Online Lecture

2025-2026 East of Byzantium Lecture Series

The Quarry Church at Deir al-Ganadla (Asyut, Middle Egypt) and the Lost Timber Nave

Mikael Muehlbauer, Columbia University

December 9, 2025 | Zoom | 12:00–1:30 pm (Eastern Standard Time, UTC -5)

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Mashtot Chair of Armenian Studies at Harvard University are pleased to announce the next lecture in the 2025–2026 East of Byzantium lecture series.

This presentation presents the little-known Quarry church of Mary at Deir al-Ganadla (near Asyut) as a tool for students of Late Antiquity to visualize lost timber-roofed basilicas in Egypt as well as the Mediterranean more broadly. The church’s value lies in its mural program, which orders the Pharaonic mine from which it was consecrated into a fictive freestanding basilica. These paintings depict painted timber ephemera from circa 500 that are largely lost to us. By fully documenting this largely unknown church and its decorative schema we may reconstruct elements of freestanding basilicas in Egypt and the wider Mediterranean which lack extant naves. Although modest, Ganadla’s import should not be understated, as it is the most in-tact Late Antique church in Egypt known.

Mikael Muehlbauer is Lecturer in the Discipline of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. He is a specialist in the architecture of Medieval Ethiopia, Egypt and the textile arts of the Western Indian Ocean world.

Advance registration required. Register: https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.