What Is Coptic and Who Were the Copts in Ancient Egypt?

A short history of ancient Egyptian language

By Megan Sauter

What is Coptic, and who were the Copts in ancient Egypt?

The Coptic language is the final stage of ancient Egyptian language. Even though it looks very different from texts written in Old Egyptian using hieroglyphs, the two are related. In his article “Coptic—Egypt’s Christian Language” in the November/December 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Leo Depuydt gives a short history of the development of ancient Egyptian language and shows where the Coptic language fits in that timeline, as well as answering the question: Who were the Copts.

What Is Coptic?

The Coptic language developed around 300 C.E. in Egypt. It is Egyptian language written using the Greek alphabet, as well as a couple of Demotic signs. This script was much easier to learn than the earlier writing systems used in ancient Egypt: hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic scripts.

Coptic was the lingua franca of Egypt when Egypt was predominantly Christian. Many assume that the Coptic language was developed primarily to spread Christianity, but Depuydt disagrees. He supports the great Belgian Coptologist Louis Théophile Lefort’s theory that the Coptic language was created by another group—the Jews.

Rosetta stone-style stele unearthed in the Mediterranean coast

By Rany Mostafa

CAIRO: A 2,200 year-old “an upright stone slab bearing a commemorative inscription” was unearthed at the Mediterranean coast, Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty announced Thursday.

The stele, which was discovered at Taposiris Magna archaeological site on Lake Mariout, southwest of the Mediterranean city of Alexandria,  “dates to the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes (204B.C-180B.C) of the Ptolemaic Dynasty (332 B.C.-30 B.C) that has ruled Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.” said Damaty in a statement on the ministry’s Facebook page.

The stele, measuring 1.05 X 0.65X0.18 meters, was discovered by an archaeology mission of the Catholic University of Santo Domingo in collaboration with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), he added.

“It consists of two registers carved in two different scripts; the upper one features over 20 lines of hieroglyphic inscriptions bearing the cartouches [oval shapes bearing royal names only] of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes, his sister Princess Cleopatra I, his mother Queen Arsinoe III and his father King Ptolemy IV Philopator,” said Damaty adding that archaeologists are currently working on transliterating the text.

The bottom register features a 5-line demotic script that seems to be a translation of the hieroglyphic inscriptions, said Damaty.

Demotic language was used by ordinary people while hieroglyphic was used by royals, high officials, priests and the elite of the ancient Egyptian society.

The famous Rosetta stone, currently displayed in the British Museum in London, dates back to the reign of the same Greek king but was carved in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek scripts, according to Damaty.

Chief of the Dominican Egyptian archaeology mission, Dr. Kathleen Martinez said that the mission, has been working at Taposiris Magna for six years, has made a lot of significant discoveries related to the history of Alexandria. “Some of the major discoveries are tombs of Nobles, a number of statues of goddess Isis in addition to many bronze coins belonging to Queen Cleopatra VII, the famous Cleopatra of Anthony,” said Martinez.

Source: http://www.thecairopost.com/news/137176/inside_egypt/rosetta-stone-style-stele-unearthed-in-the-mediterranean-coast

Did the pharaohs know hieroglyphics? - Polish Egyptologist explains

Could all the pharaohs read and write? Only 1-3 percent of the inhabitants of ancient Egypt mastered this exceptionally difficult art. Evidence of literacy of the rulers of Egypt are perhaps not numerous, but clear, argues Filip Taterka, Egyptologist, a doctoral student at the Institute of Prehistory, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.

In ancient Egypt, there were several types of handwriting. Currently, the best known are classical hieroglyphics, carved in stone on the walls of temples and tombs.

"For administrative documents and literary texts, ancient Egiptians used mainly hieratic, which was a simplified form of writing used since the Old Kingdom, the time of the builders of the pyramids in the third millennium BC. In the middle of the first millennium BC, even more simplified demotic appeared" - explained Taterka.

As it turns out, Egyptian written sources tell us very little about the literacy of the kings of Egypt. Poznań scientist tried to trace the problem since the beginning of pharaonic civilization in Egyptian texts.

"Relatively late sources suggest that even one of the first rulers of Egypt - Aha - mastered the writing skill. He was believed to be an author of a few medical treaties, although the reliability of this report is, of course, debatable" - added Taterka.

According to the reasearcher, the oldest source directly referring to pharaonic literacy comes from the end of the Fifth Dynasty, the end of the 3d millennium BC. Royal dignitary Inti an inscription carved inside his tomb at Saqqara near the oldest pyramid in the world, which mentions receiving a letter personally written by Pharaoh Isesi. The researcher found numerous allusions to skills in writing by the rulers of the land of the Nile in the Texts of the Pyramids, the oldest religious inscriptions carved inside the 10 pyramids.

