Coptic Orthodox Liturgical Chant & Hymnody
The Ragheb Moftah Collection at the Library of Congress
Deserta Aegypti, Thebaidis, Arabiae,
Syriae etc. ubi accurata notata sunt
loca inhabitata per Sanctos Patres
Anachoretas, created by Matthaeus
Seutter. 17??.
Maps Gallery
- Les Deserts d’Egypte (1693)
- L’Ancienne Thebaide (1738)
- Deserta Ægypti (1700-1750)
- Egypt, Arabia Petraea & S. Turkey (1882)
- Egypt, Arabia, Petraea, Abyssina (1885)
- Bartholomew’s New Map of Egypt (1897)
- The Nile Valley including Egypt ... [ca. 1910]
- Bacon’s Excelsior Map of Egypt [1916?]
- General Map of Cairo [1920]
- Cairo & Environs (1925)
- Map of Christian Egypt (1955)
Courtesy of the Library of Congress Geography and Maps Division, this Gallery features some maps of Christian Egypt from the end of the seventeenth century to the 1950s, and general maps of Egypt and Cairo until the 1920s. Much like the presentation Timeline that outlines the rise of Coptic music studies, this Map Gallery briefly demonstrates the growing interest in Coptic Egypt by explorers, historians, Egyptologists and, afterward, by Ottoman, French, and British colonial administrators. In this collection, the earliest map from 1693, Les Déserts d’Egypte, de Thébaïde d’Arabie, de Sirie &c., où Sont exactement Marques les Lieux habitez par les Saincts Pères des Déserts, is a mythic representation of dwellings of hermits and saints in the desert. Later, cartographers strived to capture Christian sites such as monasteries and churches that dotted the arid landscape, the dipping valleys, oases, and the path of the Nile River. In 1916, just a few years before Egypt's nominal independence from Great Britain and the onset of the First World War, Bacon’s Excelsior Map of Egypt, The Nile Basin and Adjacent Countries illustrated the strong colonial presence in Northeastern Africa that was largely dismantled after the Second World War, and by the time Egypt had gained full independence in 1952.
Finally, detailed maps of Cairo, dating from the 1920s, are also included in this Gallery to highlight some of the areas where Moftah lived, worked, and collected Coptic hymns, areas such as Old Cairo, the Giza district, and the Faggala neighborhood where he grew up.
