Language(s), Coptic

              [Editorial note: [...] indicates use of Coptic or Greek text. Original script is available for viewing in the PDF format of this article.]

(CE:A145a-151b)

LANGUAGE(S), COPTIC. Coptic is the last stage of the Egyptian language in the course of its very long existence and slow evolution (we can observe it over a period of more than four thousand years, a quite exceptional phenomenon in linguistics). Since Coptic is today a dead language, and has been for several centuries, the death of Coptic has therefore meant the death of ancient Egyptian. Will the Copts of today have enough faith, devotion, perseverance, and perspicacity to succeed in reviving the glorious language of their ancestors, one of the most beautiful, most cleverly structured, and most musical in the world? Those inspired by the love of Egypt can only hope so.

Although people habitually speak of “the” Coptic language, it must be stated that in reality there are two Coptic languages (cf. Kasser, 1984a, pp. 261-62; Vycichl, 1987, pp. 67-68), each of which is accompanied by various regional dialects, themselves the successors in some fashion of the dialects of PRE-COPTIC.

The first is Sahidic (S), which is the common speech, or “vehicular language,” supralocal and supraregional, of the valley of the Egyptian Nile above the Delta, after having probably (but in what distant past?) itself been a local dialect that may have issued from some region of upper Middle Egypt without direct contact with the second language, Bohairic (B), as a local dialect, but probably in touch with Bohairic in the region of Memphis as a common language reaching the boundary of the neighboring common language (see DIALECTS GROUPING AND MAJOR GROUPS OF). The most ancient S manuscript is of the end of the third century AD.; the latest are of the fourteenth century, a period at which Sahidic (as indeed already from the eleventh century) was no longer anything more than a language virtually dead, surviving only artificially in the ecclesiastical milieus of some communities in Upper Egypt which had not yet been won to the exclusive use of Bohairic.

The Bohairic language is the supraregional vehicular language of the Nile Delta, having been, it seems, the principal regional dialect of the western Delta. Like Sahidic, Bohairic ceased to be a truly living language from the eleventh century. Its survival in the course of the following centuries remains a phenomenon in large part artificial, a means of communication particularly esteemed among clerks of the church (a very closed institution, turned in upon itself and much preoccupied, and indeed with good reason, with its survival in the midst of a hostile environment), a language above all religious. In this regard the testimony of the writer al-Maqrizi (fifteenth century) is not very significant: he affirmed that in his time the Christians of Upper Egypt still spoke Coptic (and even Greek!) among themselves; one may receive with the same circumspection what is reported by the Jesuit Vansleb (seventeenth century), who said he met in Egypt an old man who still knew how to express himself in Coptic. For a long time, in fact, and throughout the country, Arabic had become the only living language and the sole means of communication among all its inhabitants, Christian as well as Muslim.

It is stated that the oldest B manuscripts are of the fourth century A.D.; the latest are of the nineteenth (!) century, and one might even say of the twentieth if one admitted to this category the copies of old Coptic manuscripts made by Copts to study them or to aid them in one way or another to save their ancestral language from oblivion. Bohairic was the living language of the Delta exclusively before the eleventh century, a period after which Coptic as a whole became a dead language among the Egyptian people, even Christians, and survived only in purely ecclesiastical milieus and usages. Bohairic then spread rapidly throughout the valley, as far as the southern extremities of Upper Egypt, but as a liturgical language, artificially practiced by the clergy alone (and the officiants who accompanied them). Even so, Bohairic’s very restricted role does allow the ear to hear the sounds of the Coptic language, expressed by Coptic mouths and throats, beneath the ceilings and the domes of the Coptic churches. Bohairic is a survival, then, of ancient Egyptian in a very particular form, regrettably restricted and deprived of its original life and creative capacity, but despite everything a survival. However, even this feeble remnant of the ancient treasures of Coptic intellectual life is threatened in modern Egypt. In fact, from one side certainly and for more than a century, certain Copts inspired by their faith have been working with an admirable perseverance and devotion to revive B, teaching it to the Coptic people (Vycichl, 1936; Vergote, 1973, Vol. 1a, pp. 1-2; Barsum, 1882; Labib, 1915; cf. the work of the modern teachers, among whom the admirable popular savant Emile Maher stands out). But, from another side, some partisans of a religious renewal in the ancient Coptic church are pressing the church to Arabize its whole liturgy, in which, alongside brief Greek passages, some fairly long sections in Bohairic have survived: the essential thing is, they say, that the people of the church, who know only Arabic, should understand “everything” that is said and chanted in the liturgy. One may understand and approve this reasoning on the religious level, but unfortunately its consequences deal a mortal blow to what, after ten centuries of exhaustion, had in some fashion survived of the public use of the Coptic language. Egyptologists and Coptologists cannot but deplore this complete effacement (projected or realized) of liturgical Coptic.

