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99-655: Wadi el Rayan is mentioned in Coptic sources as Pilihēy ( Coptic : ⲡⲓⲗⲓϩⲏⲩ , lit.   'possessing profit, useful'), a salt lake west of Kalamoun where Samuel the Confessor liked to rest. The valley of Wadi El-Rayan is an area of 1,759 km (679 sq mi), 113 km (44 sq mi) of which are the dominating water body of the Wadi El Rayan lakes. It is located about 65 km (40 mi) southwest of Faiyum city and 80 km (50 mi) west of

198-570: A literary language across Egypt in the period c.  325  – c.  800 AD. Bohairic, the language of the Nile Delta , gained prominence in the 9th century and is the dialect used by the Coptic Church. In Coptic the language is called ϯⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ( timetremǹkhēmi ) "Egyptian" or ϯⲁⲥⲡⲓ ⲛ̀ⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ( tiaspi ǹremǹkhēmi ) "the Egyptian language". Coptic also possessed

297-480: A Christian milieu. Many of the texts probably date to the period of Coptic literary creativity in the 6th century (often associated with Patriarch Damian of Alexandria ). The copying and composition of magical texts in Coptic declined with the rise of Arabic and Islam. Texts ceased to be produced in the 12th century. Coptic writing after 451 is mostly non-Chalcedonian , theologically miaphysite and hence isolate from

396-718: A book, known as the Liber Orsiesii , in which the Pachomian style attains its most literary form. He also wrote a set of rules. Both Pachomius and Horsiesi make use of the "spiritual alphabet", an alphabetic cipher. Two later and anonymous texts belong to the Pachomian tradition, the Apocalypse of Kiarur and the Visit of Horsiesi (which may have been originally written in Greek). A biography of Pachomius, originally written in Coptic, survives in

495-547: A broader sense, "Coptic" may include Greek literature produced in Egypt that circulated in the Coptic community. The literature that the Copts wrote in Arabic is generally treated separately as Copto-Arabic literature . "Literature", too, may be taken in a strict sense that excludes documentary and subliterary texts, such as magical and medical texts. The standard literary dialect of Coptic

594-525: A distinctive body of work that was early translated into Greek. It is preserved on scrolls and rolls of the 4th to 6th centuries, often made with recycled parchment or papyrus. Pachomius' rules for communal monastic living, inspired in part by his Roman military background, were a major influence on European monasticism. His literary influence, however, was relatively meagre. Besides his rules and letters, there are also letters of his disciples Theodorus of Tabennese and Horsiesi . Horsiesi also wrote

693-451: A fragmentary manuscript. It is probably a product of Egyptian monasticism also, but its themes are "rooted in a long Egyptian religious tradition that pits the forces of Chaos against those of Order". It can be dated to between the 5th and 9th centuries. The hagiographical Legend of Hilaria has sometimes been classified as a romance. The writings of Pachomius the Great and his milieu form

792-600: A later Bohairic version and in translations in Greek, Latin and Arabic. The monk Shenoute (died 465), head of the White Monastery, was "perhaps the most prolific writer" in the Coptic language. He is its "one truly remarkable individual author", whose writing is by far "its most sophisticated". He raised Coptic to the rank of literary language. He was, however, almost unknown outside the Coptic tradition. His works were never translated into Greek. They were gradually brought to

891-488: A named author. For reasons not fully understood, it was moribund as a language of original composition by the 11th century. Much Coptic literature is now lost, as the Copts began to use Arabic. Texts such as the Apocalypse of Samuel of Kalamoun deplore the loss of Coptic, but are themselves now only extant in Arabic. William Worrell argues that Coptic went through three stages in its contact with Arabic. First, it borrowed

990-1124: A second phase, in the 5th century, a new genre of "apostolic memoir" appears. The Gospel of the Saviour is an example of an apocryphal text composed in Coptic after the Council of Chalcedon (451). Examples of Old Testament apocrypha in Coptic include Wisdom of Solomon , Testament of Abraham , Testament of Isaac , Testament of Jacob , Ascension of Isaiah , Apocalypse of Moses , Apocalypse of Elijah and Apocalypse of Zephaniah . New Testament apocrypha include Gospel of Thomas , Gospel of Nicodemus , Gospel of Bartholomew , Gospel of Mary , Epistula Apostolorum , Protevangelium of James , Letter of Abgar to Jesus , Acts of Paul , Acts of Peter , Acts of John , Acts of Andrew , Acts of Pilate and Apocalypse of Paul . The selection of New Testament apocrypha suggests direct contacts with Asia unmediated by Alexandria. The Apocalypse of Elijah and Ascension of Isaiah , however, are native Egyptian works. The earliest translation of

1089-402: A sentence, as the object of a verb, or with a preposition. Dependent pronouns are a series of prefixes and suffixes that can attach to verbs and other nouns. Coptic verbs can therefore be said to inflect for the person, number and gender of the subject and the object: a pronominal prefix marks the subject, and a pronominal suffix marks the object, e.g. "I I'have'it the ball." When (as in this case)

