From that time there arose in the whole country, and soon after in the neighbourhood of the Upper Nile, innumerable churches and convents, and the caverns of the desert were turned into troglodyte dwellings, for an ascetic hermit population.[99] The Theban Necropolis afforded above all places convenience for this new requisition. The tombs of the kings, as well as the private ones, were used as Christian cells, and soon bore on their walls traces of their new destination. In a tomb at Qurna, there is still a letter from St. Athanasius, archbishop of Alexandria, to the orthodox monks of Thebes, preserved on the white stucco in handsome uncials, but unfortunately in a very fragmentary state. They were particularly fond of turning ancient temples into Koptic churches or convents. In the temple of Medînet Habu (city of Habu). the largest church appears to have been erected. Immense monolithic, granite columns, cover the floor of the second court in great numbers; in order to make room for the choir, an old Egyptian column, on the north side, has been removed; and from the rooms transformed into priests’ cells there has been a row of doors broken in the outer wall. The adjoining convent, Dêr el Medînet, surnamed “the townley,” was erected near the Ptolemic temple, behind the hill of Qurnet Murrâi. Another church stood in the temple of Old Qurna, and to it belonged most probably the convent Dêr el Bachît, which lies on the hill of Qurna. The ruins of a third convent cover the space of the temple of the Queen Numt-amen, in the corner of the valley of Asasif, and bear the name of Dêr el Bahri, the northern convent.