Egeria and Peter the Deacon on the Site of Clysma (Suez)

Abstract

The Itinerarium of the peripatetic nun Egeria is a unique memoir of a European woman's pilgrimage to biblical sites in Egypt and the Middle East in the latter part of the fourth century.1 Apart from philological interest in the date and authorship of the text and in Egeria's Latinity, the primary value of her account is that it is a first-hand report of her travels from place to place recording personal experiences and information passed on to her a variety of individuals (guides, monks, bishops, soldiers, et al.). There is, unfortunately, only one surviving manuscript of her account, which is incomplete, chiefly lacking the initial stage of her journey as well as several other passages of textual material. However, Egeria's Itinerarium appears to have been known in several European countries between the seventh and twelfth centuries, making it possible to recover in some respect a part of the lost text for the early years (381-383) of her journey. This gap was essentially provided Peter the Deacon, a monk from Monte Cassino, who wrote a book in 1137 on the holy places, Liber de locis sanctis, cribbing some material from Egeria's memoir and from Venerable Bede's de locis sanctis (c. 702-703). 2 The focus of this paper is on Clysma (near present-day Suez) and questions raised evidence for the site that is contained in Egeria's account and supplemented Peter the Deacon's description. If we accept the view of several authorities that Peter the Deacon's text is an accurate although impersonal summary of Egeria's words,3 or that it allows us to fill in a good deal of what is missing from Egeria's own text,4 or that e gives us a good idea of what Egeria has seen between the years of 381 -383, 5 we would then have to view his information as legitimate historical evidence for the late years of the fourth century. With respect to Clysma, this writer will argue that Peter the Deacon's account, in the face of contrary evidence, is in no way an accurate historical descr pt on of the site during the fourth or the fifth century. To accept any of it as Egeria's ipsissima verba or even as a paraphrase of them, can only give a misleading and distorted picture of condition a Clysma during that time. The fourth-century text, as we have it, opens with Egeria's approach to Mount Sinai (c. 383). After several days of being entertained monks at the Holy Mountain and shown biblical sights mainly associated with the Exodus, she left for her return journey to Jerusalem, traveling via P(h)aran and the western coast road to Egypt, going by the same route and the same stagingposts to Clysma,6 where she rested from the rigors of desert travel. Although Egeria had seen the land of Goshen when she had been to Egypt for the first time {qua primitus ad Egyptum fueram), she wanted to see where the children of Israel had been on their way from Rameses to the Red Sea. They arrived there at the place now