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1188-534: A separate collection that may not have been supervised by him. This tripartite classification was apparently made by him. He also prohibited his works from being disseminated outside his monastic federation, limiting their impact. They were, however, highly revered there, since the manuscript tradition reveals very few variants, indicating that they were treated almost on par with the Bible. His influence on Coptic literature may extend beyond his own writings, if his monastery

1287-408: A supralinear stroke ⟨◌̄⟩, or the stroke may have tied letters together in one word, since Coptic texts did not otherwise indicate word divisions. Some scribal traditions use a diaeresis over the letters ⲓ and ⲩ at the beginning of a word or to mark a diphthong. Bohairic uses a superposed point or small stroke known as ϫⲓⲛⲕⲓⲙ ( jinkim , "movement"). When jinkim is placed over a vowel it

1386-593: A tenuis-aspirate distinction to voiced-tenuis is only attested from the alveolars, the only place that Arabic has such a contrast. Earlier phases of Egyptian may have contrasted voiceless and voiced bilabial plosives, but the distinction seems to have been lost. Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic all interchangeably use their respective graphemes to indicate either sound; for example, Coptic for 'iron' appears alternately as ⲡⲉⲛⲓⲡⲉ , ⲃⲉⲛⲓⲡⲉ and ⲃⲓⲛⲓⲃⲉ . That probably reflects dialect variation. Both letters were interchanged with ⲫ and ϥ to indicate / f / , and ⲃ

1485-453: A testament to the increasing cultural contact between Egyptians and Greeks even before Alexander the Great 's conquest of Egypt. Coptic itself, or Old Coptic , takes root in the first century. The transition from the older Egyptian scripts to the newly adapted Coptic alphabet was in part due to the decline of the traditional role played by the priestly class of ancient Egyptian religion , who, unlike most ordinary Egyptians, were literate in

1584-534: A vowel's grapheme but mostly unwritten. A few early manuscripts have a letter ⳋ or ⳃ ç where Sahidic and Bohairic have ϣ š . and Akhmimic has ⳉ x . This sound seems to have been lost early on. Coptic is agglutinative with subject–verb–object word order but can be verb–subject–object with the correct preposition in front of the subject. Number, gender, tense, and mood are indicated by prefixes that come from Late Egyptian. The earlier phases of Egyptian did this through suffixation. Some vestiges of

1683-490: Is also better known than that of the Classical phase of the language because of a greater number of sources indicating Egyptian sounds, including cuneiform letters containing transcriptions of Egyptian words and phrases, and Egyptian renderings of Northwest Semitic names. Coptic sounds, in addition, are known from a variety of Coptic-Arabic papyri in which Arabic letters were used to transcribe Coptic and vice versa. They date to

1782-689: Is also found in the Oracle of the Potter and the Oracle of the Lamb . The Legend of Hilaria has been seen as a reworking of the Tale of Bentresh . Oxyrhynchite Coptic (Bohairic Coptic: ϯⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ , Timetremənkhēmi ) is an Afroasiatic extinct language . It is a group of closely related Egyptian dialects , representing the most recent developments of the Egyptian language , and historically spoken by

1881-640: Is called Coptology . Since the term "Coptic" can have, besides a linguistic sense, an ethnic sense (referring to Copts ) and a religious sense ( Coptic Christianity ), there is the propensity for ambiguity in the term "Coptic literature". Coptic literature is usually defined as that in the Coptic language . It is not usually limited to original compositions, but includes also translations into Coptic (mainly from Greek ). It also includes texts believed to have been composed in Coptic, but which are preserved only in translation (mainly in Arabic and Ethiopic ). In

1980-411: Is confined to inter-dune areas around springs and at the base of large dunes. The vegetation cover is made of 13 species of perennial plants and a few individuals of Calligonum comosum and Zygophyllum album . Wadi El Rayan accommodates one of the world's few remaining populations of the endangered slender-horned gazelle . The dorcas gazelle is still found in the area in small numbers whilst both

2079-511: Is difficult to explain ⟨ ⲏ ⟩ . However, it generally became / æ / in stressed monosyllables, / ɪ / in unstressed monosyllables, and in polysyllables, / æ / when followed by / i / , and / ɪ / when not. There were no doubled orthographic vowels in Mesokemic. Some representative correspondences with Sahidic are: It is not clear if these correspondences reflect distinct pronunciations in Mesokemic, or if they are an imitation of

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2178-413: Is expressed with a series of possessive articles which are prefixed to the noun. These articles agree with the person , number , and gender of the possessor and the number and gender of the possessed noun. The forms of the possessive article vary according to dialect. Coptic pronouns are of two kinds, dependent and independent. Independent pronouns are used when the pronoun is acting as the subject of

2277-418: Is from the 1st century AD. This first phase of written Coptic is called Old Coptic and lasts into the 4th or 5th century. The earliest stage of experimentation with the Egyptian language in the Greek alphabet is often called Pre-Old Coptic or Graeco-Egyptian. Other authors distinguish between early and late Old Coptic. Old Coptic consists of pagan writings of a magical or divinatory nature. These texts lack

