Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications
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THE ALPHABET dated belong to the fifth century A.D. There were five main Coptic dialects, the more important of them being the Sa'idic or Sahidic dialect of southern or Upper Egypt, around the old Egyptian capital Thebes (now Luxor); and the Bohairic dialect of Lower Egypt; this latter (since Alexandria was the seat of the Coptic Patriarch) became the Coptic liturgical language, and ultimately drove out the other dialects.
Coptic was essentially the non-cultivated speech of Egypt, for the Egyptian "aristocracy" was thoroughly Hellenized.
The early Egyptian Christians carne from the lower classes and it was only after the fourth century that Christianity became more firmly established, and civilization passed gradually into the hands of the Christian Egyptians; even then pagan culture did not disappear until towards the end of the fifth century. As Coptic was mainly the speech of rural districts, it was able more easily to survive the Arab conquest.
Coptic has a large admixture of Greek elements, especially in all that belongs to Christian doctrine, life and worship.
The Coptic alphabet (Fig. 208, 1) consisted of thirty-two letters, twenty-five borrowed from the Greek uncial script, and seven taken over from a more cursive variety of the demotic script (see Part 1, Chapter II) to express sounds which did not exist in Greek. The development of the Coptic script was of course entirely independent of the Greek.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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A. Mallon, Grammaire copre, Beyrouth, 1907
E. A. W. Budge, Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt, London, 1913
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W. Spiegelberg, Koptisches Handtcarterbuch, Heidelberg, 1921. E. Devand, Etudes d'étymologie copte, Fribourg, 1923. H. G. E. White, Neto Coptic Texts, etc., New York, 1926.
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