WASHINGTON: American researchers at Brigham Young University have said they have uncovered evidence that shows Christianity first spread to Egypt two centuries before previous estimates. The discovery came as the BYU researchers were digging on the edge of the Fayoum oasis about an hour south of Cairo. According to Biblical tradition, Joseph and Mary came to Egypt for a period when Jesus was still a young child in order to escape the crackdown in Palestine at the hands of Herod. Some 50 years later, St. Mark is believed to have established the church in Alexandria. But the researchers say Christianity didn't take root in the Land of the Pyramids for another three centuries. Now BYU diggers have found a necropolis in which the dead were buried in layers of graves, leaving a record of how burial practices changed between 350 B.C. and A.D. 500. Archaeologist C. Wilfred Griggs and his colleagues burrowed into the cemetery and documented shifts in burials that he believes point to early Christian influences. “All the burials we encountered were ‘head east' burials, but, when we got to the bottom of the shaft, we found them ‘head west',” the Salt Lake Tribune quoted Griggs, a BYU professor of ancient scripture who has led the university's Egypt excavations since 1981, as saying. “What happened? Did someone miss the program? I became aware we had a pattern here. “Right around the end of the first century, the burial started changing. Was there a mass migration or revolution? It probably resulted from a change of religion, and the only change of religion was the arrival of Christianity,” he stated. BYU crews have located 1,700 graves, which yielded numerous artifacts that Griggs suspects are the oldest-known pieces of Christian iconography in the form of crosses, fish and figurines. His theories could upend, or at least complicate, accepted ideas for how Christianity spread through Egypt during the first centuries after Jesus' crucifixion. “If it's true, that would be interesting, but I would be cautious,” warns Francois Gaudard, a researcher at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute who specializes in Coptic studies. While his ideas have generated skepticism, Griggs says no one has offered an alternate interpretation of the Fag el-Gamous finds. BM
