The Historia monachorum in Aegypto, also called the Lives of the Desert Fathers,[1] is a combination travelogue and hagiography from the late 4th century AD.
It recounts the travels of a band of seven Palestinian monks on a pilgrimage through Egypt between September 394 and January 395.
They travelled from south to north, stopping in monasteries and meeting hermits and holy men.
Its original title is Ἡ κατ’ Αἴγυπτον τῶν μοναχῶν ἱστορία, which translates "Inquiry about the Monks of Egypt".
[2] It is best known by the Latin title of Rufinus' edition, which is often misleadingly translated "History of the Monks of Egypt", but the work is not historiography.