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Pilgrimage of Etheria

Egeria, tr. McClure and Feltoe, 1919

d4

4. A Résumé of the Journeyings

The narrative, as we now possess it, opens in the middle of a sentence at the point where the pilgrim had already reached the megalithic remains at Kibroth Hattaavah in sight of the mountain range of Sinai. It may reasonably be assumed that the missing part contained the account of her journey from her Western home to Constantinople,¹ from thence through what is now Asia Minor to Antioch² and on to Jerusalem, the events of her stay there (apart from the description of the services which she gives later on, pp. 45 ff.) and her journey from thence towards Mount Sinai by way of Clysma (now Suez) and Faran (or Paran). She had just before probably ascended “the mountain of Faran,” where the hands of Moses were uplifted during the battle with Amalek (Exod. xvii. 10 ff.), and came down again into the plain (see p. xxii below). By this time the mountains lie only four miles distant, and, passing along the wide, flat valley that lies between, they soon arrive at their foot on the western side. Sir C. W. Wilson has no doubt that the peak which she calls the Mount of God and made a point of ascending was Jebel Musa (the traditional site, 7363 ft. high), though it would actually be impossible for her to see what she was told she saw from the top (p. 6): like so many tourists she was misinformed. She went also to what she was told was Mount Horeb, where Elijah’s cave was,³ and there she specially mentions “the very earnest prayer”⁴ with which they made the oblation. Thence they descended on the eastern side to the place of the Burning Bush (where the present convent of S. Catherine is), and after visiting Taberah and several other sites she returned down the valley again to Faran, and so back after two days’ rest, by a toilsome route across the desert to Clysma, where she was again glad to rest for a while.

When she had been in Egypt before, she had seen something of Goshen as well as of the Thebaid and Alexandria, but she was now desirous to explore the route of the Exodus more carefully. She found it was no easy journey of four stations across the desert to what she calls “the city of Arabia” (identified by experts with the Thou of Roman official documents, or possibly Bubastir), and the district was apparently at the time unsettled and in military occupation. However, she was allowed an escort of soldiers, and set out. The route lay past Epauleum (Pi-hahiroth), where there was a Roman garrison, then through two other forts, Migdol and Baal-zephon, and onwards by way of Etham, Succoth, Pithom (another fort) to Heroopolis (then only a large village), on a branch of the Nile and within the borders of Egypt. The remainder of the journey into Goshen⁵ was then accomplished. It took her past Rameses, which was only four miles from her goal, “the city of Arabia,” which she reached on the eve of the Epiphany in time for the services. Here she sent back her military guard, as she was now on the high road from the Thebaid to Pelusium, and would have no difficulty, when she resumed her journey towards Palestine. At Rameses (Saft el Henneh), which was once a great city, she found nothing but ruins remaining except two great statues cut out of “one great Theban stone” and an ancient sycomore famous for its healing virtue, which they called “the Tree of Truth”⁶ according to the “bishop of Arabia,” who had come out to meet her there. His account also was that Pharaoh had burnt the place to the ground in anger at the Israelites’ escape.

Etheria’s route lay for two days right through the land of Goshen along the banks of the Nile, and she was greatly struck with the fertility and beauty of this district (p. 17).⁷ In an article by Miss Amelia Betham Edwards, which appeared in Harper’s Magazine, October 1886, we read the following interesting comments on this: “This was before the submerging of the ‘field of Zoan’ by lake Menzaleh. Mas’oudy, the Arab traveller and historian of the tenth century, thus describes it: ‘The place occupied by the lake was formerly a district which had not its equal in Egypt for fine air, fertility and wealth. Gardens, plantations of palms and other trees, vines and cultivated fields met the eye in every direction. In short, there was not a province in Egypt except the Fayum, to be compared with it for beauty. This district was distant about one day’s journey from the sea.... But in the year 251 of the era of Diocletian (A. D. 535) the waters of the sea flowed in and submerged that part of the plain which now is called the Lake of Tennis, and every year the inundation increased, so that at last it covered the whole province.’” We know that the late Mrs. McClure considered this an additional corroboration of her conviction that Meister’s date for the pilgrimage was wrong: and it is certainly a remarkable sidelight on the narrative, if the date and the other statements are to be relied on.

