Christianity in Egypt is almost as old as Christianity itself. The Gospel of Matthew brings the infant Jesus here as a refugee, tradition brings St Mark to Alexandria within a generation of the Crucifixion, and the Egyptian desert is where Christian monasticism was born. Today the Copts, Egypt’s native Christians, are the largest Christian community in the Middle East.
This guide follows that story in order, from the Holy Family’s journey to the Coptic Church of today. It then shows you where to see it for yourself, in the churches of Old Cairo, the desert monasteries and even inside the pharaohs’ temples.
Christianity in Egypt at a glance
| Question | Short answer |
|---|---|
| Main church | Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria |
| Founder, by tradition | St Mark the Evangelist, in Alexandria, in the middle of the first century AD |
| Head of the church | Pope Tawadros II, the 118th Pope of Alexandria, since 2012 |
| Share of the population | Usually estimated at around 10 percent; estimates range from about 5 to 15 percent |
| Language of worship | Coptic and Arabic |
| Christmas | 7 January, a national public holiday |
| Easter | Follows the Orthodox calendar; 2 May in 2027 |
How Christianity in Egypt Began: The Holy Family and St Mark
The flight into Egypt
Most people link the New Testament with Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem. Egypt has its own place in the story. In the Gospel of Matthew, an angel warns Joseph that King Herod wants to kill the child, and Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus flee from Bethlehem into Egypt. They stay until Herod is dead.
Matthew gives no route. Coptic tradition does, and in detail: a journey of about three and a half years, from the Sinai coast through the Nile Delta, across Wadi El Natrun, into what is now Cairo, and then south by river as far as Assiut. More than 25 places along the way are honoured as stops. The best known are the Virgin’s Tree at Matariya, the crypt beneath Abu Serga Church in Old Cairo, Gabal El-Tayr near Minya, and Al-Muharraq Monastery near Assiut, where tradition says the family stayed longest.
In 2022 UNESCO added the festivals connected to the journey of the Holy Family in Egypt to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
St Mark and the Church of Alexandria
Egyptian Christians trace their church to St Mark the Evangelist. Tradition holds that he preached in Alexandria in the middle of the first century AD and was martyred there in AD 68. Every Coptic Pope since is counted as his successor, which is why the head of the church still carries the title Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St Mark.
Alexandria was then the intellectual capital of the Mediterranean, and Christianity there became a religion of scholars as well as of ordinary people. By the end of the second century the city’s Catechetical School, led by Clement and then Origen, was the most important centre of Christian learning in the world.
Who are the Copts?
The word Copt simply means Egyptian. It comes through Arabic Qibt from the Greek Aigyptos, which in turn goes back to Hut-ka-Ptah, “the House of the Spirit of Ptah”, an ancient Egyptian name for the temple of Memphis. When Arabic speakers arrived in the seventh century, the Egyptians were Christians, so the name for the people became the name for their faith.
Persecution and the Era of the Martyrs
Before Constantine, Christians in Egypt lived under the constant threat of persecution. Roman state religion required sacrifice to the emperor, and Christians refused. Jews held a long-standing exemption on religious grounds. Once Christians were seen as a separate group, they did not.
Septimius Severus acted against converts in Egypt around AD 202. In AD 250 Decius ordered the first persecution across the whole empire, and every citizen had to obtain a certificate proving they had sacrificed. Dozens of these papyrus certificates have been found in Egypt. Gallienus granted a period of peace around AD 260.
The worst came under Diocletian, whose Great Persecution began in AD 303 and fell on Egypt with particular force. The Coptic Church has never forgotten it. To this day the Coptic calendar counts its years from AD 284, the year Diocletian became emperor, and calls this the Era of the Martyrs.
The persecution ended with the Edict of Toleration issued by Galerius on 30 April 311, followed by the Edict of Milan in 313, which made Christianity a legal religion.
Alexandria and the Great Debates of the Early Church
Once Christianity was legal, Alexandria became the centre of its first great dispute. Arius, a priest of the city, taught that the Son was created by the Father and was not equal to him. The Council of Nicaea rejected his view in AD 325. Its leading defender was Athanasius, who became Bishop of Alexandria in 328 and was exiled five times over the next four decades as emperors changed sides.
During the fourth century the old religion steadily lost ground. In AD 391 the Serapeum of Alexandria, the great temple of Serapis, was destroyed. In the far south, worship of Isis continued at Philae until the temple was finally closed under the emperor Justinian around AD 537.
The decisive break came at the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, in a dispute over how to describe the divine and human natures of Christ. Most Egyptian Christians rejected the council’s formula. From then on the Coptic Church went its own way, separate from the churches of Rome and Constantinople. It belongs today to the family of Oriental Orthodox churches, together with the Armenian, Syriac and Ethiopian churches.
The Desert Fathers: How Egypt Gave the World Monasticism
Egypt’s most lasting gift to Christianity is the monastery. Around AD 270 a young Egyptian named Anthony gave away his inheritance and withdrew into the desert to live in prayer. Others followed him, and St Anthony the Great is remembered as the father of all monks. The Monastery of St Anthony, in the Eastern Desert near the Red Sea, stands close to the cave where he lived and is one of the oldest monasteries in the world.
