's list; 25 sites in the state's project
- Deir al-Muharraq, six months and ten days by tradition
- Between one and four years, as historians reckon it
The tradition
The Coptic Encyclopedia's entry on the flight into Egypt, by Bishop Gregorios, gives the biblical basis: a message to Joseph in a dream (Matthew 2:13), which the church reads with Isaiah's oracle of the Lord riding on a swift cloud to Egypt (Isaiah 19:1), and a second message bringing the family home, in fulfilment of "Out of Egypt I called my son" (Hosea 11:1). The event is sung in the Coptic Doxology and in the Difnar, which cites the swift cloud under 24 Bashans, and the Synaxarion records the itinerary. The encyclopedia calls the length of the stay difficult to determine: historians waver between one and four years.
The witnesses to the Muharraq tradition, as the encyclopedia's entry on the monastery sets them out, are a sermon attributed to the patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria (384 to 412), which credits him with a vision of the Virgin revealing that the monastery's principal church, where she and her son stayed, was consecrated by Jesus himself; the History of the Patriarchs, which the entry calls the most ancient source and which names Qusqam among the places where the Holy Family stayed but not the monastery; and Abu Salih the Armenian, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, whom it calls the clearest source.
The route
The Patriarchate's website lists 20 stations: al-Farma, Tal Basta, the Mahmah (now Mostorod), Belbeis, Minya Samannud (now Samanoud), Sakha, Wadi el-Natrun, Matariya, Coptic Cairo, Maadi, Deir al-Jarnous (Maghagha), Bahnasa, Samalout (Jabal al-Tair), Ashmonin, Dayrout, Qusqam (al-Qusiya), Mir, Muharraq Monastery, Drunka Mount, and the return. The encyclopedia's reconstruction runs broadly the same way, from Pelusium (al-Farama), the last station in Sinai, through the Delta and Wadi al-Natrun to Heliopolis and al-Matariya, with the tree still called the Tree of the Virgin Mary, then across the Nile near Maadi and into Upper Egypt as far as Mir and Qusiya; on the return, it says, the Synaxarion has the family lodge in a cave beneath the spot where the Church of Abu Sarga now stands in Old Cairo.
The Patriarchate's page calls Deir al-Muharraq one of the most important stations and gives the stay there as six months and ten days. The State Information Service puts the monastery about 12 km west of al-Qusiya and 327 km south of Cairo. On the return the tradition adds Jabal Durunka, south-west of Assiut, where the encyclopedia records an annual festival, 7 to 22 August, in commemoration of the Holy Family's visit.
The feast
The Coptic Church keeps the feast on 24 Bashans, which the State Information Service gives as 1 June in every year. On 1 June 2022 Pope Tawadros II presided over the feast at the Church of the Virgin Mary in Sakha, in Kafr el-Sheikh, and said, as Agenzia Fides reported, that from then on he would celebrate it each year at a different church on the route.
The state's project
The State Information Service describes a national project to revive the path of the Holy Family, under presidential directives, to develop 25 archaeological sites along a route it gives as 3,500 km there and back, from North Sinai to Assiut. A pilot phase took in five sites in Cairo and Beheira: the Church of Abu Serga in Old Cairo, the Church of the Virgin in Maadi, and the monasteries of the Syrians, al-Baramus and Anba Bishoy in Wadi al-Natrun. The first phase also covered Jabal al-Tair, al-Muharraq and Durunka, and the second Tel Basta, Sakha and Samanoud.
The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities says it allocated 60 million Egyptian pounds to restore the sites on the path. Its announcements carry no publication date. They record Samanoud in Gharbia as the first point developed, with work opened in a January the page gives no year for, and the Church of the Virgin in Sakha as the second to open.
Rome and the route
On 4 October 2017 Pope Francis greeted an Egyptian delegation at his general audience and blessed an icon of the flight into Egypt. Agenzia Fides reported that the Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, an office of the Vicariate of Rome, was to send a delegation that December to assess the route for its pilgrimages. In June 2021 the State Information Service described the route as embraced by Pope Francis as part of the Roman Catholic pilgrimage route, with eight of the 25 stops chosen as its main stops.
The sycamore now shown at Matariya as the Tree of the Virgin is planted, replacing an earlier tree, as Wikipedia records.
Pope Francis greets an Egyptian delegation at his general audience and blesses an icon of the flight into Egypt.
Pope Tawadros II presides over the feast of the Entry into Egypt at the Church of the Virgin Mary in Sakha.
Sources
Stories on this topic
No story carries this topic yet.