The use and capacity of early churches in Dakhla Oasis

This article addresses questions pertaining to capacity, access, and the use of space in the context of early Christian places of worship. The available archaeological evidence helps shed light on the development of Christian architecture, in particular the adoption of the basilica type, and the organization of the liturgical space. However, equally important are questions about how many people a church could hold and how the laity and clergy were arranged in the space. In an attempt to elucidate some of these questions, this article places the archaeological evidence, in particular two case studies of fourth-century churches recently discovered in Dakhla Oasis (located in Egypt’s Western Desert), in dialogue with late antique liturgical sources from Egypt. The latter not only offer a wide body of information on early Christian liturgical practices, but also give us a glimpse on how Christian assemblies congregated, sat, and moved within their liturgical spaces in Late Antiquity. Such an interdisciplinary and comparative study can be useful in reconstructing a more comprehensive picture of early Christian worship in Late Antiquity, even in the most isolated regions of the Roman empire

Archaeology · Art · Visual arts · African history and culture analysis · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology · Archaeology and Historical Studies · History