the City of the Dead in cairo

There are five major cemeteries in this city there, the Northern Cemetery, Bab el Nasr Cemetery, the Southern Cemetery, the Cemetery of the Great, and Bab el Wazir Cemetery

  Cairo rulers chose the area for their tombs outside the crowded city in a deserted location. This area was used as a burial ground for the Arab conquests, Fatimids, Abbasids, Ayyubids, Mamlukes, Ottomans, and many more
The historic belief in Egypt is that the cemeteries are an active part of the community and not exclusively for the dead. Egyptians have not so much thought of cemeteries as a place of the dead, but rather a place where life begins.  In modern times, because of Egypts housing crisis, a lack of satisfactory and affordable housing for a rapidly growing population, many poor Egyptians have made these rooms their permanent homes.

 These invaders have adapted the rooms to meet their needs. They have used the grave markers as desks, and shelves. They have hung strings between gravestones for their laundry to dry out.

 The City of the Dead seems to its inhabitants ideal because it is already built, affordable, and partially equipped. However there are many disadvantages of living there. They are joined by even a greater number of cockroaches, mosquitoes, flies, and vermin of all sorts"


 The cemeteries built in the City of the Dead are much different than the western idea of cemeteries. This is because traditionally, Egyptians buried their dead in room-like burial sites so they could live in them during the long mourning period of forty days.


Today, the population of the City of the Dead is growing rapidly because of rural migration and its complicated housing crisis that is getting worse.


But the future of the City of the Dead remains uncertain. The residents of the city will not deliberately agree to relocate unless the government provides other housing for them.

if u asked any one from them he  will tell I will not move from this house after all these years to go out in the streets, Of course I want to leave the depressed mood in this place, but that doesnt mean I want to live in the street. We deserve proper houses.

The Cave Church of the Zabbaleen in Cairo Monastery of Saint Simon

Saint Simon the Tanner (St. Sama'an, in Arabic) lived towards the end of the tenth Century when Egypt was ruled by the Fatimid Caliph, Al- Muizz and Anba Abram was the Coptic Pope.
At the time, the Copts (Christians) in Egypt were engaged in handicrafts. St Simon worked in one of the crafts widespread in Babylon (Old Cairo) which was tanning, a craft still known there till this day.
This profession involved also other crafts that depend on the process, from where he carried several titles related to skins; St Simon the Tanner, the Cobber, the Shoemaker.
The Monastery, located on the opposite side of the road leading to the Citadel contains seven Churches and Chapels hidden in a series of caves in the Mokattam (Muqattam) hills.
The Monastery was erected and dedicated to him a thousand years after his miracle and his death. It lies behind "Mansheiyet Nasser", the Zabbalin village (garbage collectors). This village was erratically established in 1969 when the Governor decided to move all the garbage collectors of Cairo to one of the hills of the Mokattam. There, they built themselves primitive houses of tin. The number of trash collectors living in the area reached about 15.000 in 1987. This number has doubled now.
Reaching the monastery is quiet a difficult approach. Amazingly, the people there will point you in the right direction knowing your destination without even been asked. The Monastery is reached through the narrow village streets, trash carts passing you by along with piles of rubbish, plastics and tins on the sides of the alleys with people sorting them out. Even if described in detail, the Zabbalin village is a hard place to picture, far from one's imagination; it can only be grasped on site.
At the far end of the village, awaits you an unexpected, stunning place; a vast open space lying in the bosom of the hills, with dramatic colored carvings all over the mountain. The carvings were done by a Polish Artist who begun working there several years ago. They represent stories from the Bible such as the Holy Family journey and the Nativity scene.
The main Cathedral there is named after the Virgin Mary and St Simon in commemoration of the legend of transferring the Mokattam Mountain in November 979 when Simon the Tanner was chosen to fulfill this miracle
According to Coptic sayings, the Caliph Al Muizz, an enlightened man, was fond of literacy gatherings and inviting different religious leaders to debate in his presence with neither anger nor contention.
In one of those meetings in which Pope Abram and a Jew named Jacob Ibn Killis were present, the Pope got the upper hand in the debate. Plotting to take revenge, Ibn Killis quoted the verse where the Lord Jesus said in Mt 17:20: "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to the mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move, nothing will be impossible for you" and demanded him to prove that his religion is right by means of this.
The Caliph saw in this an opportunity to remove the mountain that was spoiling his view. At the same time, if they proved unable to do so, it would be the proof that the religion of the Christians was wrong and he would be done away with them completely or so goes the Legend.

And so, after 3 days of prayers and fasts by the people throughout the land of Egypt, Simon was chosen to move the Mokattam Mountain. It is said that a great earthquake swept over the mountain. Each time the people stood up to worship, the mountain was thrust up and the sun would be seen from under it. When the people sat down, the mountain thrust down. This was repeated three times.
St Simon was never found afterwards. His skeleton was discovered in 1991 in Babylon in St Mary's church (the Hanging Church).
The Virgin Mary and St Simon Cathedral was constructed on 2 stages. At first, it was only a huge cave of limestone in the bosom of the hill. The audience were seated on straw rugs around the alter which was prepared in 1986. The 2nd stage was in November 1994 which falls on the feast of St Simon. The church was reconstructed and the ground was deepened once more. Fixed seats were constructed around the alter in the form of a quarter-circle auditorium to accommodate up to five thousand people and thus it became the biggest church in the Monastery.

