The pilgrim Egeria, in her Itinerary, records two statues in Lower Egypt, said to be of *Moses (Old Testament prophet and lawgiver, S00241) and *Aaron (first High Priest, brother of Moses, S01427), and a health-giving tree said to have been planted by the patriarchs. Written in Latin during Egeria's journey to the East, probably in 381-384.
E07941
Literary - Pilgrim accounts and itineraries
Egeria
Egeria, Itinerary 8.1-4
8.1 De Arabia autem ciuitate quattuor milia passus sunt Ramessen. Nos autem, ut ueniremus ad mansionem Arabiae, per media Ramesse transiuimus: quae Ramessen ciuitas nunc campus est, ita ut nec unam habitationem habeat. Paret sane quoniam et ingens fuit per girum et multas fabricas habuit; ruinae enim ipsius, quemadmodum collapsae sunt, in hodie infinitae parent. (2) Nunc autem ibi nichil aliud est nisi tantum unus lapis ingens thebeus, in quo sunt duae statuae exclusae ingentes, quas dicunt esse sanctorum hominum, id est Moysi et Aaron; nam dicent eo quod filii Israhel in honore ipsorum eas posuerint. (3) Et est ibi preterea arbor sicomori, quae dicitur a patriarchis posita esse; nam iam uetustissima est et ideo permodica est, licet tamen adhuc fructus afferat. Nam cuicumque inquomoditas fuerit, uadent ibi et tollent surculos, et prode illis est. (4) Hoc autem referente sancto episcopo de Arabia cognouimus; nam ipse nobis dixit nomen ipsius arboris, quemadmodum appellant eam grece, id est dendros alethiae, quod nos dicimus arbor ueritatis. Qui tamen sanctus episcopus nobis ramessen occurrere dignatus est; nam est iam senior uir, uere satis religiosus ex monacho et affabilis, suscipiens peregrinos ualde bene; nam et in scripturis Dei ualde eruditus est. (5) Ipse ergo cum se dignatus fuisset uexare et ibi nobis occurrere, singula ibi ostendit seu retulit de illas statuas, quas dixi, ut etiam et de illa arbore sicomori.
‘8.1 Four miles from the city of Arabia is the city of Rameses, and on our way to the waystation of Arabia, we travelled right through it. The city of Rameses is now a level site without a single dwelling, but it is still visible, and once it had many buildings and covered a huge area. Even though it is ruined, its remains are still vast. (2) The only thing there now is a great Theban stone, a single piece out of which rise two huge statues. They are said to represent holy men, Moses and Aaron, and they say that the children of Israel set them up in their honour. (3) There is also a sycamore tree there which is said to have been planted by the patriarchs. Though it is now extremely old, and thus small, it still bears fruit, and people who have something wrong with them pick its twigs, which do them good. We learned this from the holy bishop of Arabia, and it was he who told us that the Greek name for this tree is Dendros Aletheias or, in our language, the ‘Tree of Truth’. This holy bishop was kind enough to meet us at Rameses. He is now an old man, of a godly life since the time he became a monk, and an approachable man, who is good at welcoming travellers and also very knowledgeable about God’s scriptures. (5) He very kindly took the trouble to meet us there, showed us everything, and told us about the statues of which I have told you, and the sycamore tree.’
Text: Franceschini and Weber 1965, 48-49.
Translation: Wilkinson 1999, 117, lightly modified.
Other (mountain, wood, tree, pillar)
Use of ImagesPublic display of an image
Non Liturgical ActivityPilgrimage
Appropriation of older cult sites
MiraclesMiracle after death
Healing diseases and disabilities
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesWomen
Ecclesiastics - bishops
Source
Egeria's work survives in a single eleventh-century manuscript, copied probably at Monte Cassino, which lacks both its opening and its close (where she might have told us something about herself). Consequently even her name is a little uncertain, though she was almost certainly 'the most blessed Egeria', whose dedication and devotion on pilgrimage was praised in a letter written in the mid-seventh century by Valerius of Bierzo (or Vierzo, near Léon in north-west Spain). She was unquestionably a woman of some means (given her ability to travel for several years) and she belonged to an association or community of religious women, since her work takes the form of a letter to these women sent from Constantinople during her journey home, and since she addresses them periodically throughout her account: in Itinerary 3.8, for instance, she asks these dominae venerabiles sorores, 'ladies, venerable sisters', to pay particular attention to her description of Mount Sinai. Exactly where she travelled from is unknown, though it was certainly somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean in the far west of Europe: in 18.3 she compares the flow and size of the Euphrates with the Rhône, which she presumably crossed on her journey; in 19.5 she was greeted by the bishop of Edessa as having journeyed de extremis porro terris, 'from the far ends of the earth'; and Valerius of Bierzo (who was certainly better informed than us) describes her as extremo occidui maris Oceani litore exorta, 'coming from the Ocean's western shore' (Gracia 1910, 393-394). It is therefore certain that she came from the western seaboard of the Atlantic; probably from Galicia, since Valerius was from near Galicia and he is likely to have selected her to write about because he saw her as a compatriot.Her work is a detailed, and highly informative, account of her pilgrimage, and it is a great pity that much of it is lost - what survives opens, in