BAQAVAT (al-). — Modern name given to the necropolis of the city of Hibis ('1842), metropolis of the Great Oasis. The first scholars who described it (cf. W. de Bock, Matériaux pour servir à l'archéologie de l'Égypte chrétienne, Petersburg 1901; P. Karge, Durch die libysche Wüste zur Grossen Oase, Freiburg 1920, pp. 283–322) considered it completely Christian; but the American excavations of 1907–1908 and 1926 demonstrated that it is instead largely pagan. It was perhaps begun in the middle of the 3rd century and only later also used by Christians. This is confirmed as well by the papyri from the archive of a local corporation of corpse-bearers and embalmers, dating from 247 to 307, all pagan except one (B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Greek Papyri, II, Oxford 1897, nos. LXXVII–LXXVIII, pp. 104–25). The pagan mausoleums do not differ from the Christian ones either in their architectural forms or in their construction technique (cf. W. Hauser, The Christian Necropole in Khargeh Oasis, in Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 27 (1932), pp. 38–50), and only recognition of the corpse can provide precise indications. The pagan tombs recognized thus far contain embalmed bodies enclosed in wooden sarcophagi painted with scenes and symbols from Egyptian mythology; therefore, for the present, we can regard as certainly Christian only those chapels that reveal themselves as such through their decoration or through the inscriptions painted or scratched on the walls (on the inscriptions of the necropolis see G. Lefebvre, in Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte, 9 (1908), pp. 179–83; A. Jacoby, Zur der «Ammonier», Inschrift der Grossen Oase in der Libyschen Wüste, in Byzant.-Neugriechische Jahrbücher, 1 (1920), pp. 148–150), pending exhaustive excavations that will enable us to determine exactly the history of the cemetery. It consists of approximately 250 mausoleums arranged in two groups that converge in the north near a large building, probably a small three-naved basilica, surrounded by service and residential rooms, perhaps monastic. The mausoleums are generally square chapels, with the door to the south and sometimes a small apse to the east, covered by a dome on pendentives and, more rarely, by a flat roof; at other times they are circular or octagonal. There are also rectangular mausoleums covered with a barrel vault, in some cases interrupted in the middle by a dome. The walls are externally decorated with blind arcades supported by pilasters or engaged half-columns. The perimeter walls rise above the springing of the dome, which generally remains concealed, and are decorated at the top with an openwork frieze of triangles. The building material is mud brick; only the door lintels were made of wood or stone. The walls were plastered with fine mud and whitewashed. Triangular niches for holding lamps can be seen beside the doors. Important paintings decorate, in addition to the large building mentioned above, three of the Christian mausoleums: the one known as that of the biblical scenes, that of the allegorical figures, and that of the vine decoration.
BAR: ANTIVARI.