Egypt is revered as the home of the famous Desert Ascetics, who first embraced a monastic life and established homosocial communities on the borders of their urban centres in the Nile Valley. Regarded as angels and warriors, the wisdom of the Desert Ascetics formed part of the oral and literary tradition of wonder-working saints whose commitment to asceticism was legendary and inspirational. This book grounds the mythologized stories of Desert Ascetics in the materiality of the desert, demonstrating the closeness of the desert, the connections between non-monastic and monastic communities, and the exciting insights into lived monasticism through the archaeology of monasticism in Egypt.
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