Akira Tanaka / Moon
The word "Copt" is derived from the Greek word "Aigyplos", which the Arabs call "قبط". The term was originally a geographical and ethnic concept, but later changed to a Muslim term for indigenous Christians who had been using ancient Egyptian. "Coptic" also sometimes refers to a people, a religion, and a culture. Coptic culture was first a by-product of the development of Christianity in Egypt and later became an important way for people to understand Egyptian Christianity. The term "Coptic culture" here goes some way beyond the original Christian meaning and is used to describe the language, writing, and literature of ancient Egypt, as well as the special art forms of the final stage.
Coptic language and script
The Coptic language and script was the last form of the development of the ancient Egyptian language and script, which began around the 2nd century and became popular from the 3rd century onwards. At that time, the traditional ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs had become a relatively simple secular script, and with the popularity of the official Greek language, the language and script of Egypt gradually underwent some changes, that is, the emergence of Coptic, which fused the two languages.
The Coptic script is spelled with a mutated Greek alphabet and complements 7 special letters derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. Coptic also borrowed Greek vocabulary to replace the religious terms and expressions in the previous Egyptian language, and gradually became the common language of Egyptian folk. The emergence of the Coptic language is very closely related to the development of Christianity in Egypt, and although some Coptic and Manichaean texts have survived, Coptic still exists mainly as the local Christian language.
The original motivation for writing Egyptian in Greek alphabetical order did not stem from Christianity. As early as the 2nd century BC, such an attempt was found in the inscription of a Nubian king in Abydos, Egypt. Archaeology has also uncovered papyrus spelled Egyptian in Greek dating from the 1st century BC, which is mainly used in religious ceremonies of traditional Osiris worship. There is growing evidence that from the Roman period onwards, the phenomenon of mixing Greek alphabets with secular symbols increased, reflecting a desire to show the new Egyptian language system in a more concise expression. A scrap of papyrus, now in Munich, resembles part of a school practice paper with a list of Egyptians, transliterated into Greek. A fragment of a mummified coffin from about the 3rd century unearthed by Akhmin in Egypt contains several Greek words and translations of secular language, the latter spelled in Greek letters. On a 3rd-century secular secretarial document written on papyrus paper, there are more than 600 notes written in Greek letters. A characteristic of secretarial documents from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD is the use of many Greek letters and many secular symbols, which are considered to be old Coptic. Improvements to this writing system were so common that early Christian writers began to use it, limiting secular symbols to 7 plus 24 Greek letters, thus gradually standardizing the Coptic script system.
Linguistically, Coptic still belongs to the Afro-Asian language family or the Solmham language family. Coptic is considered to be a dialect of Egyptian origin, and although it is a dialect, it also has its own vowel and consonant patterns, as well as idiomatic expressions. Unfortunately, the pronunciation of Coptic has been highly controversial in academia from the beginning. Until now, those 7 special secular symbols have not had an exact way of sounding. Scholars divide Coptic into six dialects, four in Upper Egypt and two in Lower Egypt, and the difference between them is mainly in the pronunciation system.
Sahidic (the name is the Arabic name for Upper Egypt) originated in dialects around Thebes and became the dominant language of Upper Egypt after the 5th century AD. Sehi German is also one of the most well-preserved and well-known Coptic dialects among scholars. In early writings, the Seyheed dialect was also known as the Theban dialect. In addition to Thebes, Occirincus, Ashmoni, and Alexandria are also believed to have spoken this dialect. In literature, the Sahid dialect appeared to be the most widely spoken language of its time, was almost standard in orthography, and gained dominance in Christian religious sermons until it was replaced by the Bohara dialect of Lower Egypt.
The Fayoum dialect of Upper Egypt, mainly prevalent in the west bank of the Nile, was spoken until the 8th century. The Fayoum dialect has a long history and is a modified form of dialect influenced by the Sehi German dialect, and its documentation remained in circulation until the 10th century. The Fayoum dialect literature that has survived today are some early fragments and two high-quality leather paper manuscripts, which belong to cultural relics from the late 5th to the early 6th centuries.
The language spoken in the area of Upper Egypt, known as the Achemin dialect, may also belong to the theory of the Theban dialect, a relatively unified language that survived as a literary language until the 6th century. Its use ranges from Aswan to Akhmin, and Thebes may be its birthplace and the central area of use. Another Upper Egyptian dialect, known as the Assiut dialect or the Sub-Akhmin dialect, was spoken mainly around Assiut and was very popular in the 4th century. It may also be the spoken language of the area around Achemine. The sub-Ahermin dialect was originally thought to be the middle stage of the Ahermin dialect and the Sehid dialect, but it is difficult to say whether they are a geographical relationship or a temporal inheritance relationship. A very rare set of manuscripts from the 4th to the 6th centuries has survived, and the surviving documents include the Gospels of John and the Book of Acts and a huge number of Gnostic classics.
