The family"s last Cairo stop was in today"s leafy suburban district of Maadi. Here, they are thought to have used the same steps that connect the Church of the Virgin Mary to the Nile, where they boarded a papyrus boat and sailed toward the ancient city of Memphis and Al-Bahnasa, the latter the site of another future monastic hub. When I stopped by the church, the old steps were barred by a locked iron gate, and a police boat docked nearby. Inside, along with icons of the Holy Family, is a glass-encased relic from a much later date: a water-worn Bible plucked from the Nile near the sacred steps in 1976, its pages miraculously open to Isaiah 19:25: "Blessed be Egypt my people… "