 My name is Catherine Schwab and I'm Director of the Program in Classical Studies and Professor of Art History and Visual Culture in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts. It is a great pleasure and a personal delight to introduce Professor Thelma Thomas this morning. Professor Thomas is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the Institute of Fine Arts New York University where she received her PhD. Her current research on cultural exchange concerns textiles and dress, especially monastic dress and Byzantine silk. Her larger areas of focus include late antique, early Christian, Byzantine and Eastern Christian art, architecture and archaeology. Within this larger frame, Professor Thomas is especially interested in looking beyond assumed borders to examine and investigate cross-cultural interactions in Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia in the context of Eastern Christianity. Professor Thomas teaches a wide range of courses at the Institute of Fine Arts. I want to take all of them. Including soft furnishing in late antiquity, late antiquity along the Nile, Byzantine art, ornament in late antique dress and Byzantine silk as a few examples. Professor Thomas has long been involved in the digital arena and she continues to find ways to harness these tools to work for, work with and for art history topics and projects. Her book and journal and book chapter publications are many just a few here, perspectives in the wide world of luxury late antique silk finds from Syria and Egypt. In the publication, silk trade an exchange along the silk roads between Rome and China in antiquity. Another mememic devotion and dress and some monastic portraits from the monastery of Apopolo at Bawit to which we will be shortly turning. Professor Thomas also has extensive experience as a curator and her consultant to exhibitions both in the US and abroad. When she was a visiting research fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, she curated a stunning exhibition which many of us were fortunate to see. Designing identity, the power of textiles in late antiquity, which was on view in 2016. Please welcome Professor Thomas. Thank you so much, Cathy. This figure of a vigilant angel, the Archangel Uriel, launched my current consideration of the representation of angelic form in the visual culture of Christian monasticism in late antique Egypt. The cultural horizons of this painting extend across the Roman Empire as expected to the north across the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe. My outlook from this angel is more toward the east as I consider connections to Roman Palestine and Persian Mesopotamia and cross cultural religious frontiers to address interactions with Judaism, including Ethiopian Judaism. Throughout this consideration of angelic form, my perspective remains firmly grounded in Egypt and to be more precise, in Middle Egypt, at the monastery of Appa, that is, Father Apollo at Bawit, the location of this image of Uriel. The monastery of Appa Apollo was located within the orbit of the city of Hermopolis Magna, which had been a major city from the Old Kingdom through the pharaonic period, including the ancient Nubian and Persian political interludes, as well as the Greek Hellenistic Ptolemaic period, and continuing through Roman late antiquity. Over time, associations of this great city to the ancient Egyptian god Thoth came to accommodate his Greek counterpart Hermes, who was known in Coptic as Shmun, thus the Greek name for the city Hermopolis and later variations, including the present Arabic name El Ash-Muneine. I mentioned this long history in part to emphasize the constant and multiple cultural and worldly entanglements of this city and its territory. I show this plan of the city to illustrate that the city remained an important religious and administrative center for the region, filled with magnificent architectural monuments, attesting to its glorious past and present. The map shows in part that by the late 4th century Apollo had founded his monastery among a growing number of communities in the new monastic movement that provided an alternative to the worldliness of city life. I will refer repeatedly to one late 4th century text, the history of the monks of Egypt, for a range of references to Apollo's monastery, to angels and instances of cross-cultural contacts. The history of the monks of Egypt recounts the travels of pilgrims from Palestine, Roman Palestine, who sought knowledge of Egyptian monastic practice. This map charts as well their visit to Apollo's monastery around the area and then north. As they traveled through Hermopolis, the Palestinian pilgrims learned of a miracle that had occurred centuries earlier during the visit of the Holy Family. Ancient temple sculptures fell to the ground when the infant Jesus passed by with Mary and Joseph. This popular extra-scriptural lore provides some idea of later impressions of the monumental ruins of the ancient city. The plan of the city indicates as well how some ruins were reused and replaced by the massive church complex built in the heart of the city in the 5th century. The history of the monks of Egypt recounts that Apollo's monastery was home to some 500 monks, all of them holy men, including a group of Nubians or Ethiopians. Apollo attracted pilgrims and disciples from afar because he was renowned for the miracles he had performed and was seen as, I quote from the text, a new prophet, a new apostle, both Christ-like and equal to the angels. Even his monks looked like a real army of angels. The text provides glimpses of life in the monastery, including the pilgrims' audience with Apollo