(CE:1254b-1255a)
HOR, obscure fifth-sixth-century holy person who was the companion of Ambrosius (feast day: 23 Tubah). Several Coptic inscriptions from DAYR APA JEREMIAH at Saqqara mention him, always in the company of Ambrosius, a person of whom we know nothing at all (Quibell, 1907-1908, Vol. 3, inscriptions nos. 26, 36, 76; 1908-1910, Vol. 4, inscription no. 95). H. G. EVELYN-WHITE thinks that he was contemporary with Saint JEREMIAH of Saqqara, who lived in the reign of the emperor Anastasius (491-518), if we are to believe what the Chronicle of JOHN OF NIKIOU says (89, 4).
The University Library in Leipzig and the Coptic Museum in Cairo preserve two leaves published by Evelyn-White from the beginning—the title is intact—of a Life of an Apa Hor who wrote to Saint Jeremiah and was the companion of Ambrosius (1926, pp. 168-70). Evelyn-White, as W. E. CRUM and J. Muyser later, sets this Hor in relation to Saint Jeremiah of Saqqara (Crum, 1913, p. 164, n. 1; Muyser, 1944, p. 187). Crum sees in the spelling Badasiyus in the SYNAXARION from Upper Egypt a corruption of Ambrosius, and even indeed the name of Epiphanius, which seems quite gratuitous (1926, Vol. 1, p. 216). Muyser (1944, p. 187) thinks that he is the same as Apa Hor of Abrahat, because the days of commemoration indicated on the one hand in the recension of the SYNAXARION of the Copts from Upper Egypt (23 Tubah) and on the other in the Cairo leaf published by Evelyn-White are the same; but he does not explain why the one is a companion of Ambrosius and not the other.
According to these sources Apa Hor wrote to Saint Jeremiah, the one of Saqqara, and was the companion of Ambrosius, whose name is of Western origin and rare among Egyptian proper names. He seems to have lived in the desert of Pisôben, which we can identify with the "Psôoun" of the nome of AKHMIM, named in the Life of Shenute (csco 41, p. 11, l. 27), and with the village of Absunah, which still exists.
RENÉ-GEORGES COQUIN
