In the early days of April, 1968, ten months after the Six-Day War, in a district some fifteen miles north of Cairo there occurred an event that for several months became the focus of attention not only for thousands of Egyptians of different religions and social backgrounds but also hundreds of foreigners, members of the international press, resident scholars and diplomats, representatives of Western Christianity and the perennial tourists. This event, known locally as the Apparition of Zeitoun, involves the alleged multiple appearances of the Virgin Mary on the dome of a Coptic Christian church in the district of Zeitoun. The Copts are an Egyptian Christian minority who are descendants of the original Egyptian population at the time of the Arab conquest in the seventh century and who were never converted to Islam.