This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
For decades, popular accounts of this panel have called it the oldest known Coptic icon, dating it to the second half of the sixth century, painted while Egypt was still under Byzantine rule, before the Arab conquest reshaped the region's religious life. It is a good story, and it is repeated widely in general reference summaries still circulating today. It is also, according to the Louvre's own current official catalog record, checked directly rather than assumed, no longer the museum's own position. The Louvre now dates the panel to the eighth century, 700 to 799 CE, two hundred years later than the figure most casual accounts still repeat.
Which figure the wider community of specialists now favors is not settled here; what can be said honestly is that the object's own current custodian has moved its official dating forward by two centuries, worth recording plainly rather than letting an older, more dramatic claim stand unchallenged simply because it is repeated more often.
The panel's journey to Paris carries its own complication. It was uncovered in 1902 during excavation of the Monastery of Apollo at Bawit, work associated with the French archaeologist Jean Cledat, and stolen from the excavation site before it could enter any official record. It resurfaced with a private collector, Jacques Theodore Jules Lecomte du Nouy, who had purchased it. Du Nouy gave the panel to the Louvre in 1918, and it has remained in the museum's collection since, though not currently on public display.
A find stolen from its own excavation, later legitimized by donation into a national collection, is not a unique story in the history of archaeology, but it is worth stating plainly, the same way the dating uncertainty above is worth stating plainly.