Mary of Egypt (ca.344-ca.421) is revered as the patron saint of penitent women most particularly in the Orthodox and Oriental churches, but also in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. She was born in Egypt, and at the age of twelve ran away to Alexandria where she lived an extremely dissolute life from approximately 356 to 373. Some authorities refer to her as a prostitute during this period, but in her vita she denies strongly that she ever took money in exchange for her services in terms that suggest this would have mitigated her

At the end of that time she travelled to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Her motivation for making this journey is unclear, since she paid for her passage by offering sexual favors to other pilgrims, and she continued her habitual lifestyle for a short time in Jerusalem. Her vita relates that when she tried to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the celebration, she was barred from doing so by an unseen force. On seeing an image of the Virgin Mary in the narthex and hearing a voice, she was seized with repentance and retired to the Syrian desert to live the rest of

Her life was related by her to St. Zozimas of Palestine when he encountered her in the desert approximately one year before her death. On Holy Thursday of the following year she met him on the banks of the Jordan River near his monastery, crossing the river by walking on surface of the water to reach him, and he gave her Holy Communion. The next year Zosimas travelled to the same spot where he first met her some twenty day's journey away, and found her lying there dead. According to an inscription written in the sand next to her head, she had passed away on the very night he had given her Communion and had been somehow miraculously transported to the place he found her. He buried her body with the assistance of a passing lion. On returning to the monastery he related her life story to the brethren, and it was preserved among them as oral tradition until it was written down by St. Sophronios of Jerusalem.

In iconography she is depicted as a deeply tanned, emaciated old woman with unkempt gray hair, either naked or covered by the mantle she borrowed from Zosimas. She is often shown with the three loaves of bread she bought before undertaking her journey into the desert.

Her feast day is April 1. The Orthodox Church also commemorates her on the fifth Sunday of Great Lent. She is the subject of an opera by John Tavener.