The word “Coptic” thus describes, especially today, the totality of Sahidic and Bohairic, as well as the local dialects that they cover (Kahle, 1954; Kasser, 1980-1981). There is no need to repeat here all that has been written elsewhere in this regard; see in general DIALECT, IMMIGRANT; DIALECTS; DIALECTS, MORPHOLOGY OF COPTIC; GEOGRAPHY, DIALECTAL; METADIALECT; OLD COPTIC; PRE-COPTIC; PRE-OLD COPTIC; PROTODIALECT; and in particular AKHMIMIC; BOHAIRIC; DIALECT G (OR BASHMURIC OR MANSURIC); DIALECT H (OR HERMOPOLITAN OR ASHMUNINIC); DIALECT I (OR PROTOLYCOPOLITAN); DIALECT P (OR PROTO-HEBAN); FAYYUMIC; LYCOPOLITAN (OR SUBAKHMIMIC); MESOKEMIC (OR MIDDLE EGYPTIAN); and SAHIDIC.

The word “Copt” itself derives from the same word as “Egypt” and “Egyptian,” a term the origin of which appears to be authentically Egyptian: [...] (Vycichl, 1983, p. 5) or [...] (Krause, 1979, p. 731), “the house of the spirit of [the god] Ptah” (that is, Memphis, several kilometers south of modern Cairo). This [...] became in Greek [...], Egypt, whence [...], Egyptian. Ptah was the god of the town of Memphis, and the local theology considered him the creator of the world. Distorting to some extent [...] (the name of the ancient inhabitants of the country, then of those among them who remained Christians), the Arabs (conquerors of Egypt from 642) made of it (Ai)gypti(os); then gypti became qubti (Vergote, 1973, Vol. la, pp. 1-6; Stern, 1880, pp. 1-6, who cites the Coptic forms of this name [...], [...]; cf. also Gardiner, 1957, pp. 5-6; Layton, 1976; Mallon, 1907, pp. 1 7; Steindorff, 1930, pp. 1-5, and 1951, pp. 1-6; Till, 1955, pp. 29-39). Krause (1979, p. 731) notes that the form gibtith is already found in various passages of the Talmud in the second century AD.

The Copts of the classical period (before the Arab invasion) called themselves by another name in Sahidic: [...] (transcribed in Greek [...]), which means ‘the inhabitants [or “men,” [...]] of the Black Land [[...]],” an allusion to the dark color of the sediment which forms the cultivable and habitable land along the Nile and in its Delta, in opposition to the yellowish or reddish colors of the deserts, sterile and uninhabitable areas where the Egyptian did not feel in any way at home.

How can one affirm that Coptic is authentically Egyptian, when it has so much a Greek air at first sight? In fact, anyone not forewarned who approaches a Coptic text for the first time notices at once that its alphabet is four-fifths Greek in S, indeed a little less (68 percent) in dialect P or proto-Theban but actually much more in other idioms (up to 100 percent in dialect G, or Bashmuric or Mansuric, and up to 83 percent in dialect H, or Hermopolitan or Ashmuninic; cf. ALPHABET IN COPTIC, GREEK and ALPHABETS, COPTIC). Furthermore, one encounters many Copto-Greek words in the Coptic texts (cf. VOCABULARY, COPTO-GREEK). Nevertheless, these appearances ought not to deceive: Coptic in all its essential structures (Polotsky, 1950) and at a profound level (syntax, etc.) is an authentic form of the Egyptian language.

