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85-519: The name of the monastery is derived from the colour of the white limestone of its outside walls. The White Monastery is architecturally similar to the Red Monastery. The monastery had one of the largest Coptic libraries ever known with over 1,000 codices of which 10% survive. The monastery was founded by Saint Pigol ( Coptic : ⲡⲓϫⲱⲗ ), the maternal uncle of Shenoute, in 442. However, it only became renowned after Shenoute succeeded his uncle as abbot of

170-511: A coptologist of Louvain, made the first comprehensive attempt toward achieving this monumental goal. However, his collection was a tragic victim of World War II. Currently, this task has been taken up by Tito Orlandi and his associates in the Sapienza University of Rome . There, they formed the Corpus dei Manoscritti Copti Letterari . They were able to identify hundreds of separate codices with

255-407: A decorative frieze and surmounted by architraves. Between the columns there lie the niches. The horizontal cross-section of the niches in each register alternates between rectangular and circular. The semidome of each is decorated with a beautiful design. Above the registers lies the majestic semidome. There paintings can be distinguished in these semidomes. The one in the central apse has a painting of

340-470: A great number of monasteries out of existence. In the middle of the 8th century, the Arab governor al-Qasim ibn Ubayd Allah forced his way into the monastery church with his female concubine on horseback. This resulted in the concubine falling to the ground and eventually to her death, along with the horse she was riding. The monastery served as a host for Armenian monks in the 11th and the 12th centuries. This

425-404: A returned isle in the west to define the eso-narthex. There existed atop these isles mezzanine galleries, as evidenced by the two rows of windows seen on the walls. The grand style of this 5th-century basilica includes an open courtyard measuring 172 feet by 76 feet, of which the nave occupies half that width. The current Church now occupies what used to be the choir and the sanctuary areas. This

510-402: 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)

595-408: 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

680-593: 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

765-501: 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

850-534: 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

935-400: A women's chamber in the early days. It has a chamber at each of its east and west ends. The west chamber contains a well and it underwent reconstruction in the early 19th century. There are also two chambers south of the central apse and a third one to the north. On the south side, one chamber is rectangular with a font which is now used as a baptistery, and the second is circular with niches. On

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1020-490: 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

1105-511: 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

1190-413: 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

1275-633: Is indicated in the inscriptions found on the paintings of the central apse of the church, which date between 1076 and 1124. Among these Armenian monks was the artist Theodore of Kaysun , the Armenian Vizier Bahram, who became a monk after having been banished from his office during the Caliphate of the Fatimid caliph al-Hafiz (1135-1137). In 1168, the monastery was attacked by Shirkuh . The monastery underwent major restorations between 1202 and 1259. In

1360-707: 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,

1445-425: 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

1530-827: 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

1615-501: 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

1700-439: 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

1785-423: Is separated from the open court by a solid red brick wall, of medieval construction, with doors and windows. The original sanctuary was built in a trefoil style with three apses. It is a step higher than the nave in the open court. The rectangular space, defined by the apses to its north, south and east sides, served as the altar for the basilica. Now the altar is located within the central or eastern apse. The rest of

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1870-651: 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

1955-506: 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

2040-405: 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

2125-462: 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

2210-524: The Christ Pantocrator and the four evangelists. In the northern apse, there is a depiction of the dormition of the Virgin Mary. The southern apse has a representation of the resurrection with the two Mary's and two angels. The church complex has several annexes along the east and south walls. The most significant is the great hall that runs alongside the south wall. This probably served the function of

2295-818: The Coptic Orthodox Church and of the Coptic Catholic Church . Innovations in grammar and phonology and 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

2380-467: The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria in the 4th and 5th centuries. In addition, there are several fragments of codices that record the acts of the great Councils of Nicaea and Ephesus . Another important category found in the library is the hagiographic texts. These are found in relative abundance in all monastic libraries, and the White Monastery is no exception. They are primarily intended for

2465-559: The Gospel of the Twelve , Gospel of Bartholomew , Acts of Thomas , Acts of Pilate , Life of the Virgin Mary , and History of Joseph the Carpenter . A third category is the historical manuscripts, which are rare in any of the Coptic libraries found thus far. However, in the White Monastery one finds a substantial part of an ecclesiastical history manuscript. That manuscript deals with the history of

2550-625: 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

2635-577: 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

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2720-595: The Old Testament , including the Deuterocanonical Books is represented. The only exception is some of the historical books, which were always in short supply in Egyptian monasteries. The New Testament , on the other hand is represented in its entirety though in a fragmentary shape. A second category is the apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Biblical lives that were frequently read in Egyptian monasteries. These include

