An international team of archaeologists has revealed a “remarkable” early Christian church in Egypt, thought to be more than 1,600 years old, that contains a set of “surprising” human remains.
The ruins of the religious structure were uncovered during ongoing excavations at the archaeological site of Trimithis, a once-flourishing ancient city near the western edge of the Dakhla Oasis in Egypt’s Western Desert—part of the wider Sahara.
Although it has earlier origins, Trimithis (modern Amheida) was an important settlement during Egypt’s Roman period, which began in 30 B.C. when the territory became part of the Roman Empire and lasted until the Muslim conquest in A.D. 641. The large archaeological site includes well-preserved buildings—including a main temple, bath facility and richly decorated villa—as well as inscriptions and artifacts.
The early Christian church, dated to around the mid-fourth century, is one of the “exciting” discoveries revealed by excavations at the site, David Ratzan with New York University’s (NYU) Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) said in an article on the NYU website. The excavation of the church, which features the oldest known funerary crypts ever excavated in Egypt, was completed in 2023, and is now the subject of a new ISAW monograph.
“It is really in the second generation of purpose-built churches [constructed] in the mid-4th century but one of the oldest to be excavated in Egypt,” Ratzan, director of the Amheida Excavations, told Newsweek. “Christians had been gathering in churches of various sorts since the 1st century. And we have by the 3rd century indications of dedicated church buildings—instead, say of homes or rented rooms.”
But the sort of church found at Trimithis, which is of the “basilica” type, only started being built in the beginning of the fourth century with the reign (and patronage) of Roman Emperor Constantine, who ruled from A.D. 306-337. Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity and he is known for actively promoting the religion within the empire.
“While there certainly were churches before Constantine, who ended the imperial persecutions, we have relatively little sense of what they looked like,” Ratzan said in the NYU article. “In any case, churches in this style, based on the Roman basilica, a type of public building dedicated to administration and law, date back only to a generation or two before the church at Trimithis, since only then did Christians feel sufficiently confident to build proudly public spaces of worship.”
The church has suffered severely from erosion, such that all that remained when archaeologists uncovered it was the ground floor, the crypts (underneath the eastern end of the church), the foundations and the remains of a set of attached rooms to the south.
“Luckily some of the ceiling of the church, which had collapsed, was preserved on the floor. From this we were able to determine something of the decorative program of the church,” Ratzan told Newsweek.
Surprisingly, archaeologists have discovered the remains of 17 people buried in the church—including women and children. This is unusual given the generally patriarchal nature of Roman society in the fourth century.
“It was hard to know what to expect with respect to who might be buried here, since so few churches from this period survive, and even fewer have been fully excavated. It is safe to say, however, that almost nobody would have guessed that of the 12 people buried in the crypts, at least seven would be female, with eight of the 17 being children or adolescents, including infants,” Ratzan said in the NYU article.
“While there is good evidence that women were important in early Christianity, it was still surprising to find such a concentration of women and children buried in this church, since Roman Egypt was a patriarchal society.”
The discovery of the crypts is significant insofar as it provides the earliest known example of a church seemingly built to hold burials in Egypt.
“We are still studying the human remains, and it is possible that in the future we may have more information about who these people were and how they might have related to each other,” Ratzan told Newsweek.
The structure is also “remarkable” because the remains of the decorated ceiling give us an indication as to how early churches in Egypt were decorated. Furthermore, this church, which shows many typical elements of Christian architecture of the period, is at the very edge of the Roman Empire.
“It is a testament to the ways in which this local community was connected to and participated in wider imperial culture,” Ratzan said.
The archaeological site of Trimithis extends across more than 40 hectares—the equivalent of roughly 75 football fields.
“My very first impression when I first saw the site itself was, ‘Whoa—this place is huge! What is a city of this size doing all the way out here? The only thing more surprising than its remote location is its sheer size,” Ratzan said in the article.
Many questions remain about Trimithis, particularly what could explain a settlement of this size in such a remote desert location.
“Who lived here? How did its ancient inhabitants not just survive but thrive in the middle of one of the driest places on Earth?” Ratzan said. “And why, by all indications, did Trimithis and dozens of other sites in Dakhla and Kharga—the oasis to the east, closer to the Nile Valley—contract dramatically in the late 4th or 5th century?”
In addition, there is a good reason to believe that the church was not the only one in Trimithis, which must have been home to a significant Christian community by the mid-fourth century.
“For now, though, this is an exciting discovery and one that we expect will make a significant impact on the discussion of the history of early Christianity,” Ratzan said in the NYU article.
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