Role of Egypt’s ‘Lourdes’ Unveiled : Archeology: Ongoing excavation has yet to reveal full extent of ancient religious site. Early Christians seeking miracles once flocked to area.

The German archeologist Peter Grossmann has spent 30 years trying to unravel the story of one of early Christianity’s great pilgrimage centers, Abu Mina, a city of miracles 1,400 years before France’s Lourdes.

Early pilgrims came here to pray at the grave of Menas, a 4th-Century Christian martyr beheaded by Egypt’s Roman occupiers. Said to be a place of miracles, the grave became the cornerstone of a vast religious complex, Egypt’s most acclaimed.

Under a searing sun, Grossmann stared over the vast ruins, stretching endlessly across bleached sand. He spoke about the peculiarity of the work, mixing Abu Mina’s history--things he can touch--with centuries of legends and tales of miracles.

“We’re not here to challenge the beliefs about Abu Mina,” Grossmann said. “We’re here to let the rocks tell the story.”

Grossmann, of Cairo’s German Archeological Institute, has studied early Christian sites throughout the Middle East. Abu Mina is historically special for two reasons:

Few relics survive in Egypt from the 4th to the 6th centuries, after Roman persecution ended and Christianity was legalized.

Unlike most early Christian monuments, altered repeatedly over the centuries, Abu Mina retains much of the feeling of old.

Cairo’s ancient churches, some said to have provided sanctuary for Mary, Joseph and Jesus as they fled from Herod’s wrath in Judea, have been rebuilt so many times that nothing exists of the original. What’s seen today is medieval, not early Christian.

Some of Abu Mina’s remains survive amazingly intact, giving archeologists a chance to study in detail a period when dramatic change swept the Mediterranean.

Abu Mina’s historical significance was underscored in 1979 by UNESCO, the main U.N. cultural agency, which placed the pilgrimage center on its world heritage list. Only five of Egypt’s thousands of antiquity sites share the distinction.

Despite almost a century of excavation, Abu Mina has yet to yield its last secrets.

On a recent Sunday morning, Grossmann walked the ruins. The stillness was interrupted only by occasional murmurs of wandering sheep and goats, tended by neighborhood Bedouins. Flowers dotted the desert, offerings of a recent rainstorm.

“We have other sites, but Abu Mina is unusual because it hasn’t been dramatically disturbed,” Grossmann said. “What we have here, we can understand.”

For archeologists, Abu Mina provides fascinating insights not only into early Christianity’s rites and customs but also into evolving church architecture and changing life outside church walls.

Major ruins include ancient Egypt’s largest church, the Great Basilica, dating from the late 5th or early 6th Century; the Martyr-Church, built over Menas’ grave, and a baptistery where male and female pilgrims were baptized separately.

The rise of Abu Mina began with the burial of Menas, possibly a Greek-Egyptian, whose wealthy parents died when he was young.

Friends of his father gave Menas a place in the Roman army. But he deserted his post, refused to worship pagan idols and was beheaded, perhaps during Emperor Diocletian’s savage persecution of Christians in AD 304-5.

His body was buried in a desert crypt, probably a family grave, 30 miles southwest of Alexandria. After Christianity was legalized in 313, word spread quickly that Menas’ tomb was a place of miraculous healing.

Pilgrimages to areas associated with the Virgin Mary or popular saints were distinctive to Egyptian Christianity from the beginning. Although Egypt claimed 20 early sites, Abu Mina remained the most popular until the Middle Ages when it gradually sank into obscurity.

Believers from around the Mediterranean flocked here to pray. By the 5th Century Abu Mina had grown from simple surroundings to a famous, richly endowed miracle center with elaborate churches, hotels and hawkers.

For souvenirs, pilgrims took home pottery flasks filled with holy water. Known as Menas bottles, they have been found as far away as Spain and France.

Pilgrims stayed a few days, others weeks, even years. At Abu Mina, archeologists are uncovering accommodations ranging from the posh for the rich pilgrim to simple courtyards for the weary poor.

Excavation is showing that longtime residents had their own quarters, with separate toilets for men and women--along with hairdressers.

“We read a description left by an early pilgrim or traveler, and sometimes the archeology supports the story,” Grossmann said. “We’re digging, and there it is.”

Abu Mina was lost to scholars until 1905 when a German archeologist searching for Abu Mina fell ill and was carried toward shade. Superstitious Bedouin guides, afraid of the site’s aura, had managed to keep others far afield.

The shade that soothed the ailing archeologist came from the ruins of Abu Mina.

Its discovery came 53 years after Bernadette Soubirous visualized the Virgin Mary at Lourdes in southwestern France. The Virgin is said to have told the young girl of a miraculous underground spring, which has since been visited by millions of afflicted pilgrims.

Coptic and Greek Orthodox pilgrims and other seekers still congregate at Abu Mina.

Every Nov. 24, the Coptic feast day of St. Menas, as many as 20,000 Copts visit nearby Abu Mina Monastery, built to honor St. Menas’ cult.

Many walk into the desert to pray in the ruined miracle center.