Coptic dialects of Lower Egypt include basmlik dialects and Bohara dialects. With the exception of a few words that have survived, almost nothing is known about the Basmlik language. The Bohara dialect originated in the western part of Lower Egypt and consisted mainly of Alexander and Memphis. The Bohara dialect has been used as a religious language by all Coptic Christians since the 11th century, and the last Coptist texts of the Bohara language appeared in the 14th century. The influence of the Bohara dialect eventually surpassed that of other dialects, and many early and important manuscripts have been preserved, so they are more noticeable. Since the 18th and 19th centuries, Western scholars have conducted a lot of research on this dialect, and finally named the "Bohara" dialect by Stern, who was considered to be the first Coptic dialect.
The Bohara dialect (known as the Memphis dialect in early writings) is still used today in the Communion ceremonies of the Coptic Church. The most influential reason for the Bohara dialect is that it is first and foremost the dialect of the Nathrum, which has been the official residence of the archbishop since the 11th century, so it was a local pride to speak the Bohara dialect at that time. Compared to other dialects, the Bohara dialect has many complete manuscripts, and there is no difficulty in reading these manuscripts, and they can be published quickly. With the exception of one major manuscript of the 4th and 5th centuries and several isolated fragments showing the strong appeal of the Bohara dialect, the other Bohara dialect manuscripts were completed around the 11th century; Many of the Old Testament articles in this dialect have survived in the form of 13th-century manuscripts. From the historical trend of development, after the Arab conquest of Egypt, the Copt language and the Christian church declined together.
It may be argued that the decline of the Coptic Church is reflected in the history of a living language. Bilingual manuscripts reflecting Coptic-Arabic grammar and vocabulary appeared in the 11th century. By the 13th century, literary activity among the Copts had almost entirely embraced Arabic as the language of communication. According to the Arab historian Al Maklitz, Coptic was the spoken language of upper Egyptian villages in the 15th century, and by the 16th century it was considered a dead language. Thereafter, Coptist written records appeared only in remote Upper Egyptian villages outside the church, when the Copt language, some idiomatic terms used in church and school settings, changed; There are also church documents that are readable but incomprehensible at religious assemblies, incorporating a handful of Coptic and Greek words, perhaps less than 50, mainly the names of fish, food, agricultural tools and cooking utensils, as well as other popular expressions. Although coptic chanting is still used in copt churches today, it is no longer clear what it means.
There is a paradox: Coptic has become an obsolete language in Egypt, but Western Orientalists have taken a keen interest in the study of this language. These orientalists were increasingly encouraged by tourists, many of whom were well educated and collected many Coptist manuscripts during their travels to the East. The first such visitor was the Roman nobleman Viro Daira Walla (1586-1652), who brought back to Europe Coptic manuscripts of 5 grammar books and 2 vocabulary books. In the 17th century, the major European libraries set up special offices in Egypt. From 1672 to 1673, Vanceleber obtained in Egypt a number of manuscript pages from the Schonutbeth Abbey, which were later displayed in the Bibliothèque National de Paris. In 1883 Gaston Maspero also discovered a batch of Coptic manuscripts. The Assemani brothers collected many manuscripts in the Bohara dialect in the early 18th century, most of which are now preserved in the Vatican Library, and they also collected important Syrian manuscripts in the Dale Suyani area.
The first step in western interpretation of Coptic was taken by the Arabic scholar Thomas Obi Sydney, who in 1628 interpreted the text on the first Coptic baptismal plate. But his premature death in 1632 delayed the publication of Daila Walla's grammar book. Four years later, in 1636, with the publication of the Jesuit scholar Attanacius Kitchell's book The Pioneers of the Egyptians or Copts, the Copt language system was rigorously established in the Western world. His book was the first Coptic grammar book written in a European language. In this work, he identified Coptic as a direct continuation of the language of the Pharaonic period, which has been recognized by the academic community.
The Coptic dictionary was compiled and published by La Cruz (1775), Perón (1885), and Henri Tatamu (1835). The grammar books of Broomberg (1716), Kristan Scholz (1778), Rafael Tucka (1778), Tatamu (1830) and Perón (1841) were all precursors to the first truly scientific grammar book, stern grammar (1880). The first scriptural texts were published in the early 18th century, including the Pentateuch of Moses (1731) by David Wilkinson, the Coptic and Arabic Mass Scripts by Tuka (1736), the Rites of Alexander the King of Coptic Arabia (1750) and the Archbishop and the Eucharist (1761), and Voyd's Edition and Appendix to the Greek Bible (1799). The first compilation of large manuscripts appeared in 1810 as George Zogger's Bibliographic Compendium of the Controversy over the Coptic Codex at the Bergen Library.
For Western scholars, the direct impact of the Copt language and cultural heritage is that after the discovery of the Rosetta Stele in July 1799, the opportunity to decipher multilingual documents was placed in front of some Western scholars, and with the understanding of the Coptic language, people's understanding of the Egyptian language made rapid progress. The biggest contributor was to the young French scholar Shang Bo liang. On the basis of the research of his predecessors, Champollion, with his good skills in Coptic and Greek, finally succeeded in transfiguring hieroglyphs. Coptic script and grammar became the most important assistants in understanding early indigenous Egyptian, and the study of historical comparative linguistics and semantics made Coptic the most well understood script in Egyptian.
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