Dair El-Garnus:
The village of "Dir El Garnous" is about seven Kilometers west of "Ishnin Al-Nasara" and eihteen kilometers south-west of "Maghaghah".
Nowadays there is a church there after the name of the Holy Virgin Mary which goes back to the nineteenth century.This church was built in about 1870.Beside the western wall inside the church there is a deep well.
In the Ethiopic Synaxarium it is stated that the Holy Family went to a locality which is called Baysus ("Bet Iyasus", or House of Jesus) and here Jesus dug a well whereof the water cured every sickness and every pain. And He also set a sign in a certain river of Egypt, which rose in flood every year.
The plessed well in Dair El-Garnus was used as an ancient Nilometer .
EI-Bahnasa:
They went on from there to a spot later named "Sandafa" village, east of "Al-Bahnassa".
The village of "EI-Bahnasa",itself, is one of the important places which the Holy Family passed by .It stands about ten kilometres in a southerly direction from "Ishnin" and about 17 kms west of the town of "Beni Mazar". Nowadays, it is situated on the edge of the desert.
In Pharaonic times , it was the capital of a nome and called "Oxyrhynchus" according to the fish Oxyrhynchus, a species of mormyrus,wich was worshipped there .In Coptic Pemje,it was the present town of "Al-Bahnasa".
There is evidence that the persecutions by the Emperor Diocletian were especially severe at Oxyrhynchus.
Father "Palladius " mentioned that at "El-Bahnasa" there were about 30 thousands monks and nuns.
AI-Maqrizi (15th Century) mentioned that the only church then in the town was the church of the Holy Virgin, after it had 360 churches.
In 1897 Grenfell and A S. Hunt discovered in the mounds of "Oxyrhynchus" the famous Logia or Sayings of Jesus, which form part of the find known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
Today, "Al-Bahnasa" possesses only one church and this is dedicated to St. George and was built in 1923.