Christianity on Thoth's Hill

Abstract

The Roman city of Amheida stood on a terrace wrapped around a hill (Plate 1). On this hill once stood the Temple of Thoth, which we can trace back to 800 BCE with certainty, to the New Kingdom with probability, and perhaps even earlier. We must confess that as scholars interested in late antiquity we had great hopes for this temple when we began to excavate it in 2005. We thought that carefully excavated it might tell us about just when it ceased to be a working temple and what, if anything, happened to it after that. No in situ remains of the temple itself were found, only partly because the area has been severely disturbed by this later human activity. Our excavations have now uncovered hundreds of decorated or inscribed temple blocks, when fragments are included. We have found a few traces of interest which show that Christianity was not absent from the hill in the fourth century. It is these that form our subject here.