The Coptic site of Manqabad. An Italian-Egyptian project

The Conservation Project at the so-called “Monastery of Abba Nefer the Hermit”, located in Manqabad (ancient Mallīdis), about 7,30 km west of Asyut, is a joint project promoted by the Embassy of Italy in Egypt and based on the collaboration of the University of Naples l’Orientale, the Sapienza University of Rome, the Italian Consortium Omnia Servizi and the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The project, directed by Rosanna Pirelli — with the scientific collaboration of Paola Buzi — regards an important but almost unknown archaeological site, that is surrounded by an extensive roughly square walled precinct, adjoining a modern village and a cemetery. Although it includes what is very likely a monastery and some churches, as well as documents from the early Islamic period, it was probably founded as a reoccupation of a previously abandoned Roman settlement, according to the evidence of the buildings and findings uncovered so far.