Kellia II: L'ermitage copte QR 195: Ceramique, inscriptions, decors.

• Author: MacCoull, L.S.B.
• Position: Book Review

Kellia II: L'ermitage copte QR 195: Ceramique, inscriptions, decors. By PASCALE BALLET, NATHALIE BOSSON, and MARGUERITE RASSART-DEBERGH. Fouilles de l'IFAO, vol. 49. Cairo: INSTITUT FRANCAIS D'ARCHEOLOGIE ORIENTALE, 2003. Pp. vi + 525, illus. (paper).

Since the mid-1960s the Franco-Swiss rescue mission has put a third apex on the triangular map of Coptic monastic archaeology: alongside Nitria and Scetis (Wadi Natrun), the Kellia site has yielded the most contextualized knowledge of monastic settlement layout and life in Egypt during Christian Late Antiquity (see "Kellia," in Coptic Encyclopaedia [New York: Macmillan, 1991], 5: 1396-1410). The complex known by its modern Arabophone name of Qusur al-Ruba 'iyyat (itself one of five within Kellia), and in particular the hermitage designated QR 195, is of special interest owing to its largely late date (N. H. Henein and M. Wuttmann, Kellia II: L'ermitage copte QR 195: Archeologie et architecture [Cairo, 2000], 243-44). From a first phase before the Muslim conquest, the greatest part of its continuing construction covered the century and a half between A.D. 650 and ca. 800. This dating, derived from ceramic evidence, shows that Egyptian Christian monastic life continued to expand and to have ample resources at its disposal in Umayyad and Abbasid times, a phenomenon not imaginable from literary sources alone. (And yet life at the site appears to have ended "brutalement" [p. 42], perhaps by fire.) The 2003 French Institute volume presents that ceramic evidence in detail, along with the painted decorations and more than 150 inscriptions.

Of the ceramics found at Kellia, amphoras were found in the walls placed horizontally on their sides for storage and retrieval, for dehumidification, and, interestingly, for acoustic amplification. Other storage vases were placed vertically in niches; still others, for various uses including food preparation and storage and herbal fumigation, were sunk below floor level (pp. 231-36). The origins of the ceramic items as well as their typologies are researched in depth by Ballet. Before 650 it seems that pan-Mediterranean late Roman wares were imported into Alexandria and thence redistributed to the rest of Egypt, including Kellia. After that, local products and those from further east come to predominate (pp. 205-7). Glass is also found, both a few vessels and some used in windows (cf. pp. 114-38).

In the earlier phase of life at Kellia, residence by...