2376-534: Is less consistent and they contain more grammatical errors. On the whole, they are less professional productions. Shenoute 's Against the Origenists shows, however, that such texts were widely read in orthodox communities. Manichaeism was introduced to Egypt around 350. Within a few decades they began translating their texts into Coptic, some from the Aramaic originals and sometimes from Greek intermediaries. This makes

2475-658: Is likely because the majority of Coptic religious texts are direct translations of Greek works. What invariably attracts the attention of the reader of a Coptic text, especially if it is written in the Sa'idic dialect, is the very liberal use which is made of Greek loan words, of which so few, indeed, are to be found in the Ancient Egyptian language. There Greek loan words occur everywhere in Coptic literature, be it Biblical, liturgical, theological, or non-literary, i.e. legal documents and personal letters. Though nouns and verbs predominate,

2574-412: Is not known if some or all of them were originally composed in Greek or Coptic. These letters demonstrate Anthony's familiarity with the controversies engulfing the contemporary church, including that over Arianism. They would provide a link, otherwise unattested, between the origins of Coptic literature and Alexandrian theology . The earliest certain original author with surviving works is Pachomius

2673-711: Is not known if the Bohairic translations were made from the Greek originals or from the Sahidic versions. The only non-religious literary texts in Coptic are two romances : the Alexander Romance and the Cambyses Romance . Translated from Greek, the Coptic Alexander attained its definitive form in the 6th century. What survives is a fragmentary text from the White Monastery. The original manuscript had 220 pages and

2772-425: Is not sufficient to demonstrate that these are distinct vowels, and if they are, the difference has a very low functional load . For dialects that use orthographic ⟨ ⲉⲓ ⟩ for a single vowel, there appears to be no phonetic difference from ⟨ ⲓ ⟩ . Double orthographic vowels are presumed here to be long, as that makes the morphology more straightforward. (Another common interpretation

2871-778: Is possible that in addition there was a glottal stop , ʔ , that was not consistently written. Coptic does not seem to have had a glottal stop at the beginning of orthographically vowel-initial words. It is possible that vowels written double were an attempt to indicate glottal stop, rather than a long vowel, in the middle of a word. However, there is little evidence for this (e.g., Arabic words with short vowels and glottal stop are not written with double vowels in Coptic, and Coptic words with double orthographic vowels are transcribed with long vowels rather than hamza in Arabic.) In Late Coptic (ca. 14th century), Bohairic sounds that did not occur in Egyptian Arabic were lost. A possible shift from

2970-445: Is pronounced independently, and when it is placed over a consonant a short ⲉ precedes it. The oldest Coptic writings date to the pre-Christian era (Old Coptic), though Coptic literature consists mostly of texts written by prominent saints of the Coptic Church such as Anthony the Great, Pachomius the Great and Shenoute. Shenoute helped fully standardise the Coptic language through his many sermons, treatises and homilies, which formed

3069-439: Is safe to assume that the everyday speech of the native population retained, to a greater extent, its indigenous Egyptian character, which is sometimes reflected in Coptic nonecclesiastical documents such as letters and contracts. Coptic provides the clearest indication of Later Egyptian phonology from its writing system, which fully indicates vowel sounds and occasionally stress patterns. The phonological system of Later Egyptian

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3168-603: Is spoken only in Egypt and historically has had little influence outside of the territory, except for monasteries located in Nubia . Coptic's most noticeable linguistic influence has been on the various dialects of Egyptian Arabic , which is characterised by a Coptic substratum in lexical , morphological , syntactical , and phonological features. In addition to influencing the grammar, vocabulary and syntax of Egyptian Arabic, Coptic has lent to both Arabic and Modern Hebrew such words as: A few words of Coptic origin are found in

3267-405: Is that Coptic articles are prefixes. Masculine nouns are marked with the article /pə, peː/ and feminine nouns with the article /tə, teː/ in the Sahidic dialect and /pi, əp/ and /ti, ət/ in the Bohairic dialect. The definite and indefinite articles also indicate number ; however, only definite articles mark gender. Coptic has a number of broken plurals , a vestige of Older Egyptian, but in

3366-405: Is that these represented glottal stop.) There is no length distinction in final stressed position, but only those vowels that occur long appear there: ⟨ (ⲉ)ⲓ, ⲉ, ⲁ, ⲟ~ⲱ, ⲟⲩ ⟩ . In Sahidic, the letter ⲉ was used for short / e / before back fricatives, and also for unstressed schwa / ə / . It's possible there was also a distinction between short / ɛ / and / a / , but if so

3465-462: Is usually the result of consonant voicing in proximity to / n / . Though there is no clear evidence that Coptic had a glottal stop , different orthographic means have been posited for indicating one by those who believe that it did: with ⲁ word-initially, with ⲓ word-finally in monosyllabic words in northern dialects and ⲉ in monosyllabic words in Akhmimic and Assiutic, by reduplication of