himself and the interpreters provided for them. Although subsequent, throughout subsequent centuries, Apollo's spiritual authority continued to grow, as did the monastery he founded. His special association to angels continued, as did broader associations of monks to angels. Also noted in an encomion, a praise text for Apollo that I'll mention later. By the 6th to 7th century, the monastery extended over a vast terrain that is still being mapped. This recent map gives a sense of the archaeological attention concentrated on the northern sections of the monastery with less attention paid to the southern sections. The striking lavish decoration of the architecture of the monastery at its height in the 6th to 7th centuries evident throughout the site. Part of my current research addresses how this art continued to promote Apollo's spiritual authority in part through portraits of him. And one of these portraits of Apollo is included in the composition with the figure of Uriel in room 40. Room 40 was in a complex of rooms to the far south. So note that the orientation of this map shift to the side instead of at so north is not no longer at the top of the map. All right. The southern reaches of the site are less well known. Room 40 is sparsely documented, although it preserved some of the grandest painted decoration. In addition to this one sketch plan of the complex of rooms 40 to 46, photographs document built-in furnishings, small-scale movable finds, painted imagery and inscriptions. So in ground print, room 40 and its neighbors were simple rectangles and more complicated in elevation. The space of room 40 was vaulted and the walls to the east, west and south contained multiple niches. A clay altar is the only known object found in room 40. Whereas niches, altar, and the preserved painting indicate that this room served a devotional function, other functions cannot be ruled out, sure quantity of niches suggests multiple functions. The main entrances into this room seem to have been through the west wall into room 44. The painted composition, including Uriel, was located on the north wall, so viewers did not face the painting as they entered. The scene was located on the upper level of wall of the wall here in the curve of the vault. It was conventional at the monastery to utilize the placement of such tableaus with Apollo and companions so that those entering the room had to look up to them. Despite the compositional harnessing of viewers' movements to lend dynamism to the scene, the painted figures showed no hint of movement. They didn't even lower their heads, although they gazed at the viewers in the room. The holiness of the figures was announced by their halos and more specifically by their titles and names in their painted inscriptions. So we have the left to the right there, John the soldier, a martyr, Apahor of Pret and Apahaman of Thune, apparently local monastic fathers. The Holy Apostle Peter, who holds the key that is his special attribute, the Holy Appa Apollo the Great, the Archangel Uriel. The Holy Appa, and his name is missing for the fall of the plaster, was also identified as the father of the works, apparently another local monastic figure. The Holy Appa Anup the Great was the companion of Apollo, the co-founder of the monastery, who's often portrayed in these paintings of the Apollo the Great. Another Appa Apollo, who's a namesake figure, apparently associated with another place, a place called Nauu. And at the end, the Holy Amorakail Rachel, mother of the monastery, who went to her rest on Peony 27. Amor Rachel's portrait in room 40 and other evidence throughout the complex of rooms 40 to 46 attests to a significant social development of the monastery as a double monastery for men and women. By the 6th century, Apollo's monastery had included women long enough for them to be commemorated in this room and throughout this complex that is thought to be in the women's section of the monastery. Altogether, this group portrait, a gathering of wise, righteous and holy from the various eras, locates the saints and the Archangel Uriel in a verdant heavenly paradise from which they watched over those women and men in the room. Many compositional strategies indicate relationships between figures in this carefully planned composition. Positioning the singletons, John, the soldier and Amor Rachel at the ends of the lineup signal their difference from those at center. The central positioning of Apollo and Peter and Uriel accords them prominence and closely associates them with each other. All but Uriel and the soldier wear old fashioned clothing that had been a traditional mode of dress for representing the thinking man, the intellectual, long before it was co-opted for images of Christian apostles. Like their identical postures and heights, the strategic formulation of clothing within the composition identifies the saints as apostolic in character and locates the saints outside of everyday existence. As do the identically bejeweled covers of the books they hold. Uriel's bejeweled mantle repeats the design of the book covers. This mantle and up-to-date version of the toga, the Roman toga, establishes the formality of the occasion as well as Uriel's high rank. As do his red shoes, the attributes of the scepter, the crosstalked scepter and the globe that's divided into four quarters. This courtly scene likely evoked one of Apollo's dreams as it is recorded in the history of the monks of Egypt in which he stood before a tribunal of angels. So these figures too watched and they judged. Uriel's role as an archangel was known from coptic versions of texts that began to circulate widely at about the same time