Book Note | Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity

David Frankfurter. Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.

Over the last thirty years, scholarship on Coptic texts has increasingly grappled with the complicated intersection of textual and material culture. Confronted with literary texts that seek to erase, neglect, or overshadow the colorful and pervasive realities of Egyptian traditions, scholars have turned to archaeology, art history, sociology, and anthropology to re-examine the cultural milieu which gave rise to Coptic literature. In Christianizing Egypt, David Frankfurter continues this trend. He examines the standards by which scholars should dissect the process of Christian conversion in Egypt and investigate the continued presence of traditional Egyptian religious behaviors and practices. To do so, he draws on a plethora of monastic, apocalyptic, and magical texts, as well as amulets, paintings, statuary, textiles, and architecture, such as the Temple of Hathor at the complex of Denderah (pp. 233–45). The difficulty of employing such a diverse range of sources for analysis does not go unrecognized. “It is a delicate matter,” Frankfurter notes, “to generalize on the sources of symbols and iconographic strategies as they appear on materials like lamps, texts, and stonework, since all the archeological evidence shows a predominately local reception and interpretation of such symbols (p.151).” Notably, he seeks to redefine how scholars approach the study of religious conversion in late antique Egypt. For him, Christianity represents not a specific cultural or religious identity, but rather “an ongoing process of negotiation—of syncretism (p.6).” Frankfurter’s work, divided into seven chapters along with a preface and afterword, focuses on the continued negotiation of traditional Egyptian practice and forms with emerging Christian religious behaviors.

Starting with Chapter 1, Frankfurter takes on the difficult terminology and methodological perspective of syncretism. Drawing on anthropological frameworks, in particular Claude Lévi-Strauss, he eschews the notion of closed, coherent theological systems. Instead, his study relies on the premise of “Christianization as bricolage [which takes] place in particular spaces involves, alternately, the domestication of institutional symbols (like liturgical formulations or crosses) and the revitalization and sanctioning of traditional practices (like festivals or iconographic forms) (p.15).” In these ways, he imagines “…Christianization and the perpetuation of indigenous religious traditions together as syncretism (p.15).” Having established these premises, Frankfurter goes on to declare that his work will focus on ‘social sites’ wherein religious agents, such as women, craftsmen, or monastic scribes, engage in different levels of activity and of personal engagement with a veritable “laboratory of religious symbols” (p.24). Here, Frankfurter’s study provides an invaluable approach to the complex comparative framework and scholarly discourses necessary to navigate the religious world of Egypt (p.32).

Having introduced his foundational premises, Frankfurter proceeds to dedicate the remaining chapters to applying his framework to various social worlds. Chapter 2 examines Christianization in the domestic sphere. He begins with the archeological evidence of terracotta figurines of women and their proliferation in various religious shrines. Frankfurter illustrates how these objects represent one example of continued Egyptian traditional practice applied in Christian settings. For him, “…the independent and assertive creativity, that these figurines imply…embraces Christian landscape and shrine culture in one dimension while negotiating needs and traditions in another (p.36).” His demonstration of the idiosyncratic combinations of local religious traditions and prominent Christian practices describes how the domestic sphere became a locative and cultural setting for the perpetuation and development of new religious traditions. As a result, how concern for the maintenance and continuation of the family meant the domestic expanded well beyond simple households into shrines and religious places. Evidence for the accumulation of Christian names (p.38) or the use of Shai Lamps (pp.41,55), as well as combinations of magical texts and Christian scriptural and liturgical language (p.61), demonstrate how familial and domestic concerns motivated individuals to seek purveyors of religious power, such as holy men, scribes, and religious craftsmen, and/or sites, such as saint’s shrines. Frankfurter’s study imagines how domestic concerns supersede the boundaries between public and private spheres and even pagan and Christian ritual.

