Opuscula 9 (2016) is now available for purchase and free download at bokorder.se. Also available at Amazon.com, Amazon.de, Bokus.com and Adlibris.com. Excavations at the Monastery of St Antony at the Red Sea By Jesper Blid, Fr Maximous El-Antony, Hugo Lundhaug, Jason Zaborowski, Meira Polliack, Mengistu Gobezie Worku & Samuel Rubenson Abstract This paper discusses the results from recent archaeological investigations at the Monastery of St Antony in Egypt, including the remains of a number of building phases predating the current church, locally produced pottery, and manuscript fragments written in Coptic, Arabic, Hebrew, and Ge’ez. Introduction St Antony is, according to tradition, the early 4th-century institutor of Christian monasticism, and his monastery, located some 30 km from the Red Sea coast and about 125 km south of Suez, is regarded as the oldest still-inhabited monastery. As for the chronology of the actual material formation of a monastery at the site, Antony must have settled here sometime before 337, if we are to believe the biography written by Athanasius of Alexandria shortly after his death. Several sources from the end of the 4th century mention the disciples of Antony staying at his desert retreat after his death in 356. Medieval sources refer…