3564-519: The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis , the 3rd-century writer Hierakas wrote works of biblical exegesis and psalmody in Greek and Coptic. The only surviving work attributed to him is of dubious authenticity. The first author in literary Coptic whose works survives may be Anthony the Great (died 356). Seven of his authentic letters are known, some in Coptic fragments. They were also translated into Latin from Greek. No Greek version survives and it

3663-510: The Vita Sinuthii , has been falsely attributed to Besa. It is a collection of various stories of independent and anonymous authorship and questionable historical value. There are approximately 600 surviving magical or ritual manuscripts in Coptic from between the 4th and 12th centuries. Coptic magic originates as translations from the Greek tradition . The vast majority of manuscripts come from

3762-844: The Apostolic Fathers and Hippolytus of Rome . There is a Coptic version of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers . Notably absent are works by two of the most outstanding early Egyptian Christian writers, Clement of Alexandria and Origen , although the Berlin Coptic Book of anonymous treatises shows traces of Clementine thought. Works were generally treated individually and rarely was a whole body of work translated, although there are corpora of homilies by Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa and Severus of Antioch . Pseudepigraphy —false attribution—is common in Coptic literature, especially with

3861-567: The Church Fathers into Coptic also date from the period of the first biblical translations, the 2nd and 3rd centuries. One of the earliest manuscripts of such works is the Crosby-Schøyen Codex . Most, however, date to a slightly later phase, the 4th through 6th centuries. The translations were notably selective, with a stronger preference for the "edifying and pastoral" over the "theological and exegetical". The earliest identifiable are

3960-714: The Copts , starting from the third century AD in Roman Egypt . Coptic was supplanted by Arabic as the primary spoken language of Egypt following the Arab conquest of Egypt and was slowly replaced over the centuries. Coptic has no native speakers today, although it remains in daily use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church and of the Coptic Catholic Church . Innovations in grammar and phonology and

4059-553: The Gospels and the Pauline epistles . In one place, he quotes The Birds of Aristophanes . He wrote treatises against Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Origenism and Melitianism . Shenoute's writings are divided into two collections, the nine-volume Canons , which are addressed to his monastic community and mainly concern discipline, and the eight-volume Discourses , which are addressed to outsiders and mainly concern ethics. His letters are

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4158-577: The Greek language ; some of the words were later lent to various European languages — such as barge , from Coptic baare ( ⲃⲁⲁⲣⲉ , "small boat"). However, most words of Egyptian origin that entered into Greek and subsequently into other European languages came directly from Ancient Egyptian, often Demotic . An example is the Greek oasis ( ὄασις ), which comes directly from Egyptian wḥꜣt or Demotic wḥj . However, Coptic reborrowed some words of Ancient Egyptian origin into its lexicon, via Greek. For example, both Sahidic and Bohairic use

4257-577: The Middle Ages . Coptic belongs to the Later Egyptian phase, which started to be written in the New Kingdom of Egypt . Later Egyptian represented colloquial speech of the later periods. It had analytic features like definite and indefinite articles and periphrastic verb conjugation. Coptic, therefore, is a reference to both the most recent stage of Egyptian after Demotic and the new writing system that

4356-452: The Nile River. The Wadi has been used for man-made lakes from agricultural drainage which has made a reserve of the two separate Wadi El Rayan Lakes. The reserve is composed of a 50.90 km (19.65 sq mi) upper lake and a 62.00 km (23.94 sq mi) lower lake, with waterfalls between the two. Among the springs , there are three sulphur springs at the southern side of

4455-452: The Psalms and New Testament—was in official use in the churches. The circumstances of the earliest translation work are obscure. The relatively early standardization of the Sahidic text, which remains largely unchanged throughout Coptic history, attests to the high standards of the original translation work. Coptic translations of Gnostic and Manichaean texts date from the same period as

4554-433: The fennec fox and Rüppell's fox are scarce. There are 11 species of reptile, 9 species of mammal, 13 species of resident bird and 26 species of migrant and vagrant bird. Coptic literature Coptic literature is the body of writings in the Coptic language of Egypt , the last stage of the indigenous Egyptian language . It is written in the Coptic alphabet . The study of the Coptic language and literature

4653-591: The lunar month ) and kalandologia (which give predictions for the year based on the day of the week on which it begins or the direction of the wind during the first week). The first day of the year is regarded as the sixth day of the month of Ṭūba , which corresponded to the first ( kalends ) of January, the official start of the year in the Roman Empire . These texts are derived or translated from Greek originals. They are also influenced by concept of Tagewählerei  [ de ] (lucky and unlucky days) in

4752-456: The spread of Islam in the seventh century. At the turn of the eighth century, Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan decreed that Arabic replace Koine Greek as the sole administrative language . Literary Coptic gradually declined, and within a few hundred years, Egyptian bishop Severus ibn al-Muqaffa found it necessary to write his History of the Patriarchs in Arabic. However, ecclesiastically