that this was painted. Texts addressing the investiture of the archangels, especially the investiture of Gabriel and the investiture of Michael. Uriel's clothing and attributes confirmed the heavenly courtly setting for this tableau and the ceremony and the ceremony when archangelic rank was conferred by Christ giving them the emblems of rank. Uriel's role as an archangel, which has little to do with canonical scripture in which Uriel does not appear, had much to do with current popular ideas about angels. Uriel's representation, rare at Apollo's monastery and in other late antique art, made improvisatory use of iconographic conventions, not only mention a few of the often used conventions representing angels in the monastery of Apollo. So we have pairs of angels always watching, usually flanked apostles and saints, monastic saints as latter day apostles. In groups centered on Christ or Mary, Mary is shown here where their arms raised in prayer. Pairs of angels may undertake various activities. Here they honor Mary and the child with incense. Here two archangels are identified by inscriptions as Michael and Gabriel. In such tableaus that are closely associated with the composition in Room 40, the angels serve as attendants and mediators as they watch. Theorizing about different kinds of angels and their roles began to flourish during late antiquity. One order of angels, another order is shown here on the face of the arch, framing the scenes inside the arch. Now these figures are identified as specific virtues by inscriptions over the outermost wreath that is painted to frame the arch. So they're shown not in male winged form but as bust-length female figures as personifications of virtues. Now it makes sense that images of angels should have come to be so pervasive within the architectural decoration of Christian monasteries as angels were thought to be among monks, watching them, protecting them, guiding them throughout their lives, taking notes on their lives as the monks strove to earn their places in heaven. On earth, angels were visible only to the most righteous, however angels appeared to all in their depictions and wall paintings. At these monasteries in elsewhere, angels came to be closely associated with architectural spaces overhead that were transitional and liminal, such as lentils. And as I've shown elsewhere, niches and abses are examples of spaces understood to connect this world to the heavenly. A connection underscored by the many prayers inscribed on the walls in these rooms at Apollo's monastery that were addressed to the angel of this vault. Apollo often had the help of angels as well as visions of them. On one occasion, as noted in the encomion to Apollo that I mentioned earlier, Apollo received the vision of an angel who urged him to come to the church he had just built as Christ was calling him there. Apollo then saw the ceiling of the church open and filled with angels descending into the church. So in contrast to pairs of angels, the single figure of an angel in a compositional unit is usually associated with a narrative as here in this series of vignettes beginning with the archangel Gabriel's Annunciation to Mary and continuing through his nativity. Similar compositional patterns are found at the monastery of Apollo at Zechara and at other Egyptian monasteries. No two compositions are exactly the same. They play with iconographic conventions by the same sets of compositional principles. Although late antique wall painting programs of non-monastic churches do not survive in Egypt, church programs elsewhere across the Roman and early Byzantine Mediterranean begin to appear in the fifth century already experimenting with a range of angelic forms and by the sixth century, as in Egypt, are improvising with conventional forms. A highly unusual singular representation from the monastery of Apollo, thankfully closely described by the excavators, shows a smiling angel torturing a sinner in hell. This image has been connected to an enduring tale told in biographies of the Egyptian monastic founder Precomius, who lived in the third to fourth century, and the Egyptian bishop Byzantius, who lived in the seventh century. The idea of an angelic overseer in hell is also related to Uriel in the book of Enoch, a text that originated in Jewish culture around the third century BCE that continued to circulate in late antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean and near east, although it is preserved in full only in Ethiopic Geds. Ethiopia offers another avenue of inquiry in that the book of Enoch became canonical scripture only in Ethiopian Judaism. The book of Enoch explains, amid extensive explanations of why the world came to be the way it is, how Uriel was assigned to watch over and torment those angels who fell from grace by lusting after human women and joining with them. So this image of the tormenting angel provided a visual reminder to monks and their attempts to live the angelic life. And likely brought to mind the knowledge of Uriel watching over fallen angels, that's also prevalent in Coptic apocalyptic literature. And may well have had a very special meaning in this part of the monastery that was a part associated with women. A complementary beneficent image shows an archangel nestling saved souls. So although the composition with Uriel may appear bland and benign, it does have a dark side. In addition to the Enochic literature, investiture and related texts, often told from the perspective of apostles, these are so-called apostolic memoirs, I'm starting to follow other promising avenues of inquiry for charting the cultural horizons of this depiction of Uriel. And I have time