Saint Pachomius was born in about 292 AD in the Upper Thebaid in Egypt. As a twenty-year-old in 312 AD, he was inducted into the Roman army. The great kindness of Christians toward the soldiers at Thebes inspired his conversion subsequent to his military discharge. After being baptized, he became a disciple of the elder anchorite Palemon. There were many such hermits at that time, refugees from the decadent Roman Empire, who lived in the countless caves along the rimrock of the Upper Nile Valley. This was a solitary life of extreme austerity and total dedication to God, combining manual labor with unceasing prayer and study both day and night. Pachomius, however, recalling his experiences in military barracks, had the idea of gathering the local hermits together into a community to build a monastery on the banks of the Nile at Tabennisi (Gk CHNOBOSKEION). Thus in about 318 AD, Palemon helped him build a cell there and remained with him for a while. In a short time some 100 anchorites had joined Pachomius at Tabennisi, and in 320 AD he organized them on principles of communal living. The various writings in the Nag Hammadi Library doubtless represent texts from the resultant Pachomian library, brought to the community by this or that individual anchorite or novice. So renowned did the life of Pachomius and his monks become, that he was eventually obliged to establish ten other monasteries for men and two nunneries for women. Before his death in 346 AD, there were 7000 monks in his various houses, his Pachomian Order in the East lasting until the 11th century. St Pachomius must thus be credited with founding the Christian monastic movement, for the first time organizing male and female devotees into communities and writing down a Rule for them. (Both St Basil and St Benedict drew from his Rule in setting forth their own more famous ones.) Hence, although St Anthony is often regarded as the founder of monasticism, it was really St Pachomius who founded the cenobitic life.