2805-456: 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

2890-480: 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

2975-482: The 13th century, in the work attributed to Abu al-Makarim , it is mentioned that the monastery included a keep, which was probably built during the Middle Ages to protect the monastery from the attacks of the desert's bedouins . Abu al-Makarim also tells of an enclosure wall around the monastery within which a garden full of all sorts of trees existed. The lack of literary manuscripts after the 14th century indicates that

3060-557: The Archimandrite . Other writings includes those of Saint Wissa 's sermons, the writings of Saint Pachomius and his disciples, and the Apophthegmata Patrum . Other texts of original Coptic composition include those of Constantine of Asyut , John of Burulus , and Rufus of Shotep . The group of Coptic translations of Greek writings includes those of Saint Peter of Alexandria , Saint Athanasius , Saint Theophilus , Saint Cyril

3145-483: The Confessor , and Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite to name just a few. The richest and most significant category available is the writings of the fathers. This library has yielded a great number of manuscripts, preserving texts of the composition of Egyptian writers, as well as Coptic translation of Greek writings of Church Fathers . The most significant part of it is that of the remarkable works of Saint Shenouda

3230-478: 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

3315-487: 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

3400-487: 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

3485-463: 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

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3570-436: The Great , and Saint Dioscorus . The Greek translations of non-Coptic Fathers include Saint Cyril of Jerusalem , Saint John Chrysostom , and Saint Severus of Antioch . Works of other authors are also found in that collection. Coptic language Coptic (Bohairic Coptic: ϯⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ , Timetremənkhēmi ) is an Afroasiatic extinct language . It is a group of closely related Egyptian dialects , representing

3655-476: 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,

3740-419: The aid of the prior works that Coptic scholars had previously done. The library contents, as mentioned above, has adorned many libraries and museums around the world from as early as the 19th century. The following is a partial list of those places that possess such fragments: The ancient library of the White Monastery is rich in many categories such as biblical, hagiographical, liturgical, etc. This provides

3825-473: 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

3910-454: The church complex experienced another repair which included the removal of the encrustation of brick work and the undercovering of the doorways. Then in the 1980s more restoration work took place on the walls and the columns of the church. The only surviving piece of the original monastery is its church complex, which was built in the Basilica style. It has six entrances: three centrally placed in

3995-469: The death of Shenouda, the monastic community of the White Monastery continued strong throughout the 5th century under the leadership of Saint Wissa ( Coptic : ⲃⲏⲥⲁ ) and later Saint Zenobius . However, the monastery began slowly to decline following the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641. The state of decline can be attributed in part to the heavy taxes that the monasteries in Egypt had to endure. Such taxes put

4080-482: The direction of Muhammad Ali , parts of the monastery were rebuilt. In 1833, Robert Curzon visited the monastery and left a written record of his visit. In 1893, Fergusson published a plan of the church complex. However, the most significant contributions to the study of the monastery and its church were made by such visitors as Wladimir de Bock (1901), C. R. Peers (1904), Flinders Petrie (1907), Somers Clarke (1912), and Ugo Monneret de Villard (1925). In 1907,

4165-528: The foundation of the monastery to Helena of Constantinople , Emperor Constantine 's mother. During the second half of the 18th century, the southwest corner of the surviving church-complex collapsed. In 1798, the monastery was sacked and totally burned down by the Mamluks . The destruction was mentioned by the French traveler Dominique Vivant , who visited the monastery on the day following its destruction. In 1802, under

4250-488: 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

4335-417: 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

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4420-476: The library of the monastery. With everyone in the monastery capable of reading and many skilled in writing manuscripts, the library must have been one of the greatest libraries of Christian Egypt . The library contained around 1,000 codices, averaging 200-300 pages each. Around 10% of these survived today in collections primarily located in Europe. This testimony is not only in the number of codices identified but also in

4505-440: 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

4590-422: 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

4675-463: 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

4760-408: The monastery was in an advanced state of decline from that time onwards. According to al-Maqrizi, who called it both the "White Monastery" and the "Monastery of St Shenoute", mentioned that in the 13th century, it lay in ruins and only the church remained in use. The monastery was visited by Johann Michael Vansleb in 1672 and by Richard Pococke in 1737. Both of them made an incorrect attribution of

4845-428: The monastery. From 30 monks, the population of the White Monastery increased to 2,200 monks and 1800 nuns by Shenoute's death in 466. The monastery also increased in size during this time to 12,800 acres (51.8 km), an area about 3000 times its original size. Such an area included cells, kitchens, and storehouses, the ruins of which can still be seen to the north, west, and south sides of the church complex. Following

4930-560: The most recent developments of the Egyptian language , and historically spoken by 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

