Desert Fathers
Desert Fathers is the name for early Christian monks, who left the villages of Egypt, when Christans were persecuted under Diocletian. They then either lived alone, as hermits, or they formed small groups who lived in monasteries. The settled in the desert. in Egypt and Syria. Most of them went to the Scetes desert, about  south of Alexandria. The most well-known of their monasteries are located in Wadi El Natrun, Nitria and Kellia. The movement started in the 3rd century.  The  is a collection of the wisdom of some of the early desert monks and nuns, in print as Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The most well known was Anthony the Great, who moved to the desert in AD 270–271 and became known as both the father and founder of desert monasticism. By the time Anthony had died in AD 356, thousands of monks and nuns had been drawn to living in the desert following Anthony's example, leading his biographer, Athanasius of Alexandria, to write that "the desert had become a city." The Desert Fathers had a major influence on the development of Christianity.