4851-480: The 13th century, though it seems to have survived as a spoken language until the 17th century and in some localities even longer. From the medieval period, there is one known example of tarsh -printed Coptic. The fragmentary amulet A.Ch. 12.145, now in the Austrian National Library , contains a frame of Coptic text around an Arabic main text. In the early 20th century, some Copts tried to revive

4950-436: The 3rd century. The earliest literary texts are translations of Greek texts, either Christian or Gnostic. The five literary texts dated to the 3rd century are all biblical, either marginal annotations to Greek bibles or bilingual Greek–Coptic biblical texts. There is a single documentary text, a private letter on an ostracon, dated to this century. There are several possible candidates for earliest Coptic author. According to

5049-472: The 6th–8th centuries. Coptic translations are an important source of both Old Testament apocrypha and New Testament apocrypha . In some cases, the Coptic is the main or only witness to a text, as in the Gospel of Judas . There were two main phases in the production of Coptic apocrypha. In the first, in the 4th century, the works translated were mainly associated with founding figures like Peter and Paul. In

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5148-466: The Chalcedonian mainstream. Important writers from the latter half of the 5th century include Paul of Tamma , Paphnute , Makarius of Tkow and Patriarch Timothy II of Alexandria . The next most pivotal moment in Coptic history after Chalcedon was the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641, which placed the Copts under Islamic rule and introduced Arabic. Its immediate impact on Coptic literature, however,

5247-478: The Coptic alphabet, flourished in the second and third centuries. However, it was not until Shenoute that Coptic became a fully standardised literary language based on the Sahidic dialect. Shenouda's native Egyptian tongue and knowledge of Greek and rhetoric gave him the necessary tools to elevate Coptic, in content and style, to a literary height nearly equal to the position of the Egyptian language in ancient Egypt. The Muslim conquest of Egypt by Arabs came with

5346-487: The Coptic language, but they were unsuccessful. In the second half of the 20th century, Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria started a national Church-sponsored movement to revive Coptic. Several works of grammar were published, including a more comprehensive dictionary than had been formerly available. The scholarly findings of the field of Egyptology and the inauguration of the Institute of Coptic Studies further contributed to

5445-487: The Egyptian deserts. In time, the growth of these communities generated the need to write Christian Greek instructions in the Egyptian language. The early Fathers of the Coptic Church , such as Anthony the Great , Pachomius the Great , Macarius of Egypt and Athanasius of Alexandria , who otherwise usually wrote in Greek, addressed some of their works to the Egyptian monks in Egyptian. The Egyptian language, now written in

5544-463: The Fayyumic dialect, a feature of earlier Egyptian) and [ k ] and [ ɡ ] , with the voiceless stop consonants being more common in Coptic words and the voiced ones in Greek borrowings. Apart from the liquid consonants , this pattern may indicate a sound change in Later Egyptian, leading to a neutralisation of voiced alveolar and velar plosives. When the voiced plosives are realised, it

5643-493: The Great (died 346). He wrote rules for a community of monks that was translated into Latin by Jerome . Only a few fragments survive of the original Coptic version of the rule, but several of Pachomius' letters in Coptic are preserved. These "represent the oldest original Coptic texts with true literary characteristics." The Bible was translated into Coptic from the Greek Septuagint and New Testament . It may have been

5742-476: The Greek loan words may come from any other part of speech except pronouns' Words or concepts for which no adequate Egyptian translation existed were taken directly from Greek to avoid altering the meaning of the religious message. In addition, other Egyptian words that would have adequately translated the Greek equivalents were not used as they were perceived as having overt pagan associations. Old Coptic texts use many such words, phrases and epithets ; for example,

5841-786: The Manichaean translations slightly later than the Gnostic and biblical texts. The Manichaean manuscripts all date from the 4th and 5th centuries and all were found at Medinet Madi , although they were most likely produced at Lycopolis , since they were written in the Lycopolitan dialect. They include the Manichaean Psalter and the Kephalaia among others. A variety of prognostic texts are known in Coptic. These include hemerologia  [ nl ] (which give prognostications for each day of

5940-453: The ancient Egyptian calendar . Predictions relating to the flow of the Nile are a distinctly Egyptian feature. Fragments of hemerologia and kalandologia in Sahidic are found on papyrus, parchment and paper from the 6th–12th centuries. Predictions based on the day of the week and the direction of the wind are often found in the same manuscript. There are also Bohairic papyrus fragments from

6039-461: The attention of western scholars between about 1750 and 1900. Shenoute made unprecedented use of features of Coptic grammar not directly translatable into Greek. His writing is highly literary and often difficult. He received a classical education in rhetoric and was influenced by the Greek style of the Second Sophistic . He quotes extensively from the Bible, especially the wisdom books ,

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6138-473: The basis of early Coptic literature. The core lexicon of Coptic is Egyptian , most closely related to the preceding Demotic phase of the language. Up to 40% of the vocabulary of literary Coptic is drawn from Greek , but borrowings are not always fully adapted to the Coptic phonological system and may have semantic differences as well. There are instances of Coptic texts having passages that are almost entirely composed from Greek lexical roots. However, that

