A sample of what appears in the Real Messiah order it hereI did visit today St. George, the Coptic Church in the Chatby Cemeteries.
I did remember from visiting the place over 50 years ago that there was a small church, it has been now expanded into a monstrous --in size and taste-- Basilica.
I asked for the crypt, which contained as far as I can remember some relics. I was taken through a locked iron door into a crypt and was surprised to find rows of loculi, all beautifully laid with new marble. Most of the loculy are empty and in some there are recent burials of priests. Obviously they have just lined recently, with nice marble the ancient loculi. I asked to the guardian: where are the holy relics. His answer was: we did transport them, upstairs in the new church. In fact I was taken upstairs at the level of the new St. George Basilica and the relics of some 10 martyrs and Saints are there.
In a separate reliquary, left of the main altar, there are the pretended relics of St. George wrapped in crimson velvet, hand embroider with various motifs. The relics are in a glass protected displays. Then on the right of the altar, in some sort of transparent glass drawers there are the remains of another 9 martyrs and Saints. The most prominent been those of Abou Mina [St. Mina] a well know martyr. The ruins of the matryrium of St. Mina and of his huge church lay some 70 km South-West of Alexandria in the desert. [an UNESCO protected monument],
I asked if any of the Martyrs is Peter the 1st [Boutros in Coptic]; there was no such a martyr in the reliquary. I asked where are the remains of St. Mark and I was given the story that some of his remains are in the Coptic Church in the centre of Alexandria. [Which I intend to visit soon].
The interest of all these relics, certainly fictitious, is that, the graveyard in Chatby was by tradition the site of a martyrium with several martyrs buried there and some of their remains may have been taken to Venice and elsewhere but some [or the tradition] has survived.
Another point is that all the bundles of bones [I could no see the bones but only the wrapping] are headless. The bundles are oblong, shaped as a rolled newspaper so obviously there is no head. And when I asked about the heads the answer was that they had been decapitated.
The man talking to me was a simple person, not a scholar, he spoke some English and mixing it with some Arabic we had a reasonable conversation.
I intend to get more from a learned Copt, perhaps a Bishop at the St. Mark church.
