Christianizing Egypt

Christianizing Egypt is a thoughtful and exceptionally valuable study, with implications that go far beyond either Egypt or Late Antiquity (a period here framed as roughly 300–700). The book challenges the basic vocabulary we use when discussing such concepts as “conversion” and even “religion.” Frankfurter begins by quoting some charms and healing spells written presumably in the seventh century, and unquestionably by people we would describe as Christian. Nevertheless, the texts focus on Jesus-Horus, son of Isis, and we would naturally label them as intriguing “pagan survivals.” Frankfurter then swoops in on that last phrase, with the determination of the hawk of Horus himself, to ask exactly what modern mythological system of our own we are applying to those ancient realities. To speak of pagan survivals assumes an organization and consistency within a primitive religion we can call Paganism, with its structures, creeds, and hierarchies. That religion was then allegedly replaced by a new religion called Christianity, which ordinary believers encountered as a single package, with all its hierarchies, liturgies, and texts. Sadly, though (in this vision) a few relics of that old faith crept through to pollute and subvert the new, to drag it in the regrettable direction of “syncretism.”

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