5015-409: The nave is of limestone or granite slabs. The original sanctuary is now roofed with vaults of burnt bricks; originally, it had a wood roof. The nave, isles, and the great south hall (lateral narthex) are now without a roof; originally they had wood gabled roofs with galleries atop the isles. The wall between the exo-narthex and the body of the original church is of limestone. The great wall that defines

5100-470: The north side, the chamber is square. There is another rectangular chamber west of the circular chamber and it is divided in half by two projecting buttresses. There is a variety of building material employed in the construction of the church complex. This reflects the different stages that the monastery went through since the time of its foundation. The outer walls are of white limestone set in mortar with no bonding. They are sloped six degrees from vertical on

5185-425: The north, south, and west walls. The other three are located south of the west wall, east of the south wall, and east of the north wall. Its outer appearance resembles an Egyptian temple . It has a combination of exo- and eso-narthex leading into the body of the original church. This body, which is now an open courtyard, contains a nave flanked by two aisles. They are separated from the nave by long rows of columns with

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5270-547: The offices of Sir Gilbert Scott and later worked in partnership with John Thomas Micklethwaite from offices at 15 Dean's Yard , Westminster , London . He was Surveyor of the Fabric of St Paul's Cathedral from 1897 to 1906. After his retirement Clarke continued to live in Egypt and died in Mahamid in August 1926. This article about a United Kingdom architect or firm of architects is

5355-484: The outside (original construction). The gargoyles and the door lintels are also of limestone, with the doorjambs being made of red granite. The source of these limestones is probably from ruins of nearby Ancient Egyptian temples, which Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite contributed to their demise figuratively and literally. The original nave columns are made of marble or granite with few later ones being of red bricks. Many of these columns are no longer standing. The paving of

5440-548: 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

5525-468: 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

5610-517: The researcher with good knowledge about what the monks were reading and what they were allowed to read at different stages of the monastery's development. However, the early times are not too well represented in the surviving fragments. This can be either attributed to their frequent use or simply that they were victims of time and of the decline of the monastery in later times. The dialect of these manuscripts were predominantly in Sahidic Coptic , which

5695-401: 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

5780-516: 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

5865-551: The space is now integrated into the nave of the current Church. There is also a new iconostasis made with solid wood and adorned by small icons on its top register. The current sanctuary in the central apse is actually divided into three. The middle one is dedicated to Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite, the southern one to the Mary, mother of Jesus , and the northern one to Saint George . The original three apses are of magnificent construction. Each contains two registers of columns separated by

5950-591: The spiritual edification of the monks rather than being accurate historical records of the saints. They include acts and related texts of many martyrs such as Saint Colluthus the Physician , Saints Cosmas and Damian , St. Philopater Mercurius , Saint Psote , Saint Theodore , Saint Victor , and many others. There are also the lives of many important saints of the Egyptian Church like Saint Anthony , Saint Athanasius , Saint Pachomius and his disciples, Saint Samuel

6035-503: The subject is a pronoun, it normally is not also expressed independently, unless for emphasis. Somers Clarke George Somers Clarke (1841–1926) was an architect and English Egyptologist who worked on the restoration and design of churches and at a number of sites throughout Egypt , notably in El Kab , where he built a house. He was born in Brighton . As an architect he entered

6120-520: 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

6205-429: 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

6290-489: 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

6375-467: 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

6460-401: 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

6545-451: The western boundary of the current church is made up of red bricks which encase the original columns and arches. This now is covered with a cream-color stucco layer. The four arches carrying the squinches of the central, original, sanctuary dome are also made up of red bricks except for the one toward the east which is of marble construction. The literacy campaign, which Shenouda the Archimandrite waged in his monastery, reflected positively on

6630-441: The wide variety of subjects it possessed. Today the library is scattered all over the world. Codices were dismembered with individual folios ending up in different libraries or museums. At times, even an individual folio ended up in different libraries which were thousands of miles apart. Serious effort has been undertaken to artificially regroup these codices from their Diaspora with photographic means. Mgr. Louis Théophile Lefort ,

6715-441: 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

6800-464: 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

6885-512: 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,

6970-451: 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

7055-412: 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 / ,

7140-550: Was perfected in its literary form by Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite . There were also some bilingual manuscripts. The early ones were in Sahidic Coptic and Greek , while the later ones had Sahidic Coptic and Arabic . The writing materials employed were mostly parchment, because of its prevalence, but some of the later ones were found on paper. The first category, and most abundant, is the Biblical manuscripts. Nearly every book of

7225-541: Was spoken between the cities of Asyut and Oxyrhynchus and flourished as 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

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