St Simeon was a Coptic Christian monastery built in the 7th century. It looked more like a fortress than a monastery with high straight walls. I guess they knew what they were doing because the monastery came under attack which led to its abandonment in 1173. It housed some 300 monks and 100 pilgrims. It had all the requirements for life, most of which were still obvious. The one thing that was missing and that we could not find was a source of water. The monastery is about a 25 minute walk from the Nile.

The first picture is the best one that I got of the whole monastery. As you can see, the monastery was two stories.

The second picture is the church with the sanctuary in the back center of the picture. I took the second picture from the upper story.

The third picture is the courtyard just inside the entrance.

St Simeon was pretty much self contained. It had a church, shops, a bakery, offices, a kitchen, a wine-making area, dormitories, a stable, and workshops. It was pretty much all adobe or mud-brick buildings.

The next photo is the long vault on the upper story. The rooms off this hallway were where the monks and pilgrims slept. They had benches built along the wall that were used as beds as well.

The next photo is the mill where they ground the wheat for flour. They had a kitchen nearby with a fire oven for baking bread and other things.

The last photo is one of the rooms off the vaulted hallway in the fourth photo. It was dark and a bit eerie being inside some of the rooms. I kept thinking that I wasn’t quite alone – though I knew we were. We were the only tourists at the monastery. At any rate, I finally determined what was making me nervous. It was the bats flying around. In the third photo, you can see a couple of them in the left center of the picture. I didn’t bother them and they didn’t bother me.