The little church in which now every Sunday the Theban Christians assemble, lies isolated in the great stony plain south of Medînet Habu. It has an Arabic cupola, and is surrounded by a court and wall. A few days since I went there, as I observed that the black turbans, which are only worn by the Kopts, were going to the chapel in greater number than usual. They were celebrating the feast of St. Donadeos, who founded the church. The service was over; I met the old priest (who lived in, and took care of the church), together with his numerous family. The spaces were covered with mats; they showed me the divisions for the men and the women, the little chapels ornamented with gay carvings, the square fonts for christening, and holy water. Upon the reading-desk lay a large old Koptic book, with sections of the Psalms and the Gospels, and Arabic translations of them; I asked the old man if he could read Koptic; he answered in the affirmative, but said his little boy could do it better than he; his eyes had already become weak. I now seated myself upon the mat, and the whole swarm of big and little yellow-brown children and grandchildren of the old priest squatted round me. I asked the eldest boy to read to me, and he immediately, with great fluency, began, not to read, but to sing, _i. e._ to chaunt in an awkward, grumbling tone. I interrupted him, and requested him to read slowly in his usual voice; this he did with great difficulty and making many mistakes, which his younger brother sometimes corrected over his shoulder; but when I went so far as to ask the meaning of the separate words, he pointed coolly to the Arabic translation, and told me that it was all there, and wanted to read it to me; as to the single words, or the value of the single letters over the sections, he could give no account, and the old man also had doubtless never understood them. I then asked them to show me the rest of the book-treasures belonging to the church, they were immediately brought to me, in a large cloth, tied up by the four corners; it contained some much-read Koptic and Arabic prayer-books. I left a small present for the benefit of the church, and I had already ridden some distance, when one of the boys overtook me, and out of breath, brought me a small holy cake of biscuit, stamped with Koptic crosses and Greek inscriptions, which had to be paid for by a second bakshish. These are the Epigoni, the purest, unmixed successors of that ancient Pharoah-people, who formerly conquered Asia and Ethiopia, and led their prisoners from the north and south, into the great hall of Ammon, at Karnak, in whose wisdom Moses was educated, and to whose priesthood the Greek sages went to school. “_O Aegypte, Aegypte! religionum tuarum solae supererunt fabulæ, aeque, incredibiles posteris, solaque supererunt verba lapidibus incisa tua pia facta narrantibus, et inhabitabit Aegyptum Scythes aut Indus aut aliquis talis, id est vicina barbaria._”[100]