How Mar-Mina's Marble City was discovered… A gripping story

Watani

21-06-2025

Tomorrow, 21 June 2025, Copts celebrate a feast of Mar-Mina, the feast of consecrating the first church in his name. Watani marks the event by posting this story about the discovery of his tomb and marble city in Egypt's Western Desert.
On 20 May 2025, Pope Tawadros II paid a visit to the archaeological site of Abu-Mina, some 60km southwest Alexandria. The sprawling 1000-feddan site [one feddan is equivalent to 4,200sq.m] is home to the tomb of the Coptic saint, the Martyr St Menas (285 – 309AD), commonly known as Mar-Mina; also the magnificent 4th / 5th-century cathedral, churches and city that were built around the tomb, in addition to the modern-day monastery of Mar-Mina.
Together with the Pope were Alexandria Governor, Major General Ahmed Khaled; Egypt's Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Sherif Fathi; Director of UNESCO Regional Office in Cairo Nuria Sanz, and high ranking officials from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).
The purpose of the visit was to inspect the project being implemented in the area to reduce the level of the groundwater, a result of agricultural projects in the area, which threatens the archaeological remains at the site.
Abu-Mina's had been placed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1979, but was in 2001 moved to UNESCO World Heritage in Danger, owing to the detrimental effect of the rising groundwater. Coordinated efforts between the Egyptian government—including the ministries of irrigation and agriculture—and Mar-Mina Monastery have been ongoing to reduce the underground water, but further work still needs to be done.
For full details:
Saving Mar-Mina's splendid place
The martyr
An officer in Diocletian's army, the young man who was to become St Menas was posted to Phrygia in Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Brought up as a Christian, he refused to participate in the massacre of Christians ordered by the emperor Diocletian in 303 and fled into the desert, where he lived devoutly for five years. But he saw in a vision that he had to die for his faith; he was tortured and martyred in 309.
Tradition has it that the martyr's followers intended to take his remains from Phrygia to Alexandria by ship, then on camelback to his birthplace at Pentapolis in the Libyan Desert. At a spot southwest Alexandria, however, the camel knelt and refused to move on, so this was taken to be Mar-Mina's preordained burial site and there he was laid to rest. The incident explains his famous depiction with two kneeling camels in his icon.
Over time, the burial site was forgotten till a local goatherd discovered that a sick goat made an extraordinary recovery after bathing and drinking from a spring at this spot. Word went out about the miraculous spring and other cures occurred, the most famous involving a princess who had suffered from a long sickness. The princess had a vision of St Menas asking her to dig in a nearby spot where she would find his body. The relics of the saint were dug out, and pilgrims began to flock to the site for the blessings of the saint and to drink the healing water.
Not long afterwards a church was erected at the site which became a sacred place of pilgrimage and around which a splendid city sprung. The site was later called Abu-Mina by the Arabs, 'Abu' being a corrupted version of the Coptic 'Ava', meaning saint.
Magnificent city, splendid basilica
The focal point of the city, later dubbed Abu-Mina's, was the small tomb of St Mena. A small compartment was built above the tomb in the early 4th century then, in mid-4th century, the first church was built above that cabin. In the early 5th century a spacious, magnificent church was built on the eastern side by order of Emperor Arcadius who spared no effort or money in decorating and ornamenting it with precious marble, mosaics, and exquisite paintings. A town grew around the church to minister to the pilgrims, replete with churches, elegant houses, inns, bathhouses, water cisterns, and shops and markets. The central basilica was so admired by ancient historians; they called it 'the greatest and most beautiful Egyptian church', 'a masterpiece of Christian art', 'Delight of the people of Egypt', 'the Christian Acropolis', and also the 'Marble City'. The beautiful pavements of the city and its coloured marble columns were unequalled. Emperors Constantine I (312 – 337), Arcadius (395 – 408) and Zeno (457 – 474) left their mark on the city.
Pilgrims would take home tiny terracotta flacons, known as ampullae, stamped with an image of St Menas and the two kneeling camels, filled with healing water from the famous spring.
The city itself had several channels to transport water from the holy spring to large pools, reservoirs, baths and halls dedicated to receiving patients. The neighbouring land soon turned into fruitful vineyards and orchards in the middle of the desert.
The prosperity was brought to a halt by the breakdown in law and order that followed the collapse of Roman rule in North Africa. Tribesmen overran the site, its pilgrims fell victim to robbers, and the beautiful gardens were abandoned. Historian Abul-Makarem wrote that the church stood till the 13th century, then was claimed by the desert sand.
The search
