Coptic Culture: Past, Present and Future - A Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2013.02.08 

Mariam F. Ayad, Coptic Culture: Past, Present and Future.   Stevenage:  Coptic Orthodox Church Centre, 2011.  Pp. xiii, 238.  ISBN 9781935488279.  $45.00.   

Reviewed by Heike Behlmer, Universität Göttingen


The present volume comprises papers from a conference held in May 2008 at the Coptic Orthodox Centre in Stevenage, UK. The conference brought together specialists in the history and culture of Egypt and the Coptic Orthodox Church from late antiquity to the present day and Coptic clergy and laypersons interested in the cultural and literary heritage of their church. This approach has led to fruitful discussions among the participants, the results of which are documented in this well-produced and accessible volume. 

“The Coptic Orthodox Church: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”, the introductory remarks by Bishop Angaelos, General Bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the UK (p. 1-10) focus on the traditional pillars of the Coptic Orthodox faith in the modern context of a diaspora community. This introduction is followed by 19 contributions touching on four main areas of research: (1) continuities and discontinuities between Pharaonic and Christian Egypt, (2) sources for our knowledge about late antique and early medieval Egypt, (3) questions of heritage preservation and (4) the artistic tradition of the modern Coptic church. 

The first group of articles focuses on linguistic links between the Pharaonic and later periods and the survival of ritual practices. Mariam Ayad’s contribution “The Death of Coptic: A Reprisal” (p. 11-41) takes issue with the notion of Coptic as a “dead” language and makes some very valid points: in the past scholars have often shown little interest in the entire use-life of the Coptic language, neglecting the study of later, especially liturgical Coptic. While her concerns are shared by the vast majority of modern scholars, I am uncertain about her choice of a case study, a retranslation of the Paschal hymn into Ancient Egyptian, using hieroglyphs to render the words of Egyptian origin, intended to visualise the link between the modern liturgy and the ancient language. This link is well known and a translation from the Coptic into an Ancient Egyptian that never existed in the form set forth in the article seems to confuse the issue unnecessarily.