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Murqus Simaika's career, the Coptic Museum he founded in 1908, Mirrit Boutros Ghali's Society of Coptic Archeology (1934), and the perception that Copts were “sons of the pharaohs” provide main narrative threads for this chapter. In the late nineteenth century, Simaika and other Coptic Christian lay reformers, partly inspired by British and American Protestant missionaries, used the Coptic Community Council and the press to challenge clerical control of Coptic endowments, schools, and personal status law. Simaika's museum and—two generations later—Mirrit Boutros Ghali's Coptic Archeological Society highlighted Egypt's leading role in the early centuries of Christianity. Modern Coptic popes, priests, and monks generally trailed Coptic laymen in appreciating either Coptic or pharaonic antiquities. Shortly after Simaika's death in 1944, the acquisition of the Nag Hammadi codices drew international attention to the Coptic Museum. Coptic journalist Salama Musa, on the other hand, emphasized pharaonic and Egyptian national rather than Coptic communal heritage. Coptic scriptures and liturgy, had preserved the latest form of the ancient Egyptian language, and Cairo's school of Egyptology long turned out proportionately more Coptic than Muslim Egyptologists.

This book, drawing on Marcus Simaika's memoirs, explores several important themes in modern Egyptian history, including the causes and consequences of the Coptic Congress of 1911; what happened to Coptic antiquities in the decade between the Coptic monuments being brought under the Committee for the Preservation of Arab Art's (Comité) jurisdiction in 1896 and Simaika's accession to a seat on the Comité; and the politics surrounding the nationalization of the Coptic Museum in 1931. This introduction provides an overview of the founding of the Coptic Museum and the development of Coptic archaeology and heritage studies, shifting balances in the interaction of clergymen and the lay Coptic community, and the evolution of Coptic/Muslim relations. It also considers Simaika's achievements in Coptic archaeology, especially the founding of the Coptic Museum.

This chapter deals with the mention of the area in The History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, also recounting interesting historical events that were witnessed there by the authors of this important historical work. It specifically sheds some light on the monasteries and monks of the Wādī al-Naṭrūn as they are mentioned and described in the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria. It then concentrates on the period of the Fatimids (969–1171 A.D.), which is generally considered one of the periods in which the Coptic community flourished. Next, it presents a number of remarks on the patriarchs Christodoulos and Cyril II, and on what their biographer, Mawhūb, has to say about them and about the monks and the monasteries of the Wādī al-Naṭrūn in their days. It also considers Saint Bishoi, Dayr al-Suryān, Saint John the Little, Saint Macarius, Baramūs, and Saint John Kamā. It is shown that Mawhūb was very much at home in several of its monasteries.

This chapter discusses Marcus Simaika's relationship with the Coptic patriarchs of his time as a member, then vice president, of the Coptic Community Council (Majlis al-Milli) for thirty-nine consecutive years. In his attempts to start a Coptic museum, which needed patriarchal approval, Simaika fought many battles and used much diplomacy and compromise in his dealings with the Coptic hierarchy. The full title of the patriarch, the leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church, is “Pope and Lord Archbishop of the Great City of Alexandria and Patriarch of all Africa on the Holy Orthodox and Apostolic Throne of Saint Mark the Evangelist, Holy Apostle and Martyr, that is in Egypt, Pentapolis, Libya, Nubia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and all Africa.” These patriarchs include Cyril IV, Cyril V, and Yohannes XIX.

This chapter presents a reading of the Arabic Life of Ibrahim al-Fani, a Coptic saint of the fourteenth century. It tells the story of his early life, sufferings, discipleship under Marqus al-Antuni, and death. It discusses the date and purpose of the compilation of the life of that saint, and its literal, religious, and social implications. The Life of Ibrahim offers a glimpse of the Coptic experiences of the period and the distinct viewpoints of the clergy who sanctioned this Life. The text attests to the thriving monastic life during this particular era, when the monasteries of St. Antony and Abu Fana, and others, were filled with monks. This vibrant religious life is in stark contrast to the accounts of abandoned monasteries and destitute monks of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Finally, the Life points to an active Coptic community in Cairo despite the persecutions.