Desert Ascetics of Egypt

Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom is the Myra and Robert Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Associate Professor of Christian Studies at Brandeis University. She worked at the Monastery of John the Little in Wadi Natrun, Egypt, as the Chief Archaeologist and is currently the Senior Archaeological Consultant for the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project.

The real gift of Hedstrom’s book ... comes when she moves away from the familiar stories that general readers can access readily enough. After asking how reliable the stories are – “And is reliability necessary?” – she sets out to describe “the actual lived experience of desert life.” She does this by generous use of other literary and documentary sources, and archaeology. The picture she paints is fascinating, and rather than ruining or underminingthe power of the sayings and stories, she makes the lives of these men and women even more admirable.

• Chapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: Desert Ascetics as Early Christian CelebritiesChapter 3: What Did the Desert Ascetics Teach and How Did They Live?Chapter 4: The Problem of a Saintly Reputation: Antony and AthanasiusChapter 5: Other Desert Ascetics and Other SourcesChapter 6: Grounding the Desert Ascetics in ArchaeologyChapter 7: Archaeology of Place: Where Desert Ascetics LivedChapter 8: Monastic Archaeology and Monastic ThingsChapter 9: Conclusion: Reassembling the History of Desert Ascetics