User:Carhutt/Pbow

Pbow was a cenobitic monastery established by St. Pachomius in 336-337 AD. Pbow is about 60 km north of Luxor in modern southern Egypt.

Name
Pbow is a Coptic name. The Arabic "Faw" in "Faw al-Qibli" ("South Faw") derives from the Coptic Pbow.

Other names include "Bau" and "Pboou".

History
Pbow was founded as administrative center for Pachomius's monastery in 336-337. The center included the Basilica of St. Pachomius. Pachomius died in Pbow in 347.

Very little is known about the history of Pbow after the 6th century AD. Around the time of the reign of al-Hakim, Pbow was either destroyed by al-Hakim, or it was already ruined.

Archaeology
The first descriptions of Pbow by Western archaeologists were from B.T.A. Evetts, Alfred J. Butler, Michel Jullien, and Louis Massignon around the late 19th century and early 20th century. Louis-Théophile Lefort described Pbow in Les premiers monastères Pachômiens, published 1939.

Peter Grossman has been a primary investigator of the archaeology of Pbow, starting in the 1970s. According to Grossman, three different primary churches were built at Pbow over time, superimposed one over the other.