To the right side of the alter, the church keeps the remains of St Simon's body.
In the year 1974, up on the ceiling and to the right side of the alter, an obvious engraved figure of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus Christ was discovered, not touched by any human hand. It was later revised in the year 1994.
Another amazing Chapel in the Monastery is St Bola's Church, named after St Bola the first Pilgrim for virtues he possessed. He lived in caves and solitude for 70 years during which he never set eyes upon a human face.
The Chapel cave was discovered in 1986 by pure coincidence during construction works when a huge rock fell showing an opening in the ceiling of the cave and thus, the church location was decided
An astonishing story about this church took place in January 1992 when it was endangered by a fire caused by an electric spark. The picture of Jesus Christ hanging in the church and the alter were by no means destroyed even though the whole interior of the cave was damaged.
A third church of the series of churches in the Monastery is St Mark's Church and St Simon the tanner's Hall. This huge cave was discovered in 1979 full of hundreds of tons of rocks at a height of 17 meters from the ground.

After several years of hard work and prayer, they began to find a path in order to start removing the rocks and finally it was prepared to contain 2 levels.
The upper storey is St Simon's Hall which accommodates 2000 people in spiritual meetings. The walls are decorated with many wonderful pictures engraved on the rocks representing scenes from the Bible.
The lower storey is St Mark's Church which is named after St Mark, the first preacher in Egypt.
The church dome at the hall entrance is decorated from the outside with three great artistic pieces made of small mosaic on top of the dome, representing important scenes of the Bible.
This Monastery, a tribute to St Simon, receives large numbers of pilgrims and is mostly visited by the people of the Zabbalin village.
Simon's Monastery also includes an educational Center; a kinder garden, a school for the deaf and dumb and literacy and vocational courses.
The unusual location, the unexpected size of the caves and the beauty of the engravings, all combined together are astonishing.
Even though the work there is relatively recent, it might as well seem that the Monastery has been hiding there since ever so much so that it feels like a part the Mokattam Hills.
By all means, visiting the place is an exceptional experience that's not to be missed.

The Cave Church of the Zabbaleen in Cairo

The Monastery of Saint Simon, also known as the Cave Church, is located in the Mokattam mountain in southeastern Cairo, Egypt, in an area that is known as ‘garbage city’ because of the large population of garbage collectors or Zabbaleen that live there. The Zabbaleen are descendants of farmers who started migrating from Upper Egypt to Cairo in the 1940s. a community of garbage collectors who make their living collecting and recycling 15,000 tons of garbage produced by Cairo's 17.8 million residents.Fleeing poor harvests and poverty they came to the city looking for work and set-up makeshift settlements around the city. Initially, they stuck to their tradition of raising pigs, goats, chickens and other animals, but eventually found collecting and sorting of waste produced by the city residents more profitable. The Zabbaleen would sort through household garbage, salvaging and selling things of value, while the organic waste provided an excellent source of food for their animals. In fact, this arrangement worked so well, that successive waves of migrants came from Upper Egypt to live and work in the newly founded garbage villages of Cairo.

 Seven churches and chapels are hidden within a series of caves inside the Monastery; the Virgin Mary and St. Simon Cathedral is the largest church.

 The Monastery also includes an education center, an area for children, as well as a school for the deaf. Now considered one of the largest Coptic monasteries in Egypt,

For years, the makeshift settlements of the Zabbaleen were moved around the city trying to avoid the municipal authorities. Finally, a large group of Zabbaleen settled under the cliffs of the Mokattam or Moquattam quarries at the eastern edge of the city, which has now grown from a population of 8,000 in the early 1980s, into the largest garbage collector community in Cairo, with approximately 30,000 Zabbaleen inhabitants.
Egypt is a Muslim-majority country, but the Zabbaleen are Coptic Christians, at least, 90 percent of them are. Christian communities are rare to find in Egypt, so the Zabbaleen prefer to stay in Mokattam within their own religious community even though many of them could afford houses elsewhere.
The local Coptic Church in Mokattam Village was established in 1975. After the establishment of the church, the Zabbaleen felt more secure in their location and only then began to use more permanent building materials, such as stone and bricks, for their homes. Given their previous experience of eviction from Giza in 1970, the Zabbaleen had lived in temporary tin huts up till that point. In 1976, a large fire broke out in Manshiyat Nasir, which led to the beginning of the construction of the first church below the Mokattam mountain on a site of 1,000 square meters. Several more churches have been built into the caves found in Mokattam, of which the Monastery of St. Simon the Tanner is the largest with a seating capacity of 20,000. In fact, the Cave Church of St. Simon in Mokattam is the largest church in the Middle East.

The calendar of komombo

This carving is among the most famous carvings that are found at the temple of komombow.
It was made by the ancient Egyptians around 2000 years ago. It represents the annual diary or the agenda for use of priests and priestesses of Komombow, in order to organize the service and the rituals of the local feminine goddesses; the use of it is so limited to this temple.

The carving in komombo temple is divided into three panels ,the first describes the date and the month, the second details the type of service presented, while the third is about the local gods consorts .It is read from the right counts "day w

hich is a sun disc ,23rd ,10 is like an inverted U letter till 28th then 29th is different as 9 is a sun disc with a dash in it's center while 30th day is given a determinative character in the form of an animal tail to the emphasize the end of the month". Then starts over again reporting a new month which the third one of the flood season which is four month in total, reads the 3rd month flood, 1st day then the counting go in a normal order as you can follow it.