In my research I analyze the Coptic Christian tradition in Byzantine Egypt. The chronological period of my work is 4-7 centuries ad. The source base of my research consists of two large blocks. The first includes the works of Church historians of antiquity, such as Eusebius of Caesarea (Pamphilus), Socrates Scholasticus, salamanus Hermius Sozomenus and Evagrius Scholasticus.  The second block of sources is the Coptic literature itself, which includes such authors as Macarius the Great, Pachomius the Great, Shenoute the Great and etc.

The focus of my research is Egyptian monasticism as an integral part of the Coptic Christian tradition. The reasons for the appearance of monasticism in Egypt are interesting. One of the main reasons is the escape from the persecution of the Roman emperors to the Christians in the desert. It was for this reason that Paul of Thebes, the first Christian hermit, fled from the world and settled in one of the deserts of Lower Egypt. This is how the first form of monastic life – asceticism have been  born. Due to the factor of geographical conditions of Egypt, namely the fact that the Nile is surrounded from the West and East by deserts, this form of monasticism began to acquire a mass character. The essence of it was that the monastic commune lived autonomously by its own Charter and provided itself with the most necessary things.

An excellent source on the history of the cenobitic monasticism are the charters of the monasteries. The work of the historian Khosroev is devoted to the Charter of the monastery of pakhomiy the Great, in which the spiritual and material side of monastic life is analyzed literally by the hour. But in domestic historiography there is no work in which the Charter of the follower of Pachomius and Shenoute the Great would be touched.

In particular, I touched upon the problem of literacy rate  in the monastic community, as a result, I came to the conclusion that the bulk of those wishing to take monastic vows was illiterate, but in the process of becoming a monk and living in a monastery wishing to learn to write and count. I also touched upon the problem of the social and ethnic origin of monasticism. The problem was complicated by the ethnic diversity in Egypt, as well as the fact that many knew both Coptic and Greek. t turns out that the vast majority of monks in the remote outskirts of Egypt were Copts from the countryside. The farther North the monastery was, the more it contained the Greek element from the urban environment, but this element is extremely small, since the Greeks occupied mainly the middle and upper Church ranks in the cities of Byzantine Egypt. During this year of study, I will analyze the material culture of Egyptian monasteries.