ABŪ HENNIS (more correctly Deyr Abū Hennis). — Coptic village situated southwest of Sheikh 'Ibada (Antinoupolis), preserving the remains of an important basilica of the fifth century, transformed (perhaps in the thirteenth or fourteenth century) into a domed church. It was probably the principal church of that Christian city whose ruins, located nearby, are today known as al-Madīna (cf. Somers Clarke, Christian Antiquities in the Nile Valley, Oxford 1902, pp. 181–87). In a valley near the village there are some ancient stone quarries that were adapted into Christian chapels from the earliest times. The walls are decorated with relatively well-preserved paintings from the fifth and sixth centuries, depicting episodes from the Gospels arranged according to the chronological order of events and in continuous narrative. They were published by J. Clédat, Notes archéologiques et philologiques, in Bulletin de l'Institut Français d'archéologie orientale, 2 (Cairo 1902).
Ugo Monneret de Villard