to mention only a couple of examples. One aspect of Uriel's image is the idea of the four archangels looking out in the four cardinal directions as glossed by the four divisions of the globe. This is also an attribute of the archangels Michael and Gabriel in Christian tradition. The motif of the globe had been associated with the Greek sun god Helios Apollo. Later, Christ is Helios. And here, as Moshe Edel has argued, its use in this Jewish synagogue mosaic is associated with the angel Anafiel. Moshe Edel described this apparently syncretistic multivalence as, quote, different image worlds brought together, end quote. Now, even without the, to us, helpful cues to the different cultural worlds of Jewish synagogue context and pagan zodiac, I think the mosaic, the monastic programs brought together conceptual worlds that to us seem quite different. The worlds of men and women monastics, for example, and Jews and Christians intersect here. Popular interest in angels burgeoned in late antiquity in Jewish as well as Christian and other contexts in ritual uses often characterized as magical, magical texts preserved on amulets and a kind of object called Babylonian incantation bowls from the Levant and Mesopotamia used variants of a formula that was to become a prayer that is still part of a Jewish bedtime prayer today and recited on other occasions as well. And that this prayer is the source of the title of my presentation and Uriel is before me. So I see a connection between this formula for prayer and the compositional force of watching angels at Apollo's monastery. And I do want to stress that there are Egyptian included optic variants of this formula in various instances of this prayer. The locations of angels may shift as may the constitution of the group of angels. Here I quote on the slide a late antique version from a Babylonian incantation bowl commissioned for a woman named dudita. Scholars have noted that many of the Babylonian incantation bowls with this formula were commissioned by women. This and other alignments of women's social contexts suggests more than broad thematic echoes. It suggests tighter and more specific gendered resonances of devotional practices involving angels at Apollo's monastery elsewhere. This piece suggests that we should look for resonances of this formula in the architectural decoration of monasteries in Egypt and Nubia. From Nubia, from a monastery in Castile, a site that Andrea Achi had mentioned earlier, is a slightly later eighth century lentil decorated with roundels, astral motifs, and an inscription invoking Uriel among six archangels and Christ. The rarity of invocations of Uriel may be explained in part by changing trends in cultic devotion to archangels, including the increasing prominence of the archangel Michael, a trend that can be seen as early as the eighth century at the monastery of Apollo with the dedication of this church to the archangel Michael and images of archangels enveloping the space. Recent scholarship has helped us chart increasing numbers of dedications of monasteries to angels, especially to Michael in Egypt and Nubia and Ethiopia in the following centuries, apparently reaching a high point in the 12th and 13th centuries. The cultural horizons of this image of Uriel were broad. The traditions intricately interlinked from Ethiopia to Mesopotamia went deep and they remained in constant formation. Thank you. And now we have time for questions. Your specialist in textiles, is that what brought you to Uriel was looking at his outfit first and the garments or how did you learn on this topic and develop your research? I did start with clothing and textiles so that I have a larger project on monastic dress and I and trying to make the connection between monastic the monastic habit earliest examples of the monastic habit that we have represented in Egypt, how they also related to these representations of angels in part because they're often described in texts as looking like angels and how do they look like angels but they don't wear the same clothes. So I was trying to figure out what's going on here which took me in a different direction entirely and I guess that's just the way research happens you know you never know where it's going to go but in this case it also ended up making me think about different cultural associations and that that project with dress is kind of firmly grounded in Greco-Roman Mediterranean traditions because that's what the monks are wearing but then reading more about the different garments and actually thinking about Uriel in that outfit it's always described as imperial or courtly but then all of these there are all of these other associations that kept going in other directions so this one angel it is to me it's firmly embedded within that Greco-Roman Mediterranean cultural context but it doesn't mean that we can't just turn to the side and follow what some of the other intercultural connections might be and as Professor Bagnell mentioned last night as Professor Alchi mentioned you know there are so many different directions these are going in. I just have a question for Dr. Thomas. Thank you for your talk. I'm sorry this is too specific of a question but I mainly remember a life of Apo Apo in the background mind and I'm wondering is that the Apo Apo and does that life help at all with these contextualizing findings? It does and especially for the other aspects of dress but it wasn't as helpful for this particular project and I was trying to use these sets of texts that were interrelated as well so I ended up not addressing that one as which actually is important in that monastic dress project. Thank you so much Dr. Thomas.