6237-420: The consistent script style and borrowed Greek vocabulary of later Coptic literature, which is entirely Christian or para-Christian (i.e., Gnostic and Manichaean ). Some use exclusively Greek letters, with none of the borrowed Demotic letters of standard Coptic, while others use more Demotic letters than became standard. The production of pagan magical texts written in Egyptian in Greek letters continued into

6336-463: The earliest literary text put into Coptic. The history of its translation can be divided into three phases. Between the 2nd and 4th centuries, many individuals were working on translations in many dialects. In the 4th and 5th centuries, the Sahidic translation was standardized. Finally, by the 9th century, the Bohairic translation was standardized. By the early 4th century, the Bible in Coptic—or at least

6435-564: The early biblical translations and demonstrate a diversity of thought and community at the earliest stage of Coptic literary production. The most important collection of Gnostic or "gnosticizing" texts is the Nag Hammadi library . There are also the Askew Codex , Berlin Codex and Bruce Codex . The quality of Gnostic texts is generally lower than that of orthodox Christian ones. Their orthography

6534-488: The functional load was extremely low. Bohairic did not have long vowels. / i / was only written ⟨ ⲓ ⟩ . As above, it's possible that / u / and / o / were distinct vowels rather than just allophones. In Late Coptic (that is, Late Bohairic), the vowels were reduced to those found in Egyptian Arabic, /a, i, u/ . ⟨ ⲱ, ⲟ ⟩ became / u / , ⟨ ⲉ ⟩ became / æ / , and ⟨ ⲏ ⟩ became either / ɪ / or / æ / . It

6633-582: The homilies De pascha and De anima et corpore by Melito of Sardis and the Pseudo-Basilian De templo Salomonis . From the later period, the Cappadocian Fathers are well represented ( Basil of Caesarea , Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus ), as are Athanasius of Alexandria , Cyril of Alexandria , Ephrem the Syrian , Epiphanius of Salamis and John Chrysostom . Also translated are

6732-510: The influx of Greek loanwords distinguish Coptic from earlier periods of the Egyptian language. It is written with the Coptic alphabet , a modified form of the Greek alphabet with seven additional letters borrowed from the Demotic Egyptian script . The major Coptic dialects are Sahidic, Bohairic, Akhmimic, Fayyumic, Lycopolitan, and Oxyrhynchite. Sahidic Coptic was spoken between the cities of Asyut and Oxyrhynchus and flourished as

6831-417: The language retained an important position, and many hagiographic texts were also composed during this period. Until the 10th century, Coptic remained the spoken language of the native population outside the capital. The Coptic language massively declined under the hands of Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah , as part of his campaigns of religious persecution. He issued strict orders completely prohibiting

6930-543: The late period. Coptic was written on parchment , papyrus and ultimately paper. Early texts were written on scrolls , but with the rise of Christianity the codex came to dominate. Almost all surviving manuscripts are incomplete (fragmentary) codices. Scrolls continued to be used into the Christian period for magical texts. There are also some short works, such as school texts, found on ostraca and boards. Most manuscripts have been recovered from abandoned monasteries,

7029-426: The left and Arabic on the right are a product of this period. During the period of translation, Coptic was still widely and deeply understood. In the 13th–14th centuries, as knowledge of Coptic declined, grammars of the language, called "prefaces", and word lists, called "ladders", were written in Arabic to help priests read and pronounce Coptic. Greek had been dominant language of writing in Egypt for centuries before

7128-440: The long Greek vowels ⟨η, ω⟩ . As with the vowels, there are differences of opinion over the correct interpretation of the Coptic consonant letters, particularly with regard to the letters ϫ and ϭ . ϫ is transcribed as ⟨j⟩ in many older Coptic sources and ϭ as ⟨ɡ⟩ or ⟨č⟩ . Lambdin (1983) notes that the current conventional pronunciations are different from

7227-565: The lower lake, with extensive mobile sand dunes . Wadi El Rayan Waterfalls are considered to be the largest waterfalls in Egypt . At the south and southeast of the springs is Gabal Manqueer Al Rayan, where marine fossils and archeological remains are found. Gabal Madwera, near the lower lake, is known for its extensive dune formations. In the northwest is Wadi El Hitan , a protectorate containing fossils of extinct whales including Tutcetus rayanensis , named after this area in 2023. The vegetation

7326-422: The majority of cases, the article marks number. Generally, nouns inflected for plurality end in /wə/ , but there are some irregularities. The dual was another feature of earlier Egyptian that survives in Coptic in only few words, such as ⲥⲛⲁⲩ ( snau ) 'two'. Words of Greek origin keep their original grammatical gender, except for neuter nouns, which become masculine in Coptic. Possession of definite nouns

7425-463: The medieval Islamic period, when Coptic was still spoken. There are some differences of opinion among Coptic language scholars on the correct phonetic interpretation of the writing system of Coptic. Differences centre on how to interpret the pairs of letters ⲉ/ⲏ and ⲟ/ⲱ . In the Attic dialect of Ancient Greek in the 5th century BC, the first member of each pair is a short closed vowel /e, o/ , and