Andrew Monson, Agriculture and Taxation in Early Ptolemaic Egypt - A Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2014.03.08

Andrew Monson, Agriculture and Taxation in Early Ptolemaic Egypt: Demotic Land Surveys and Accounts (P. Agri). Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen, 46.   Bonn:  Dr. Rudolf Habelt Verlag, 2012.  Pp. xii, 176; 30 plates.  ISBN 9783774938076.

Reviewed by Sally L.D. Katary, Thorneloe College, Laurentian University

In 2012, Andrew Monson published a seminal study, From the Ptolemies to the Romans: Political and Economic Change in Egypt (Cambridge), that examines and assesses the changes in many aspects of land tenure and taxation based upon the evidence of Greek and Demotic papyri from Egypt. He supplemented that survey with the book under review, where he transcribes and translates twelve Demotic agricultural texts of the early Ptolemaic Period, including most prominently, P. Cair. II 31073(a) and (b), with accompanying detailed commentary, and compares the texts to related Demotic texts. These twelve texts provide evidence of the fundamental changes that took place in the early part of the transition from the pharaonic agricultural economy of the Late Period to the institutions of the Graeco-Roman economy which, while often rooted in the pharaonic epoch, were transformed and supplemented by some radical innovations and initiatives that were intrinsic to the Hellenization of Egypt, the transition of power this entailed, and the peculiar topography of the Nile Delta. Monson scrupulously analyzes details of these texts in the hope of reducing the many gaps that remain in our understanding of early Ptolemaic agriculture and taxation. While occasionally referring to texts from the Roman period in Egypt, Monson does not address or assess the transformation of either land tenure or taxation under Roman rule.

Demotic Dictionary unveils culture of ancient Egypt

Four-decade project deepens knowledge of ancient life and links to modern languages

By William Harms

Janet Johnson’s interest in Egypt has been a lifelong fascination.

“My father was interested in ancient Egypt, so I just read all the books he brought home from the library,” says Johnson, the Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor at the Oriental Institute. 

She says as a seventh-grader, after reading a history textbook written by Oriental Institute founder James Henry Breasted, “I already knew I wanted to be an Egyptologist. I was lucky enough to have a guidance counselor in high school who had spent a summer in Chicago and knew of the O.I. and the program, and he suggested it would be a good place for me—and he was right,” she said.

The Oriental Institute was where Johnson as a graduate student first studied Demotic, a language used widely in Egypt from about 500 B.C. to about 500 A.D. In addition to unraveling the puzzle of a language no longer spoken, she became interested in documents that dealt with women and illuminated an area of study that had not received much attention.

“I realized how hugely rich was the volume of material written in the language,” says Johnson, AB’67, PhD’72. “You had legal documents, contracts, religious documents, scientific material, and stories and other kinds of literature.”

'Cult Fiction' Traced to Ancient Egypt Priest

by Owen Jarus

A recently deciphered Egyptian papyrus from around 1,900 years ago tells a fictional story that includes drinking, singing, feasting and ritual sex, all in the name of the goddess Mut. 

Researchers believe that a priest wrote the blush-worthy tale, as a way to discuss controversial ritual sex acts with other priests.

"Our text may represent a new and hitherto unrecognized Egyptian literary genre:  'cult' fiction, the purpose of which was to allow controversial or contentious matters pertaining to the divine cult to be scrutinized in this way," wrote professors Richard Jasnow and Mark Smith, who published their translation and analysis of the papyrus in the most recent edition of the journal Enchoria.

Jasnow, from Johns Hopkins University, and Smith, from Oxford, write that evidence of ritual sex is  rare in ancient Egypt and the act probably would have been controversial. "There is surprisingly little unequivocal Egyptian evidence for the performance of the sex act as such in ritual contexts," Jasnow and Smith wrote. They added that the Egyptians were known to discuss other controversial matters using fictional stories.

Dictionary Completed on Language Used Everyday in Ancient Egypt

Completion of 37-year project benefits global scholars of ancient Middle East

Newswise — A dictionary of thousands of words chronicling the everyday lives of people in ancient Egypt — including what taxes they paid, what they expected in a marriage and how much work they had to do for the government — has been completed by scholars at the University of Chicago.

The ancient language is Demotic Egyptian, a name given by the Greeks to denote it was the tongue of the demos, or common people. It was written as a flowing script and was used in Egypt from about 500 B.C. to 500 A.D., when the land was occupied and usually dominated by foreigners, including Persians, Greeks and Romans.

The language lives on today in words such as adobe, which came from the Egyptian word for brick. The word moved through Demotic, onto Arabic and eventually to Spain during the time of Islamic domination there, explained Janet Johnson, editor of the Chicago Demotic Dictionary.

Ebony, the dark wood that was traded down the Nile from Nubia (present-day Sudan), also comes from Demotic roots. The name Susan is indirectly related to the Demotic word for water lily.