Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Book of Revelation
Not on view
The library at the Monastery of Saint Shenoute (White Monastery) was one of the largest in medieval Egypt. Presumably connected to the monastery’s church, it once held a collection of more than one thousand codices made in scriptoria across Egypt. Over the past two centuries, these books have been dismembered and dispersed among Western and Egyptian collections.
Some of the most significant holdings include the writings of Saint Shenoute himself. His works are primarily divided into two groups, the Canons and the Discourses. With some exceptions, the Canons offer rules related to the governance of Shenoute’s Federation, while the Discourses, such as the one shown here, compile Shenoute’s public sermons of a liturgical nature. Other texts in the library range in subject from the lives of the saints to homilies to biblical works, like this Coptic version of the book of Revelation.
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