Akhmim: Meritamun and the Church of St. Mercurius

The morning after our visit to the two monasteries we hired a taxi and drove (accompanied by our ever-present police escort--R. even had to have a policeman accompany him when he left the hotel to buy cigarettes!) across the Nile to Akhmim, the location of both the statue of Meritamun and the Church of St. Mercurius.

For some more info about the Meritamun statue you can visit: the SCA's page and/or the page on Egyptian Monuments' blog. There's not much information on the Church of St. Mercurius on the Internet, but you might want to read about the saint himself. A book which has some lovely photographs (including one of the ciborium which I did not see!) is The Churches of Egypt: From the Journey of the Holy Family to the Present Day by Gawdat Gabra and Gertrud J.M. van Loon (AUC Press, 2007).

Rogério provides a sense of the scale of the statue!

TOMORROW: Al Azhar Mosque in Cairo