Codex Aretinus 405 contains the only surviving copy of Egeria’s Travels.
Lameiro, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Egeria’s Travels is an early Christian pilgrimage account by an educated and well-traveled woman from the Roman province of Galicia (in modern Spain) that tells of her journey to and around the Holy Land. Dating to the late fourth century, this work is a rich source of geographical and historical information.

The account is unfortunately incomplete and survives in a single manuscript, now in the municipal library of Arezzo, Italy. Egeria’s work appears on pages 31–74 of Codex Aretinus 405, which was produced in the 11th century in the monastery of Monte Cassino. It is debatable how faithfully this copy transmits the original work. The parchment manuscript lacks the beginning and ending as well as four pages in the middle. Due to this state of preservation, the original title has not survived. The customary title derives from the work’s content and is variously given as Itinerarium Egeriae (Egeria’s Travels), Peregrinatio ad Loca Sancta (Pilgrimage to the Holy Sites), or Peregrinatio Aetheriae (Pilgrimage of Etheria).

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The author’s identity is similarly modern conjecture. Addressing her readers repeatedly as dominae (“ladies”), dominae animae meae (“my dear ladies”), and dominae sorores (“sister ladies”), she clearly was a woman—either a nun writing for fellow nuns or a noblewoman writing for her intimate circle of pious friends. The first scholar to publish the manuscript, G.F. Gamurrini, identified her with the fourth-century noblewoman Silvia di Aquitania. She was later identified with Galla Placidia (388–450), a daughter of the Byzantine emperor Theodosius I, and with “the religious person” whom the seventh-century hermit Valerius of Bierzo (in Galicia, Spain) praised, in a letter to his fellow monks, for her pilgrimage to the Levant. Since different manuscripts of this letter provide several different spellings of her name, she has been variously known as Aetheria, Etheria, and Egeria, the last of which is currently most widely used.

Although the surviving manuscript of Egeria’s Travels dates from the 11th century, the work was likely composed in the late fourth century. From internal evidence (e.g., historical events and names of local figures), scholars infer that Egeria traveled for three years sometime between 381 and 384. This early date makes her account the first Western report about the Christian communities in the Levant, and possibly the first female author from Spain. The text is written in a peculiar type of Late Latin, which was the original language of the composition. A blend of classical and colloquial constructions reflecting the style of the Latin Bible, Egeria’s style is simple and clear, though with numerous dialectal and regional idiosyncrasies.

Divided into two parts with epistolary features, the work possibly originated as two letters. The first one reports on four trips: (1) to Mt. Sinai and back to Jerusalem, via the land of Goshen (1–9); (2) to Mt. Nebo and the traditional tomb of Moses (10–12); (3) to Carneas in Idumea (13–16); and (4) the return voyage to Constantinople, with stops at Edessa, Charris, Tarsus, Seleucia, and Chalcedon (16–23). The second part concerns the liturgical rites Egeria observed in Jerusalem (24–45), the catechesis prior to and after baptism (45–47), and the anniversary celebrations of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (48–49), after which the text breaks off. It has been suggested that the lost parts of Egeria’s Travels contained descriptions of the holy buildings of Jerusalem, a trip to Egypt, Samaria, and Galilee (with a hike up Mt. Tabor), and details of an excursion into Judea.

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Egeria’s Travels was popular through the Middle Ages, and later works are known to have used Egeria’s account, including the 12th-century Liber de locis sanctis (Book About the Holy Sites) by Peter the Deacon, who apparently had the intact Codex Aretinus at his disposal.

The most recent English translation of Egeria’s Travels, with the facing Latin text, is Paul F. Bradshaw and Anne McGowan’s Egeria, Journey to the Holy Land (Brepols, 2020). The best critical edition of the Latin original appeared in the series Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, vol. 175 (Itineraria et alia geographica, pp. 37–90; Brepols, 1965); a different Latin edition (from Sources Chrétiennes, vol. 296) is available online.

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This article was first published in Bible History Daily on May 1, 2024.

The post Text Treasures: The Pilgrimage of Egeria appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The monastic complex atop Mount Nebo grew in the fourth–sixth centuries around where Moses was buried according to the Bible. From Davide Bianchi, A Shrine to Moses (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2021), p. 174; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.

