Deir el-Muharraq and Asyut

The Most Important Coptic Pilgrimage Site In Egypt: Tradition Holds That The Holy Family Lived Here For Six Months And That The Altar Stone In The Church Of The Virgin Is The Oldest Christian Altar Still In Use Anywhere, And A Quarter Of A Million Pilgrims Come For The Feast In High Summer · Al-Qusiya, Asyut

Deir el-Muharraq is the most important Coptic pilgrimage site in Egypt, and outside Egypt almost nobody has heard of it. The tradition is specific: the Holy Family, fleeing Herod, came this far south and lived here for six months and ten days, and the Church of the Virgin at the foot of Mount Qussqam is built over the cave they sheltered in. Its altar stone is held by the community to be the oldest Christian altar still in use anywhere in the world. Whether or not you take any of that as history, what it has produced is unmistakable: a walled monastery with a keep, a large modern cathedral alongside the ancient church, and a summer feast that draws something in the order of a quarter of a million pilgrims to a field outside Al-Qusiya. Asyut, fifty kilometres south, is the largest city in Middle Egypt and the region's rail and road hub, with rock tombs at Meir and a Nile barrage. This is a part of Egypt where foreign visitors are rare and sometimes escorted; check current advice for your own nationality before travelling.

Below Mount Qussqam outside Al-Qusiya, 50 km north of Asyut on the west side of the valley, Al-Qusiya, Asyut, Egypt

A working monastery receiving visitors in daylight, free, with donation boxes, and the ancient Church of the Virgin opened by a monk or a caretaker rather than standing open all day - so ask on arrival rather than wandering in. FASTING PERIODS RESTRICT VISITING on dates that move with the Coptic calendar, and the monastery is at its most crowded and least suited to a casual visit during the high-summer feast, when the pilgrim numbers run into the hundreds of thousands. Dress is enforced at the gate: shoulders and knees covered, a scarf for women inside, shoes off in the sanctuary. Asyut is three to four hours north of Luxor by train or road and about five south of Cairo; from Asyut or Al-Qusiya the monastery needs a taxi or a hired car, as there is no public transport to the gate. Foreign visitors on these roads are sometimes assigned a police escort.

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