By the Roman period, Egyptian was written in Demotic, a script so cursive that few outside the temple schools could read it. Greek letters, meanwhile, were everywhere: Greek was the language of government since the Ptolemies, and many Egyptians could read it. As Christianity spread in Egypt, Egyptian Christians began to write their own language in the Greek alphabet.
Key idea
Coptic is the last stage of the Egyptian language, written from about the 3rd century AD, chiefly by Egyptian Christians, in the Greek alphabet plus six or seven letters taken from Demotic for sounds Greek lacked. It is the same language as the hieroglyphs, three thousand years later.
Why it works
An alphabet with vowels is easier to learn than thousands of signs, and the Christian scriptures were to be read by ordinary believers. Greek letters were already familiar, so scribes used them, and borrowed Demotic signs where Greek had no letter for an Egyptian sound, such as sh (ϣ) or f (ϥ). Earlier experiments, now called Old Coptic, wrote Egyptian words in Greek letters from about the 1st century AD, mostly in magical texts; standard Coptic took shape in the 3rd and 4th centuries.
| Egyptian (Middle Egyptian) | Coptic (Sahidic) | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| rn | ⲣⲁⲛ (ran) | name |
| ꜥnḫ | ⲱⲛϩ (ōnh) | life, to live |
| nṯr | ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ (noute) | god |
| rmṯ | ⲣⲱⲙⲉ (rōme) | person, man |
| sḏm | ⲥⲱⲧⲙ (sōtm) | hear |
Worked example: One language or two?
A student says Coptic is "a different language that replaced Egyptian". Correct it.
- Coptic words descend from earlier Egyptian words: rmṯ "person" became ⲣⲱⲙⲉ.
- Its grammar continues Late Egyptian and Demotic grammar.
- What changed was the script, and the sounds over time, not the language family.
Answer: Coptic is Egyptian, in its last stage, written in a new alphabet.
Worked example: Why Christians?
Why is Coptic mostly the writing of Egypt's Christians?
- The old scripts were tied to the temples and their priests, who wrote hieroglyphs and Demotic.
- Christian communities wanted scripture, prayers and letters that ordinary people could read, in their own language.
- Monasteries copied and wrote in Coptic for centuries; the Nag Hammadi codices, buried in the 4th century and found in 1945, are Coptic books.
Answer: Because Christians needed an easy script for scripture in their own language.
Common mistake
Thinking Coptic is a separate language from ancient Egyptian. It is Egyptian, written in a new alphabet. That is why Champollion, who knew Coptic, could recognize the words that hieroglyphs spelled.
Coptic took many words from Greek, especially for religion, law and trade: by one estimate up to two fifths of the vocabulary of literary Coptic.