Essays presented at the fifth international symposium of the St. Mark Foundation for Coptic History Studies and the St. Shenouda the Archimandrite Coptic Society, held from January 31 to February 4, 2010 near the Monastery of St. Hadra, west of Aswan, Egypt.

Coptic ostraca from Hagr Edfu / Anke Ilona Blöbaum -- Imagining Macedonius, the first Bishop of Philae / James E. Goehring -- Apa Hadra (Hidra) in the Difnar / Nashaat Mekhaiel -- Christianity on Philae / Samuel Moawad -- The indexing of manuscripts of the Monastery of the Great Saint Pachomius in Edfu / Fr. Angelous el-Naqlouny -- The beginnings of Christianity in Nubia / Siegfried G. Richter -- A foreshadowing of the desert spirituality in ancient Nubia and Upper Egypt / Ashraf Alexandre Sadek -- Contested frontiers : southern Egypt and northern Nubia, AD 300-1500 : the evidence of the inscriptions / Jacques van der Vliet -- The veneration of saints in Aswan and Nubia / Youhanna Nessim Youssef -- Dayr al-Kubbaniya : review of the documentation on the "Isisberg" Monastery ; The development of the church at Dayr Anba Hadra : a study of the plasterwork and dated inscriptions ; An updated plan of the church at Dayr Qubbat al-Hawa / Renate Dekker -- The Christian wall paintings from the Temple of Isis at Aswan revisited / Jitse H.E. Dijkstra and Gertrud J.M. van Loon -- Monastic life in Makuria / Włodzimierz Godlewski -- Christian Aswan in the modern era and the history of its cathedral / Metropolitan Hedra -- The word and the flesh / Karel C. Innemée -- The ascension scene in the apse of the church at Dayr Qubbat al-Hawwa : a comparative study / Mary Kupelian -- The Nubian marble object preserved in Dayr al-Suryan in Wadi al-Natrun / Bishop Martyros -- The digital 3D virtual reconstruction of the monastic church, Qubbat al-Hawa / Howard Middleton-Jones -- Christian objects in the Aswan and Nubia museums / Atif Naguib -- Sources for the study of late antique and early medieval Hagr Edfu / Elisabeth R. O'Connell -- Christianity in Kom Ombo / Adel F. Sadek -- Identification of the monastery of the Nubians in Wadi al-Natrun / Fr. Bigoul al-Suriany -- Monneret de Villard (1881-1954) and Nubia / Fr. Awad Wadi -- The conservation of the mural paintings of St. Hatre Monastery / Ashraf Nageh.