Great Martyr
Great Martyr Menas of Egypt (of Cotyaeum)
† ок. 296–304
Also known as: Мина Александрийский
Great Martyr Menas of Egypt — a soldier who abandoned service to the pagan emperor and was beheaded in Phrygia; his relics, miraculously carried by a camel, became the site of Abu Mena, one of Egypt's greatest pilgrimage centers.
IMPORTANT CORRECTION: the image — an ancient ivory relief showing the saint flanked by two kneeling camels — is an unmistakable, instantly recognizable iconographic attribute specific to Great Martyr Menas of Egypt, allowing certain identification despite the previous erroneous "righteous" category.
Saint Menas was born in the Mareotis region near Alexandria, Egypt (the city of Nikiu in the Nile Delta) to Christian parents who prayed for a child before an icon of the Theotokos and received the answer "Amen" — the source of his name. Orphaned young (his father at 11, his mother at 14), he was conscripted into the Roman army and served at Cotyaeum (Phrygia, modern Kütahya, Turkey) under the commander Firmilian. When Emperor Diocletian's edicts demanded universal sacrifice to the pagan gods, Menas abandoned military service and withdrew into the desert to fast and pray.
He later appeared openly during imperial celebrations at Cotyaeum, entered the theater, and confessed Christ before the assembled crowd. Arrested by the governor Pyrrhus, he endured severe torture — beating, stretching, burning, being dragged over sharp iron balls — and was beheaded, his body burned before Christians could recover the remains.
His relics were later carried by camel toward Egypt; the animal stopped and refused to go further near Lake Mareotis — this was taken as a sign of his burial place, and here arose Abu Mena, one of the greatest pilgrimage centers of Late Antiquity. The image of the saint flanked by two kneeling camels is his enduring, recognizable attribute in Coptic and Byzantine art, down to Russian iconography (frescoes at Kiev's St. Sophia, 11th c. onward).
IMPORTANT NOTE: scholarship (Delehaye, Drescher, and others) debates whether "Menas of Egypt (Abu Mena)" and "Menas of Cotyaeum in Phrygia" represent one person or two merged cults of distinct martyrs; medieval sources also occasionally conflate him with a separate figure, Menas Kallikelados. This does not affect the identification from the image — the camel iconography is specific exclusively to him.
His feast is kept on November 11/24; also June 9 and June 25 (dedication of his church in Mareotis).