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Egypt races to restore Biblical sites along the Holy Family Trail


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Cairo — Every year on the first of June, Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church and its members commemorate the holy family's escape to Egypt. According to the Biblical story, the Archangel Gabriel visited Joseph and told him to flee with his baby Jesus and his wife Mary to Egypt, to hide from King Herod of Judea, who would search for the child to kill him.

The holy family is believed to have arrived in Egypt through Rafah, in the northeast of Egypt, and then moved across the country from place to place. During their 2,000-mile journey, they're believed to have made about 25 stops in eight of Egypt's modern-day governorates, or provinces.

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The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has been working since 2014 on developing and restoring all 25 locations along their path, hoping to lure visitors to travel the same route. Officials aim to get all of the sites registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Last week, the ministry finished restoring and developing one of the locations, a site with four monasteries in Wadi Al-Natroun, in the northern governate of Beheira.

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[...] The tourism ministry has been promoting a 3D virtual tour of the church, where you can see the well from which the holy family is said to have drunk, the cavern where they stayed, and the spot where baby Jesus apparently slept.

Egypt's tourism industry is trying to get back on its feet after the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the war in Ukraine has dealt a fresh blow. Russians and Ukrainians represented a significant proportion of the foreign tourists visiting the country before those calamities struck.

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Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/egypt-holy-family-trail-jesus-mary-joseph-flight-to-egypt-tourism/

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HermioneT
23 minutes ago, bionic said:

wait i didnt know the bible was set in egypt??

Egypt is the setting for a lot of biblical narrations, especially in the old testament such as the Joseph novel and the story of Moses. Egypt is featured quite often in the story of the Israelites

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1 hour ago, bionic said:

wait i didnt know the bible was set in egypt??

In the Old Testament, a very prominent part is the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Another important part is the burning bush seen by Moses, which is identified as a prefiguration of the Virgin Mary (just like the bush was on fire but not consumed by flames, so Mary remained Virgin during and after the conception). Saint Catherine's Monastery in Sinai is said to have been built over the place where Moses had this vision.

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In Eastern Christianity there are many icons representing Mount Sinai and the burning bush of Mary.

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And then obviously, in the New Testament, after Herod ordered the execution of male babies around Bethelethem, the Virgin Mary hid in Egypt. What some may not know is that before the spread of Islam, Egypt and most of the Middle East used to be Christian. Also, something lesser known is that, to this day, 15 millions out of Egypt's population of 100 millions are Christians belonging to the Coptic Orthodox Church. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_Orthodox_Church

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