mid-sentence, with an account of her visit to the holy sites of Sinai and on to the Egyptian delta, but she tells us that this was her second visit to Egypt (and that on her first visit she had travelled as far south as the Thebaid and as far west as Alexandria), and she had certainly already spent much time in the Holy Land. After reaching Egypt, she headed back to Jerusalem, and from there made two journeys out: the first eastwards to the Jordan and Mount Nebo; the second a long journey up the Jordan valley to Lake Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee), before striking East to Carneas, to visit the grave of the Old Testament patriarch Job. Some time after returning to Jerusalem from this second expedition, 'since it was already three full years since my arrival in Jerusalem, and I had seen all the places which were the object of my pilgrimage' (Itinerary 17.1, Wilkinson 1999, 113), Egeria started for home, but from Antioch took a long detour eastwards into Mesopotamia, to Edessa and Carrhae. Returning to Antioch, she then crossed Asia Minor to Chalcedon (but not before again detouring, to Seleucia and the shrine of Thecla), and so to Constantinople, from which she despatched the account of her travels. Although heading home, she still planned to visit Ephesus and the shrine of John the Apostle and Evangelist at Ephesus. Although much of Egeria's text is missing, it was available in the early twelfth century to Peter the Deacon, a monk at Monte Cassino, when he compiled a work about the Holy Land, and, from Peter's text it is possible reconstruct the parts of her journey that are now lost (see Franceschini and Weber 1965, 93-103; Wilkinson 1999, 179-210).
Egeria, whose enthusiasm and energy appear to have been boundless, visited mostly biblical sites, but she was also interested in monasteries and martyr shrines (for instance detouring to visit Thecla's at Seleucia). The second part of her Itinerary contains a description of the Easter liturgy in Jerusalem (which has no references to the cult of saints). Thanks to the places, persons, and buildings which are mentioned by her, her travels can be dated with some confidence to the two last decades of the 4th century. A more exact dating, generally accepted, is based on the observation by Devos (1967) that 384 was the only year in this period in which it was possible to arrive in Carrhae (in Mesopotamia) for the feast of St Helpidius (23 April) having spent Easter in Jerusalem, which Egeria tells us she did on the first leg of her journey home (having already told us that she had spent three years in the Holy Land).
As with all the pilgrim texts from the Holy Land, it has been difficult to decide what to include, and what to exclude from our database, focused as it is on the 'cult of saints'. We have necessarily excluded the vast number of sites associated exclusively with the life and miracles of Jesus, and have, of course, included all obvious references to cult sites of Christian saints: their graves, churches, and references to important places in their lives, such as their place of martyrdom. A problem, however, arises when our pilgrims write about sites associated with figures from the Old Testament, since in time many of these certainly acquired Christian cult, but it is generally impossible to tell whether our pilgrims regarded these figures as saints in the Christian tradition, whose power and aid they might invoke, or whether they record the holy sites associated with them through a broader and looser biblical curiosity and veneration. The compromise position we have taken with regard to these Old Testament figures is to include all references to places associated with them where our Christian writers record miraculous occurrences or where there was a church or oratory, and also all references to their graves (though with these latter there is often no explicit reference to Christian cult).
(Bryan Ward-Perkins, Robert Wiśniewski)
Discussion
The precise location of 'Rameses' is unknown, but it was certainly in the western delta. Egeria evidently encountered two massive Egyptian statues, which the local Christians (including their bishop) believed were statues of Moses and Aaron. It is impossible to tell whether Egeria's repeated use of phrases like 'which they say are' implies a degree of scepticism or uncertainty.Bibliography
Text:Franceschini, A. and Weber, R. (ed.), Itinerarium Egeriae, in Itineraria et alia geographica (Corpus Chistianorum, series Latina 175; Turnholti: Typographi Brepols editores pontificii, 1965), 27-90.
Text, French translation and commentary:
Maraval, P., Égérie: Journal de Voyage (Itinéraire), Sources Chrétiennes 296 (Paris: Les éditions du cerf, 1982).
English translation and commentary:
Wilkinson, J. Egeria's Travels (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 3rd edition, 1999).
Dating:
Devos, P., "La date du voyage d'Égérie", Analecta Bollandiana 85 (1967), 165-194.
Hunt, E.D., "The date of the Itinerarium Egeriae", Studia Patristica 38 (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 410-416.
Further reading:
García, Z., "La lettre de Valérius aux moines de Vierzo sur la bienheureuse Aetheria", Analecta Bollandiana 29 (1910), 377-399.
Maraval, P., Lieux saints et pèlerinages d'Orient, (Paris: Les éditions du cerf, 1985).
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00241 | Moses, Old Testament prophet and lawgiver | Moyses | Certain | S01427 | Aaron, first High Priest, brother of Moses | Aaron | Certain |
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