The Christian cultural heritage of north Africa is ancient and rich, but at risk after recent political events. The Christian, Coptic heritage of Egypt remains poorly studied from the perspective of heritage management and is also at risk from a number of factors. Using first-hand study and analysis based upon original fieldwork, Egypt’s Christian Heritage offers an assessment to the risks facing Coptic monuments in Egypt today. It does this by situating Egyptian heritage policy within the English framework, and it establishes theoretical approaches to value, significance, meaning, and interpretation in Egyptian heritage within a wider global framework. The research is based on the analysis of three markedly different Egyptian Christian Coptic sites, each with their own unique management issues. This book offers a series of solutions and ideas to preserve, manage and interpret this unique material culture and to emphasise community solutions as being the most viable and sustainable approaches, whilst taking into account the varied levels of significance of these monuments.

AUTHOR
Dan Heale has been working in the heritage sector for the past 14 years. He has worked on projects in the UK, Barbados, Spain and Austria. He has managed many projects within the UK as site director and has a particular interest in urban archaeology and heritage protection.

REVIEW
‘The book is richly illustrated, with maps, tables and photos from public and private archives. (…) Besides contributing to protecting this sizeable but neglected cultural heritage from potential damage and loss, this volume offers a valuable resource to conduct further research and it will be a useful reference work for studies on rock-cut sites from other contexts, both regional and extra-regional.’ Margherita Riso, Medieval Archaeology, Vol 65.1 (2021)

‘This is a ground-breaking work’. Professor Gawdat Gabra, former director of the Coptic Museum, Cairo