7524-693: The most important being the White Monastery . The Morgan Collection comprises 58 volumes discovered in 1910 in the library of the Monastery of Saint Michael in the Fayyum . The local library collection consists of some 5000 volumes, a few fragments of which have been acquired by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo . Efforts to write Coptic in the Greek alphabet probably began in the 1st century BC. The earliest text known

7623-421: The odd Arabic word. Second, while still a living language, some texts were written in Arabic but in Coptic script. Finally, after having been completely supplanted as the spoken language by Arabic, Coptic was rendered as needed in Arabic script . A major movement to translate Coptic works into Arabic began around 1000 or shortly before and lasted into the 13th century. Many bilingual church texts with Bohairic on

7722-553: The period of Coptic literature proper. One traditional theory links the origin of literary Coptic to the Gnostic community in Alexandria . No surviving Coptic manuscript, however, can be linked to Alexandria. Another links it to Christian monasteries and the need to translate Greek teaching into the vernacular. The high proportion of borrowed Greek vocabular in early Coptic texts, however, makes their practical utility as translations questionable. More recently, it has been suggested that

7821-548: The probable ancient pronunciations: Sahidic ϫ was probably pronounced [ tʲ ] and ϭ was probably pronounced [ kʲ ] . Reintges (2004 , p. 22) suggests that ϫ was pronounced [ tʃ ] . Beside being found in Greek loanwords, the letters ⟨φ, θ, χ⟩ were used in native words for a sequence of /p, t, k/ plus / h / , as in ⲑⲉ = ⲧ-ϩⲉ "the-way" (f.sg.) and ⲫⲟϥ = ⲡ-ϩⲟϥ "the-snake" (m.sg). The letters did not have this use in Bohairic, which used them for single sounds. It

7920-468: The renaissance. Efforts at language revitalisation continue to be undertaken, and have attracted the interest of Copts and linguists in and outside of Egypt. Coptic uses a writing system almost wholly derived from the Greek alphabet , with the addition of a number of letters that have their origins in Demotic Egyptian . This is comparable to the Latin-based Icelandic alphabet , which includes

8019-464: The revival of Egyptian as a literary language (in the form of Coptic) was part of an "effort to revive a national Egyptian culture." Paola Buzi refers to it as an "identity operation", an assertion of distinctness. Conversely, since the rise of the Coptic writing system paralleled the rise of Christianity, it may have been stimulated by desire to distance itself from the pagan associations of traditional Egyptian writing. Literary Coptic first appears in

8118-858: The rise of Coptic and "Greek literature was at the base of Coptic literature." Nevertheless, certain connections have been proposed between Coptic literature and earlier Egyptian literature . The rules of Pachomius contain a quotation from the "Negative Confession" in the Book of the Dead and possible allusions to the Teaching of Ani and the Instructions of Amenemope . This may not reflect familiarity with ancient literature or even readership, but may be "a pale memory" picked up during Pachomius' education in "Egyptian letters". The Cambyses Romance may also owe something to Demotic literature. Its conflation of Assyrians and Persians

8217-401: The runic letter thorn . There is some variation in the number and forms of these signs depending on the dialect. Some of the letters in the Coptic alphabet that are of Greek origin were normally reserved for Greek words. Old Coptic texts used several graphemes that were not retained in the literary Coptic orthography of later centuries. In Sahidic, syllable boundaries may have been marked by

8316-516: The second member is a long open vowel /ɛː, ɔː/ . In some interpretations of Coptic phonology, it is assumed that the length difference is primary, with ⲉ/ⲏ /e, eː/ and ⲟ/ⲱ is /o, oː/ . Other scholars argue for a different analysis in which ⲉ/ⲏ and ⲟ/ⲱ are interpreted as /e, ɛ/ and /o, ɔ/ . These two charts show the two theories of Coptic vowel phonology: Dialects vary in their realisation. The difference between [ o ] and [ u ] seems to be allophonic. Evidence

8415-520: The suffix inflection survive in Coptic, mainly to indicate inalienable possession and in some verbs. Compare the Middle Egyptian form *satāpafa 'he chooses' (written stp.f in hieroglyphs) to Coptic (Sahidic) f.sotp ϥⲥⲱⲧⲡ̅ 'he chooses'. All Coptic nouns carry grammatical gender , either masculine or feminine, usually marked through a definite article as in the Romance languages , the difference

8514-429: The temple scriptoria. Old Coptic is represented mostly by non-Christian texts such as Egyptian pagan prayers and magical and astrological papyri. Many of them served as glosses to original hieratic and demotic equivalents. The glosses may have been aimed at non-Egyptian speakers. Under late Roman rule , Diocletian persecuted many Egyptian converts to the new Christian religion , which forced new converts to flee to

