Of the six monasteries under this proposal, me and my family visited three, two of them in Wadi el-Natrun - St. Bishoy Monastery (Deir Anba Bishoy) and Monastery of Romans (Deir al-Baramus) and one in the Eastern Desert (Monastery of Saint Anthony). The Syrian Monastery, right next to Bishoya, is only open on Fridays, so we were not able to visit it.

As the previous reviewers have already described the monasteries of Wadi el-Natrun, I will concentrate on the less accessible St. Anthony Monastery. To the monastery leads a great and completely empty road connecting Bani Suwayf with Sokhna.

The place was founded by St. Anthony, the first of the Desert Fathers, in the third century AD and is the first monastery in the world, existing in the same place to this day! St. Anthony went into the desert to devote himself to contemplation and meditation, but his fame attracted crowds of young men who wanted to follow in his footsteps. To frame the newly formed community, St. Anthony developed the world's first monastic rule. St. Benedict and St. Hieronimus, drawing up their own monastic rules and creating the first monasteries in Western Europe, took their ideas from St. Anthony. The establishment of monasteries had a deep meaning after Christianity was made the state religion of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the fourth century - it was no longer necessary (and there was no opportunity) to die for the faith, so monasticism filled the gap in …