HMML works with the Monastery of Saint Macarius (Dayr Qiddīs Anbā Maqqār) in the desert of Wadi al-Natrun, the ancient site of Scetis, to digitize their collection of more than 500 Coptic manuscripts. They range from 8th-century fragments discovered in the 1970s to beautifully illuminated works of the 13th and 14th centuries, and more recent manuscripts. The Coptic Christian tradition of Egypt is both ancient and flourishing, especially in the Coptic diaspora in Australia and the United States. The Coptic language is a late form of the ancient language represented in Egyptian hieroglyphs. No longer spoken as a living language, Coptic endures in the liturgy and in the thousands of original texts and translations found in manuscripts. The Saint Macarius Monastery, one of three important early Christian monastic centers located in the Nitrian Desert, holds a collection critical to the understanding of the formation of early Christian traditions connected to other monastic centers in the Middle East and Africa.

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