8613-489: The term ⲅⲩⲡⲧⲓⲟⲥ ( gyptios ) "Egyptian", derived from Greek Αἰγύπτιος ( Aigúptios ). This was borrowed into Arabic as ‏ قبْط ‎ ( qibṭ/qubṭ ), and from there into the languages of Europe, giving rise to words like French copte and English Copt . Coptic is today spoken liturgically in the Coptic Orthodox and Coptic Catholic Church (along with Modern Standard Arabic ). The language

8712-467: The two sounds appear to be in free variation in Coptic, as they were since the Middle Egyptian period. However, they are contrasted only in Greek loans; for example, native Coptic ⲁⲛⲍⲏⲃ ( anzēb ) and ⲁⲛⲥⲏⲃⲉ ( ansēbə ) 'school' are homophonous. Other consonants that sometimes appear to be either in free variation or to have different distributions across dialects are [ t ] and [ d ] , [ ɾ ] and [ l ] (especially in

8811-401: The use of Coptic anywhere, whether in schools, public streets, and even homes, including mothers speaking to their children. Those who did not comply had their tongues cut off. He personally walked the streets of Cairo and eavesdropped on Coptic-speaking homes to find out if any family was speaking Coptic. As a written language, Coptic is thought to have completely given way to Arabic around

8910-441: The word ebenos , which was taken directly from Greek ἔβενος ("ebony"), originally from Egyptian hbnj . Many place names in modern Egypt are Arabic adaptations of their former Coptic names : The Coptic name ⲡⲁⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ , papnoute (from Egyptian pꜣy-pꜣ-nṯr ), means "belonging to God" or "he of God". It was adapted into Arabic as Babnouda , which remains a common name among Egyptian Copts to this day. It

9009-464: The word ⲧⲃⲁⲓⲧⲱⲩ '(Who is) in (His) Mountain', is an epithet of Anubis . There are also traces of some archaic grammatical features, such as residues of the Demotic relative clause , lack of an indefinite article and possessive use of suffixes. Thus, the transition from the old traditions to the new Christian religion also contributed to the adoption of Greek words into the Coptic religious lexicon. It

9108-714: The writings of the Fathers. Melito's On the Soul and Body was re-titled and misattributed to Athanasius, probably to raise his profile. Among Athanasius authentic works, the Life of Anthony and the Festal Letters were translated, but none of his historical works or writings against Arianism . Cyril's theologically weighty Scholia de incarnatione unigeniti was translated, but not his writings against Nestorianism . Some patristic works were translated into both Sahidic and Bohairic, although it

9207-408: Was Sahidic and the majority of surviving texts are in that dialect. There are up to six other recognized dialects of Coptic— Bohairic , Fayyumic , Lycopolitan , Akhmimic , Subakhmimic and Oxyrhynchite —and further idiolects . The identification of a text's dialect can narrow down its place of origin. All of the dialects are represented in the literature to some degree, especially Bohairic in

9306-512: Was adapted from the Greek alphabet . The earliest attempts to write the Egyptian language using the Greek alphabet are Greek transcriptions of Egyptian proper names, most of which date to the Ptolemaic Kingdom . Scholars frequently refer to this phase as Pre-Coptic. However, it is clear that by the Late Period of ancient Egypt , demotic scribes regularly employed a more phonetic orthography,

9405-451: Was also borrowed into Greek as the name Παφνούτιος ( Paphnutius ). That, in turn, is the source of the Russian name Пафнутий ( Pafnuty ), perhaps best known in the name of the mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev . The Egyptian language may have the longest documented history of any language, from Old Egyptian , which appeared just before 3200 BC, to its final phases as Coptic in

9504-486: Was also the site of many translations of Greek works, as Tito Orlandi has argued. Shenoute was succeeded as head of the White Monastery by Besa . Several of his letters and sermons, written in Shenoutean style, survive. His work is less colourful than his predecessor's although equally refined. Besa's writings, unlike Shenoute's, belong mainly to the period after the Council of Chalcedon (451). Shenoute's biography,

9603-412: Was also used in many texts to indicate the bilabial approximant / w / . Coptologists believe that Coptic ⲃ was articulated as a voiced bilabial fricative [ β ] . In the present-day Coptic Church services, this letter is realised as / v / , but it is almost certainly a result of the pronunciation reforms instituted in the 19th century. Whereas Old Egyptian contrasts / s / and / z / ,

9702-571: Was divided into 37 chapters, each introduced with a verse from the Bible. The surviving fragments concern Alexander among the Elamites , his rescue from the abyss in Gedrosia , his meeting the Brahmans and his poisoning. Alexander is treated as a prophet who foreshadowed Christ and the romance was clearly intended for monks' reading. The Cambyses Romance is an original work in Coptic. It survives only in

9801-590: Was small. Important Coptic writers from the latter half of the 7th century include the Patriarchs Benjamin I and Agathon , Samuel of Qalamun , Isaac of Qalamun , John of Nikiu and Menas of Nikiu . Official documents and correspondence were sometimes written in Coptic into the Abbasid period in the late 8th century. Coptic seems to have been in decline as a literary language by the early 9th century, since few original works later than that can be attributed to

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