III
IN THE DESERT
Between the Nile and the Red Sea lay the desert
of the Thebaid, and the remote monastery of St.
Anthony is now reached after two days' camel ride
from the station Beni Suef. The desert of Scete
where Arsenius lived—the desert where Philammon
the hero of "Hypatia" learned to be a monk—is
on the Upper Nile. What was Nitria is now Wadi
el Natrun, and is reached by three days' camel ride
from the Pyramids, or via Khatadba, one of the
stations on a loop of the Cairo-Alexandria railway.
The shrines of the hermits are in the hands of the
Copts, a simple Christian people, said to be the
lineal descendants of the ancient Egyptians. The
Coptic Church is an Eastern one, and it is the lineal
descendant of the Church of Egypt that flourished
in the first centuries of Christianity. Only whereas
the Church of Egypt was a brightly living church,
the Coptic Church is going on in a tradition. What
is valuable in the Coptic Church to-day is that it
has slept through many centuries unchanging, that
it has never been rich and pompous, never erudite,