Tabennisi
A deserted village on the Nile in the Thebaid where Pachomius founded his first monastery about 320. His monks were called Tabennesiots after it. The exact site has not been found.
Tabennisi lay in the Thebaid, the southern part of Egypt. The Life of Pachomius calls it a village in which no one was living when he came there to pray and was told to build a monastery (Life of Pachomius 12). Palladius, writing about 420, knew it as the place that gave the Pachomian monks their name (Palladius, Lausiac History 32.1). The site has not been identified on the ground; the coordinates are those given for it in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places, on the Nile between modern Nag Hammadi and Qena. See Pachomius Founds Communal Monasticism.
What happened here
- about AD 320, estimated datePachomius Founds Communal Monasticism
At Tabennisi in Upper Egypt, Pachomius gathers monks into a walled community with a common rule, shared meals and work, and a single superior. By his death there are several houses of men and women, and his rule is later translated for the West.