BEIJING, Aug. 10 -- Renovators working in an ancient Egyptian monastery have unearthed the oldest example of a building housing Christian monks, a member of the restoration project near the country's Red Sea coast said.

    The cell, a building that served as the living quarters for monks, dates from between the fourth and fifth centuries and will help shed light on the early days of monastic life, said Father Maximous, a monk working at the site.

    ¡°It is the oldest physical evidence of a cell from that age. It's the oldest in the Christian world,¡± said Maximous, who works on restoring Coptic monuments.

    The renovators had been repairing paintings inside a fifteenth century church on the site of St. Anthony's Monastery, founded in the mid-fourth century by disciples of one of Christianity's most influential hermits.

    St. Anthony, who lived between the third and fourth centuries, is credited with developing regulated monastic life. Before him, individual hermits lived solitary lives dedicated to prayer and contemplation.

    The renovators also found an eighth century church on the same site.

    Historical texts make mention of the early monks living at the site but no archeological evidence had previously been found from before the sixth century, Maximous said.

    The cell is a collection of rooms with private living areas and a central communal room, where the team found cooking implements, he said.

    St. Anthony's Monastery, 160 kilometers south west of Cairo, is one of the Christian world's oldest monasteries.

    (SD-Agencies)