Between “the city of Arabia” and Pelusium on the sea coast she mentions only one place that she passed through, viz. Tathnis, which is taken as more likely to be the ancient Tahpanhes (or Daphno)⁸ than Tanis (Zoan), but the two places were not far apart, and the relevancy of the extract just given is not affected.

Without further description of her journey Etheria arrived once more in Jerusalem.

She now proceeds to describe another expedition she undertook from there, viz. to make the ascent of Mount Nebo in the land of Moab. This time she was accompanied by several of the clergy and monks. They crossed the Jordan by Jericho and, passing through Livias, came to the mountain, and having reached the top, were much delighted with the panorama spread before them, particulars of which she gives. They then returned to the Holy City. Her next tour was through Jericho again and then northwards up the Jordan valley until they came first to Salem, where they visited Melchizedek’s church and city; then to Aenon, Thisbe (Elijah’s native place) and the brook Cherith, and so, crossing the Jordan, into the Ausitis (Uz), when they made the buryingplace of Job at Carneas (or Dennaba) the final point in their journey. The church had been “built by some tribune,” but left unfinished. Here again Etheria refers to the thankfulness and joy with which she and her companions made their communion at the special oblation, which the bishop offered at her request before they returned once more to Jerusalem.⁹ But there is a gap in the MS. in the middle of the account of this tour. After leaving the brook Cherith they continued up the valley until they saw on the left towards Phoenicia (on the N. W.) “a great and very high mountain which extended,” and there the gap begins, and when the story is taken up again we are at Job’s burial-place. Valerius (chap. ii.), mentions several mountains as visited by her, which are omitted in our fragments: Faran, where Moses prayed with hands uplifted, but that no doubt she described before our fragments begin (p. 1); Tabor, the scene of our Lord’s Transfiguration; Hermon, where the Lord was wont to rest Himself with His disciples, and the mountain where our Lord taught His disciples the beatitudes, etc. The shape of Tabor, which is conical and not very high, does not suit Etheria’s description. One would think, therefore, that it was part of the Hermon range that she saw, and that by the time she saw it, she had turned east to cross the Jordan.

The time had now come for Etheria to return to her own country, but still full of energy and desire to see as much as she could, she determined to make a big detour from Antioch, which would lie in her direct course by land to Constantinople, and visit from there several important and interesting places in N.-W. Syria and Mesopotamia before turning her face westwards. Accordingly, when she left Antioch she went first to Hierapolis, and from there reached the great river Euphrates, which she can only compare with the Rhone for its width and strong current. They crossed it in a ship and came to Bathnae (in Osrhoene), and from thence arrived at Edessa, the chief goal of her desires, where she stayed three days and had a busy and very interesting time. Matters of interest are involved in this portion of the narrative, which deserve attention.

Etheria expressly says she went to Edessa to pray at the martyrium of S. Thomas the Apostle, whose whole body is there. And when she arrived there, she and her companions went at once to the church and the martyrium of S. Thomas. She found the great and beautiful church had been rebuilt in a new form (nova compositione). This the Emperor Valens had finished in 372 (Socr., Hist. Eccl. iv. 18). Her language seems, though not at all certainly, to imply that the martyrium was still separate from the church. The Chronicle of Edessa says the tomb was transferred to the new church in 394, when Cyrus was bishop, who had succeeded Eulogius on his death in 388. This again seems to corroborate the date we have accepted for her pilgrimage.

She visited many other martyria in the town, but makes no specific allusion to the famous likeness of our Lord, though it is said to have been held in veneration at least as early as the middle of the fourth century.

She does, however, describe two other striking likenesses which she was taken to see, though that can hardly be more than a coincidence — viz. the marble busts or images (archiotepa) of King Abgar and his son Magnus¹⁰ in the royal palace (p. 33).

Etheria gives us likewise an account that will be read with interest of what she was told about the letters of Abgar to our Lord and His answer. This account differs from that of Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. ii. 13), in mentioning the promise of Christ that no enemy should ever enter the city. Eusebius knows nothing of such a promise of immunity, though later historians relate it (see Bernard’s note, p. 36), and it was known to Ephraem Syrus (about 390). She also mentions that she had copies of these letters at home. Meister points out that Rufinus’s translation of Eus. Hist. Eccl. into Latin was not complete before 398 at the earliest, from which he argues that copies would not be known in the West so soon as the date assigned by Gamurrini and adopted by ourselves. But there may have been other sources or authorities, Greek as well as Latin, besides Eusebius; nor was Etheria, perhaps, quite so ignorant of Greek as is usually thought, and her copies may have been in that language after all.