Anthony lived as a hermit. A second Egyptian, St Pachomius, created the other model around AD 320 at Tabennisi in Upper Egypt: monks living together under one rule, with shared work, meals and prayer. That is the pattern every later monastery followed, from Ireland to Russia.
The tradition has never stopped. Four monasteries in Wadi El Natrun, between Cairo and Alexandria, have been inhabited since the fourth century. In Upper Egypt, the White Monastery at Sohag was led in the fifth century by St Shenoute, the greatest writer in the Coptic language.
When Temples Became Churches
Visitors often walk past the Christian chapter of Egypt’s pharaonic monuments without noticing it. Once you know where to look, it is everywhere.
- Philae. Coptic crosses are cut into the walls and columns of the Temple of Isis, and its columned hall was turned into a church dedicated to St Stephen in the sixth century.
- Deir el-Bahari. The name of the site of the Temple of Hatshepsut is Arabic for “the Northern Monastery”. A monastery stood on the temple’s upper terrace for centuries.
- Deir el-Medina. The workers’ village near the Valley of the Kings takes its name, “the Monastery of the Town”, from the church built inside its small Ptolemaic temple.
- Luxor Temple. The remains of an early church lie beneath the Mosque of Abu al-Haggag in the first court of Luxor Temple: three religions on one spot.
Even the Coptic cross has an Egyptian ancestor. Early Egyptian Christians adopted the ankh, the hieroglyphic sign for life, as a form of the cross.
Christianity in Egypt During the Islamic Era
Under Byzantine rule the Egyptian church was itself persecuted, as Constantinople tried to impose the decisions of Chalcedon. That division helps to explain why Egypt fell so quickly when the Arab army of Amr ibn al-As arrived. The fortress of Babylon, in what is now Old Cairo, surrendered in AD 641.
For several centuries after the conquest most Egyptians remained Christian, and Christians formed the backbone of the country’s administration. Like other non-Muslims they paid a poll tax, the jizya. Many rose to high office. Conversion to Islam was gradual, and Arabic slowly replaced Coptic as the everyday language.
There were hard periods. The Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim (996–1021) ordered churches destroyed, and the Crusades, launched in 1095, cast suspicion on local Christians even though they had no part in them. Taken as a whole, though, the story of the Copts shows a more tolerant country than most of medieval Europe was to its own religious minorities.
Christianity in Modern Egypt
The Copts have remained an influential community into the modern era. Two Copts served as prime minister during the British occupation: Boutros Ghali (1908–1910) and Youssef Wahba (1919–1920). After the 1952 revolution, the reforms of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s government affected upper and middle-class families, Coptic and Muslim alike, and many emigrated. Large Coptic communities now live in the United States, Canada and Australia.
Pope Shenouda III led the church from 1971 until his death in 2012. His successor, Pope Tawadros II, is the 118th Pope of Alexandria. In 1968 relics of St Mark were returned from Venice to the new St Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo, and in 2019 the Cathedral of the Nativity opened in the New Administrative Capital.
Egypt publishes no official figure for its Christian population. Christians are usually estimated at around 10 percent of Egyptians, with estimates ranging from about 5 to 15 percent. The great majority are Coptic Orthodox. Smaller communities include Coptic Catholics, Protestants, and the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria, whose members live mainly in Cairo and Alexandria.
Coptic Language, Calendar and Feasts
Coptic is the last stage of the ancient Egyptian language, written in Greek letters with a few extra signs taken from Egyptian Demotic script. It is the language the pharaohs’ descendants spoke, and it gave Champollion a key to reading hieroglyphs. It is still chanted in church services today.
The Coptic calendar is the old Egyptian farming calendar: twelve months of thirty days and a short thirteenth month. Its month names, such as Thout and Hathor, come from ancient Egyptian gods. Egyptian farmers still use it to time their planting.
- Coptic Christmas: 7 January, a national public holiday.
- Epiphany: 19 January.
- Coptic Easter: the most important feast of the year, after a 55-day fast. It falls on 2 May in 2027.
- Sham El-Nessim: the Monday after Coptic Easter. This spring festival goes back to pharaonic times and is celebrated by all Egyptians, Christian and Muslim.
- Nayrouz, the Coptic New Year: 11 September.
If you would like to be in Egypt for these feasts, see our Egypt Christmas tours and Egypt Easter tours.
