The area of the Roman fortress of Babylon is entered between two massive Roman towers. In a closely packed huddle of houses is the Church of Abu Sarga, founded in the fourth-fifth century and rebuilt in the 10th-11th centuries. According to tradition the Virgin and Child found refuge here for a month during their flight into Egypt.
The church represents the basic type of the Egyptian-Byzantine basilica of the early period, still favored by the Copts.
It has a nave and aisles, with exposed roof beams over the nave, a raised transept (choir) and galleries in the flat roofed aisles. The side walls of the nave consist of two rows of columns, one above the other, with keeled arches between the columns; the galleries are supported on alternate groups of two columns and a masonry pier. The marble columns, taken from ancient buildings, are used without regard to their diameter or architectural form.
The church is entered by a doorway at the southwest corner. The three original doorways in the west front, now walled up, led into the narthex, which was occupied during services by catechumens (converts under instruction) awaiting baptism. The narthex is divided into three parts by wooden screens. In the middle section is an old piscina, used by the priest for washing the feet of male worshipers on the Feast of the Epiphany; the north section, with a recess, is the Baptistery. The narthex is separated from the nave by another wooden screen. The nave, with an acute angled timber roof, is traditionally reserved for men, while the women sit in the aisles. Steps lead up to the sanctuary and two side chapels, which are shut off by wooden screens, paneled and richly adorned with carvings in wood and ivory. In the sanctuary (heikal) are the canopied high altar and an apse with steps on which the priests used to sit.
Two flights of steps lead down from the side chapels into the oldest part of the church, the fifth century Crypt, and a small vaulted chapel with ancient marble columns separating the nave from the aisles. At the end of the nave is an altar in the form of an Early Christian tomb recess, said to mark the spot where Mary rested with the infant Jesus.
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