From Edessa she went on to Haran and stayed there two days, one of them being April 24, the festival of S. Helpidius (see note on p. 37).¹¹ She would very much have liked to penetrate farther east to Nisibis, and then on to Ur of the Chaldees; but the bishop dissuaded her on the ground that that district was now in the hands of the Persians, no longer the Romans (see p. 39). She was content, therefore, to go only six miles out and see the well from which Jacob watered Rachel’s flocks, at a place called Fadana (the Paddan-Aram of Gen. xxviii. 2). She then returned to Antioch and pursued her westward journey, through Cilicia, till she came to Tarsus. Here she made another detour by way of Pompeiopolis (or Soli) and Corycus (both on the sea coast), in order to pay a special visit to the tomb of S. Thecla in Isauria, where she met to her great delight her dear friend Marthana, whom she had known in Jerusalem (see note on p. xxix). Coming back to Tarsus she made her way without further delay by Mopsocrene (which she calls Mansocrenae) and under Mount Taurus through Cappadocia, Galatia and Bithynia, until she arrived at Chalcedon, and stopped there for the famous shrine of S. Euphemia, and finally arrived at Constantinople.¹² There she visited the Church of the Apostles (p. 44) and many other of the martyria with which the city abounded: and, still indefatigable, tells her beloved sisters that, while she is preparing this narrative for them there and also, it seems, drawing up her account of the services and rites which she had witnessed at Jerusalem, she will not actually leave for home till she has crossed into Asia once again and visited the martyrium of S. John at Ephesus. If anything further remains to tell and her life is spared, she will relate it in person or in another letter. And so she brings her story to an end, which investigation proves to be as veracious as it is undoubtedly vivacious throughout.¹³

Notes

For this see § 3 above.
See p. 43. It is not easy to fit in her visit to Alexandria and the Thebaid: perhaps she had taken ship from Tarsus or Seleucia, the port of Antioch for Alexandria, and reached Palestine from there, or had she gone straight to that part of Egypt, when she left Jerusalem and was returning from it for her visit to Sinai when we find her where the narrative now begins? The latter alternative seems on the whole the more likely, though either of them will account for the expression used on p. 6 that “the Parthenian sea” which she was told she saw from Mount Sinai “leads to Alexandria.” No doubt she called to mind her sea-trip then, and was not too critical of her guides’ assertions.
No doubt the site which is now shown as such. In the sixth century Jebel el Deir, a little further off, was identified with Horeb.
orationem impensissimam, a phrase which reminds us of the ἐκτενὴς ἱκεσία in the Liturgy of S. Chrysostom: cf. Valerius, chap. ii, cum omni exultatione et letitia inter crebra orationum preconia salutaris Deo obtulit hostias.
Only sixteen miles according to Etheria; but it should be twenty-six according to Wilson.
“E. Naville in Goshen, pp. 12, 20, quotes inscriptions on the monuments of Saft, in which the sycomore tree is mentioned. We see that in the fourth century the tradition was yet surviving, though clothed in Christian garb” (Bernard, p. 22 n.). Mrs. McClure has left a note among her papers to this effect: “Certain sycomores on the verge of the desert are still venerated. The Fellahs put vases of water under them. If asked for what use, the answer is: For passers by and pigeons.”
Cf. Valerius, chap. i.: singularum provinciarum magnitudines, uberrimas fertilitates atque perspicuas... describens.
See note on p. 17.
Cf. Valerius, chap. ii.: cibo Verbi Dei refecta, infatigabiliter agens gratias Deo carpebat iter intrepida.
According to Smith, Dict. of Christian Biog., s.v. Abgar, several Edessene princes bore the name Ma’nû.
The ascete of this name described by Palladius (Laus. Hist. chap. xlviii.) is apparently a different person.
She had taken the same route along the great Roman high road on her way out from Constantinople, more than three years before, and on that occasion also had come to know the shrine of S. Euphemia (p. 43).
Valerius’s characteristic summary, for all its loose grammar and rhetorical exaggeration, is worth quoting: totius mundi itinera non quassabat, maria procellosa ac flumina ingentia non conclusit, montium immanitas diraque asperitas non imminuit, gentium imbiarum truculentissima atrocitas non perterruit (chap. iii.).