Chapters 3 and 4 turn to the indelible images of holy men and the legacy of saints’ shrines. In both cases, Frankfurter insists that it is not the shrines or the holy men themselves that are of interest but rather the fact that the construction and the maintenance of sainthood and holy sites associated with saints required the negotiation of “local traditions and broader ideologies (p.72).” In adopting saints and their shrines, supplicants’ privileged new sets of religious practices and behaviors often tied to cultural traditions. Chapter 3 explores how the holy man functioned as a source of advice, protection, and oracular inspiration, all needs that existed well before the rise of Christianity. Similarly, Chapter 4 asks how an emerging sacred landscape again rested on age old human interests. The entreaties and material practices of supplicants stand as evidence in the continuing evolution of religious expression. For Frankfurter, local religious practice and individual agency converge, so that traditional forms of religious propitiatory behaviors—dancing, votive figurines, animal sacrifice, etc.—lend authority and reify emerging Christian sites and the holy men associated with them (p.114–38).

In the same vein, the treatment of craftsmen (Chapter 5) and scribes (Chapter 6) demonstrates how institutional, either monastic or ecclesiastical, Christian practice continually negotiated with local material practice or, in the case of scribes, drew upon diverse media frequently without censure. As Frankfurter points out, there is little to no evidence that these practices, especially the textual ones, were subject to ecclesiastical censure. Instead, numerous inscriptions and artistic specimens attest to both the perceived efficacy of apotropaic items that drew upon Egyptian traditional symbolism and the use of a wide variety of materials in the creation of a Christian practice. The study explains how workshops and monastic laura became locations for “…the perpetuation and innovation of traditional forms (p.181).”

The final chapter turns to the legacy of the Egyptian landscape. Frankfurter describes how local landscapes continued to link traditional cultic practices and beliefs with Christian topography. The largest legacy Frankfurter highlights is the liminality and the establishment of boundaries for landscapes of dread. For example, Egyptian gods, no longer remembered in local culture could potentially remain as specters who haunted the Egyptian landscape, like the god Bes (p.242). Contrary to narratives of Christianization privileging complete domination or cultural erasure, societal memory preserved the power of certain images, territorial features, and supernatural beings.

Perhaps, the only site for pause in Frankfurter’s work occurs in places where local religious traditions continue in seeming defiance of ecclesiastical and monastic mandates. For example, Frankfurter mentions the continuation of certain burial practices, such as the alignment of bodies in cemeteries on the east/west axis (p.182) and mummification. As he points out, “entire villages and monasteries maintained mummification practices without any apparent reflection on or from, religious ‘identity’ (p.178).” In particular, for his evidence of mummification, he draws upon the Life of Antony and the Coptic Story of Joseph the Carpenter to discuss how mummification represents ongoing local traditions. However, the former source is not a simple commentary on the practice of mummification but a lightly veiled chastisement of Egyptian treatment of the dead. The text is clear: Antony should not receive such a burial nor should anyone else. “It is neither lawful,” Antony chastises, “nor at all reverent to do this [mummify] (Life of Antony 90).” To mummify in this text would be a violation of Antony’s or any monk’s sacrosanctity. Moreover, other texts, including the Coptic Life of Antony 91–2, make clear that mummification and even marked burial of monk’s bodies should be avoided. Thinking of mummification as a locally based craft (p.178) allows Frankfurter to account for continued existence of mummifications. However, hagiographical sources attest to this practice as contested in monastic settings at least. So much more than a simple form of perpetuation and perhaps innovation, the continued practice of mummification may indicate points of cultural defiance.

Altogether, Frankfurter’s study offers a methodology for navigating the complex identities evident in Late Antique Egypt. His deft use of material culture and less often used literary sources provides a model for integrating the diverse array of extant historiographical evidence into broader discussions of late antique religion. Possibly, the most interesting aspect of the study remains its implications for the training of future scholars of late antiquity. The insistence on Christian conversion as an ongoing process dissolves artificial boundaries, and instead it challenges readers to debate anew the sorts of sources necessary for understanding early Christian literature. Additionally, if late antique literature represents a set of discourses which constantly require the mediation between traditional cultural practices and the presence of new ideological concepts, then Frankfurter’s study reminds us of the precarious rhetorical position of authoritative Christian voices. For every declaration of Christian impropriety or negligence, texts reveal the delicate compromises shoring up an ever-evolving form of Christian religious practice. As Frankfurter reminds us in his afterword, “Christianization amounts to an ongoing and historically contingent process without an endpoint (p.257).”

Candace Buckner is a Ph.D. Candidate in Ancient Mediterranean Religions who specializes in the study of early Christianity at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.