Mar-Mina's tomb and his Marble City remained ruined for centuries, interred in the sand. It took until the 20th-century for them to be unearthed. Their discovery makes for a gripping story indeed.
The wonderful discovery was made by a German archeological expedition that came from Frankfurt to Egypt in 1905 under the leadership of the German biblical archaeologist Monsignor Karl-Maria Kaufmann (1872 – 1951).
It should not have been too difficult for Monsignor Kaufmann to find the city; others who preceded him had cast light on the location. The ruined site had more or less retained its name, albeit in a corrupted form; it was known by the local Bedouin as Boumnah.
In 1824, the French explorer Jean-Raymond Pacho unknowing passed through the site on his way from Abu Sir to Qasr al-Qatagi, 35 km south of Abu-Mina. He crossed what he described as ruins of an old village that included, under piles of stones, two columns that went back to the Roman era.
Other explorers and travellers followed, finding ostraca or pottery made in what they assumed to be the ruined city of Abu-Mina. These relics were studied in Alexandria by the Archaeological Society of Alexandria, founded in 1893. In 1905, the Society's Ralph Carver concluded for the first time that there must be a link between the names Boumnah and Abu-Mina. He decided to go to this Boumnah, took the desert train to Bahij station, and from there walked south for two hours under guidance of one of the Bedouins until he reached a place full of rocks, stones, pottery, and cast bottles. He wrote a report on 26 August 1905, attaching various paintings and drawings of what he had found.
Sea of rubble
Among the founders of the Archaeological Society of Alexandria was Italian archaeologist Evaristo Breccia. He had been exploring the Western Desert since 1904 in search of Abu-Mina when he met the German expedition led by Monsignor Kaufmann. And here Breccia wrote: 'We had to humbly withdraw before the expedition led by Monsignor Kaufmann who came to Egypt to pursue the same goal, because his expedition possessed material capabilities and medical preparations that I did not have.'
Yet Monsignor Kaufmann and his men faced great difficulties. They had trekked the desert on camelback for 30 days from Wadi al-Natroun to the site of Abu-Mina, then camped there in tents placed at their disposal by the Egyptian government, and which flew the Egyptian and German flags. Monsignor Kaufmann
In his book 'The Holy City in the Desert', published in German in 1914, Monsignor Kaufmann gave a precise description of what he saw: 'We went around the area and saw a sea of rubble, and there was almost no stone on top of another. The heaped hills of rubble were distinguished by their gray colour from the yellow surrounding desert. When we stood on the highest rubble hill, we saw that the destruction of the place had been so complete that its rediscovery was a work that needed great courage.'
For months, the expedition dug out ruin after ruin, but failed to find what they were looking for. Kaufmann fell ill. Stressed and disappointed, the men thought about returning to their country in despair. They said farewell to their Bedouin guide, but then a Bedouin boy came with an intact flacon of St Menas, and gave it to Ewald Falls, Monsignor Kaufmann's assistant, saying that he had found it in one of the ancient pottery ovens near the place they had been digging.
Discovery!
The expedition went back to working with zeal. Finally, one of the Bedouins guided them to a spot they called the Caliph's Castle, which was a huge heap of stones. Excavation beneath it revealed the remains of the church built by the Coptic Pope Theophilus (385-412 AD). This great discovery was made on 7 July 1905, after which the expedition returned to Alexandria to organise its work to resume excavation in November that same year. They unearthed the 5th-century marble city which Monsignor Kaufmann dubbed the 'Christian Acropolis'.
In 1906-1907, the German expedition discovered the tomb of St Menas and the grand church, also the cemetery and its church, and the plantations. In 1907, they discovered the baths, and found the huge bathhouse next to the church. They also found many scattered wells, houses, and shops that confirmed the image of the site as a fully fledged, magnificent marble city. Monsignor Kaufmann dubbed it the 'Christian Acropolis'.
It took till the 1960s, however, for Abu-Mina to regain its status as a pilgrimage site. In 1959, St Pope Kyrillos VI became Patriarch of Alexandria; he held a deep seated interest in honouring Mar-Mina by building a modern monastery on the grounds of Abu-Mina. He was able to accomplish that in collaboration with the Mar-Mina Society for Coptic Studies in Alexandria which was founded in November 1945. Today, the modern Mar-Mina Monastery boasts two churches that house the relics of Mar-Mina and St Pope Kyrillos, and all the amenities of a thriving monastic site, in addition to excellent visitor facilities. It stands a few kilometres distance—a safe archaeological buffer—from Abu-Mina site.
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Mina Badie Abdel-Malek is member of Mar-Mina al-Agaibi Society for Coptic Studies in Alexandria, and Professor of Engineering at Alexandria University .
Watani International
21 June 2025 Comments
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