Christian Sites You Can Visit in Egypt
These are the places where the history above can still be seen and, in most of them, where it is still lived.
| Site | Where | Why visit |
|---|---|---|
| The Hanging Church | Old Cairo | Built over a gate of the Roman fortress of Babylon; for centuries the seat of the Coptic Pope |
| Abu Serga Church | Old Cairo | Stands over the crypt where the Holy Family is believed to have sheltered |
| The Coptic Museum | Old Cairo | The world’s largest collection of Coptic art, textiles, icons and manuscripts |
| Ben Ezra Synagogue | Old Cairo | A few steps from the churches; shows how three faiths shared one quarter |
| Cave Church of St Simon the Tanner | Mokattam, Cairo | A vast church cut into the cliff, seating thousands |
| Monasteries of Wadi El Natrun | Between Cairo and Alexandria | Four working monasteries founded in the fourth century |
| St Catherine’s Monastery | South Sinai | Built for the emperor Justinian in the sixth century at the foot of Mount Sinai; a UNESCO World Heritage Site |
| Monasteries of St Anthony and St Paul | Eastern Desert, near the Red Sea | Where Christian monasticism began |
| Gabal El-Tayr and Al-Muharraq Monastery | Minya and Assiut | Two of the most important stops on the Holy Family route |
| The White and Red Monasteries | Sohag | Fifth-century churches; the Red Monastery has the finest early Christian wall paintings in Egypt |
| Monastery of St Simeon | Aswan, west bank | A fortress-like desert monastery, abandoned in the Middle Ages and well preserved |
For more on the oldest quarter of the capital, read our guide to Old Cairo.
Tours that follow this history
- Half a day in Cairo: the NMEC Museum and Coptic Cairo tour covers the Hanging Church, Abu Serga and Ben Ezra Synagogue.
- The Holy Family route: our 10-day Holy Family tour visits Old Cairo, Wadi El Natrun, Gabal El-Tayr, Al-Muharraq, Durunka and the White and Red Monasteries.
- The desert monasteries: the 8-day spiritual retreat in Cairo, Wadi El Natrun and Luxor includes the Monastery of St Macarius.
- Mount Sinai: the 2-day Mount Sinai tour from Cairo includes St Catherine’s Monastery.
You can see every itinerary on our Egypt spiritual tours page.
Timeline of Christianity in Egypt
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1st century AD | The Holy Family’s flight into Egypt; St Mark preaches in Alexandria and is martyred there in AD 68 |
| c. 180–200 | The Catechetical School of Alexandria flourishes under Clement and Origen |
| 250 | Decius orders the first empire-wide persecution |
| c. 270 | St Anthony withdraws into the desert |
| 284 | Diocletian becomes emperor; year 1 of the Coptic Era of the Martyrs |
| 303–311 | The Great Persecution |
| 313 | The Edict of Milan legalises Christianity |
| c. 320 | St Pachomius founds the first community monastery |
| 325 | The Council of Nicaea rejects the teaching of Arius |
| 391 | The Serapeum of Alexandria is destroyed |
| 451 | The Council of Chalcedon; the Coptic Church separates from Rome and Constantinople |
| c. 537 | The Temple of Isis at Philae is closed |
| 641 | The Arab conquest; the fortress of Babylon surrenders |
| 1910 | The Coptic Museum is founded in Old Cairo |
| 1968 | Relics of St Mark return from Venice to Cairo |
| 2012 | Pope Tawadros II becomes the 118th Pope of Alexandria |
| 2022 | UNESCO recognises the festivals of the Holy Family’s journey in Egypt |
Frequently Asked Questions
What percentage of Egypt is Christian?
Egypt publishes no official figure. Christians are usually estimated at around 10 percent of the population, with estimates ranging from about 5 to 15 percent. The great majority belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Who are the Copts?
The Copts are Egypt’s native Christians. The word Copt comes from the Greek name for Egypt and originally meant simply Egyptian. Most Copts belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, led by Pope Tawadros II.
When did Christianity arrive in Egypt?
Christianity reached Egypt in the first century AD. Tradition says St Mark the Evangelist preached in Alexandria in the middle of that century and was martyred there in AD 68.
Where did the Holy Family stay in Egypt?
Coptic tradition names more than 25 places, from the Nile Delta to Assiut. The best known are the Virgin’s Tree at Matariya, the crypt of Abu Serga Church in Old Cairo, Gabal El-Tayr near Minya and Al-Muharraq Monastery near Assiut.
When do Copts celebrate Christmas and Easter?
Coptic Christmas is on 7 January and is a national public holiday in Egypt. Coptic Easter follows the Orthodox calendar and usually falls later than Western Easter. In 2027 it is on 2 May.
How is the Coptic Orthodox Church different from the Catholic Church?
The Coptic Church separated from the churches of Rome and Constantinople after the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, over how to describe the divine and human natures of Christ. It has its own Pope, its own calendar and its own ancient liturgy in Coptic and Arabic.
Did Christian monasticism begin in Egypt?
Yes. St Anthony the Great withdrew into the Egyptian desert around AD 270, and St Pachomius founded the first community monastery in Upper Egypt around AD 320. Monasteries across the Christian world follow the models they created.
Can tourists visit Coptic churches and monasteries in Egypt?
Yes. The churches of Old Cairo, the monasteries of Wadi El Natrun and St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai all welcome visitors. Dress modestly, with shoulders and knees covered. Some monasteries close to visitors on certain days and during the main fasts, so check before you go.
See Christian Egypt With an Egyptologist
Egypt Best Vacations is a licensed Egyptian tour operator and holder of the TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice Award in 2024, 2025 and 2026. Our tours are led by professional Egyptologists who can show you the Christian chapter of Egypt’s history alongside the pharaonic one. Contact us and tell us which churches and monasteries you would like to see.