This uncertainty, however, did not discourage early Christians, who determined that Moses died and was buried on Mt. Nebo, in what is today central Jordan. Known locally by its Arabic name, Siyagha, Mt. Nebo began attracting Christian worshipers in the early fourth century, when Christianity was acknowledged in the Roman Empire as a lawful religion. Its connection to Moses and the Exodus narrative brought in Christian monks, who wanted to live and pray near where Moses was buried, as well as pilgrims, who wished to commemorate the prophet and contemplate God’s promises to his people.

The monastic network of Mt. Nebo included other Christian sites, such as ‘Uyun Musa, Khirbat al-Mukhayyat, Ma‘in, and Madaba. Biblical Archaeology Society.

In her article “Moses and the Monks of Nebo,” published in the Summer 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Debra Foran outlines the early history of Christian pilgrimage to and around Mt. Nebo and describes some of the central monuments in the region. “A network of monastic communities extended from [Mt. Nebo] to the east as far as the desert fringes and to the south until the Wadi Mujib (the biblical Arnon River). This development was likely connected to the growing monastic movement across the southern Levant during the Byzantine period, exemplified by the Judean Desert monasteries near Jerusalem.”

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Assistant Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Foran also delves into related questions of how the monks of Mt. Nebo interacted with the local population. “Interwoven into this monastic landscape was an active and prosperous lay population that catered to its ascetic neighbors. The rural population also served the many pilgrims traveling through the region.”

One of the earliest Western pilgrims to the Holy Land was a noble woman named Egeria (or Etheria), who in the 380s visited the alleged place where Moses was buried. In her Latin itinerary, she wrote:

So we arrived at the summit of that mountain, where there is now a church of no great size on the very top of Mount Nabau. Inside the church, in the place where the pulpit is, I saw a place a little raised, containing about as much space as tombs usually do. I asked those holy men [i.e., monks] what this was, and they answered: “Here was holy Moses laid by the angels, for, as it is written, no one knows his burial place, and because it is certain that he was buried by the angels. His tomb, indeed, where he was laid, is not shown to this day; but as it was shown to us by our ancestors who dwelt here, so do we show it to you, and our ancestors said that this tradition was handed down to them by their own ancestors (XII, 1–2).

Northern baptistery of the Mt. Nebo Byzantine basilica features a baptismal font (front) and elaborate mosaics dating to c. 530 C.E. Photo by flowcomm, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The small church that Egeria visited was rebuilt and expanded in the fifth century to include several side chapels and a baptistery (see photo), all of which were decorated with intricate mosaics or paved with marble tiles arranged in geometric patterns. This Byzantine basilica was recently excavated, and a new church (termed the Memorial Church of Moses) was built over it to protect the archaeological remains and provide visitors with the visual experience of the sixth-century church. During the restorations in 2013, an empty tomb was discovered in the center of the nave of the basilica. Foran writes:

Located at the highest point of the mountain, this tomb initially may have been part of an earlier shrine dedicated to Moses that was later incorporated into the basilica and sealed under its floor. The monastic community of Mt. Nebo possibly regarded this tomb as a burial monument dedicated to Moses, and it could have been the one that Egeria and her fellow pilgrims saw in the fourth century.

Where was Moses buried? This empty tomb in the center of the basilica on Mt. Nebo is likely the traditional site of Moses’s burial, around which the first monks settled. From Davide Bianchi, A Shrine to Moses (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2021), p. 64; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.

Several other monastic sites around the alleged burial site of Moses at Mt. Nebo flourished during the Byzantine period (fourth–seventh centuries). Among them were ‘Uyun Musa (the Springs of Moses)—a perennial spring in the valley to the northeast of Mt. Nebo that also offered caves for Christian hermits (see photo). There is also Khirbat al-Mukhayyat, which is a hill about 2 miles southeast of Mt. Nebo that has at least three churches dating from the sixth and seventh centuries. This site is the focus of current explorations within the Town of Nebo Archaeological Project, directed by Foran.

Caves at ‘Uyun Musa (2 mi. northeast of Mt. Nebo) provided shelter to the Christian monks who came to live and pray near where Moses was buried. From Davide Bianchi, A Shrine to Moses (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2021), p. 166; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.

To further explore the Christian monuments of Mt. Nebo, read Debra Foran’s article “Moses and the Monks of Nebo,” published in the Summer 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Subscribers: Read the full article “Moses and the Monks of Nebo,” by Debra Foran, in the Summer 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This article first appeared in Bible History Daily on July 20, 2022

The post Where Was Moses Buried? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.