This lecture looks at the common activity of cooking and baking to consider how men in monastic communities regulated their day with cooking and baking. Egypt is particularly unique in having the best-preserved remains of Christian monastic remains in the entire Middle East. The settlements document the lives of the largest Christian minority in the Middle East and a history of Christian settlement rarely studied and visited by tourists. The sites reveal a hidden history of a population currently under threat and in need of attention to show how rich Egypt’s history is, in addition to the well-known pharaonic past.

Short bibliography and/or website on lecture topic (for lay reader):

Brooks Hedstrom, Darlene. The Monastic Landscape of Late Antique Egypt: An Archaeological Reconstruction — Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.