Building above all on Gardiner (1957, p. 5), one may distinguish five successive stages in the long evolution of this language over several thousand years: (1) Ancient Egyptian (from the First to the Eighth Dynasty, about 3180-2240 B.C., or 940 years); (2) Middle Egyptian (from the Ninth to the Eleventh Dynasty fully, to the Eighteenth Dynasty less clearly, about 2240-1570 B.C., or 670 years); (3) Neo-Egyptian (from the Eighteenth to the Twenty-fourth Dynasty, about 1570-715 B.C., or 855 years); (4) demotic (from the Twenty-fifth Dynasty to the third century A.D., Egypt being from this time Roman after having been Greek, and even as far as the reign of the Byzantine emperor Leo I if one takes account of certain sporadic extensions of the use of demotic during the first Coptic centuries, hence from about 715 B.C. to 470 AD. or 1185 years, or only 965 years if we stop at the beginning of the Coptic period); (5) Coptic (not counting Old Coptic, which preceded it and was not yet properly Coptic), a stage that one might arbitrarily and approximately reckon to begin in the middle of the third century AD. and the end of which is difficult to fix with any precision (there are no nonliterary Coptic documents from the eleventh century on, and it is artificially that this language still survived for some time, say to the thirteenth century if one may fix a limit there, again arbitrarily, for convenience in chronological evaluation, and even though the slow agony of Coptic during the Middle Ages is difficult to discern with precision); one may thus admit that the Coptic stage could have lasted approximately a thousand years (cf. Kasser, 1989).

However that may be, Coptic (in its two principal forms, S and B) is indeed the last state of the Egyptian language. It might have been the last but one, as some investigators would have it, if the Coptic language had not failed, for want of vigor, in the last of the metamorphoses it was undergoing locally and endeavoring to undertake from the eighth century on.

On the basis of Gardiner’s scheme, one may try to imagine more concretely the succession of these stages of the Egyptian language. It is known that every language constantly evolves, and it is very probable that Egyptian is no exception to this rule. But if the spoken language is in perpetual evolution, the written language, on the contrary, strives to remain stable—or rather, the intellectual class, that of the scribes, which could not carry out its work in conditions of unduly accentuated orthographic (chiefly), lexical, and morphosyntactic instability, strives for a clear definition and fixing of orthography and related matters, for a strict control of all impulses toward evolution, to immobilize them as far as possible. The result is that although the orthography corresponds fairly well to the pronunciation of the spoken language at the time the rules of orthography become fixed, it is no longer the same after a number of centuries; then the distance between the written and the spoken languages becomes ever greater, and the orthography becomes more and more arbitrary in relation to what is spoken; it thus becomes more and more difficult to learn, to the point where the difficulty becomes intolerable and the tension leads to rupture. People then proceed to a reform of the orthography, adapting it to the contemporary spoken language.

When the language studied is a language entirely dead, as is Egyptian, a language known only from texts that no modern scientific observer has ever heard pronounced by a man who spoke it as his proper living language, then the scheme sketched above remains a hypothesis, however probable it may be. The investigator, instead of being able to grasp the spoken language in its constant evolution, lays hold only of the texts, showing that the first stage of the Egyptian language (Ancient Egyptian) is quite suddenly succeeded by the second (Middle Egyptian), then the third (Neo-Egyptian, rather different from Middle Egyptian), then the fourth (demotic, rather different from Neo-Egyptian), and finally the fifth (Coptic, rather different from demotic). But by comparison with what he can observe in other languages, today still living, he knows that the evolution of the spoken language (which is the “true” language) ought not to be confused with the irregular progress shown by the written language, with its abrupt mutations.

The result of these considerations may be a slightly more nuanced vision of this evolution. The one that Vergote (1973, Vol. 1b, pp. 3-4) presents is very illuminating. First of all, he admits (with B. H. Stricker [1945]) that Middle Egyptian is further removed from Neo Egyptian that it is from Ancient Egyptian, so that one may bring together Ancient Egyptian and Middle Egyptian in a “line I”; similarly, Neo-Egyptian is further removed from Middle Egyptian than it is from demotic, so that one may bring Neo-Egyptian and demotic together in a “line II”; Coptic, by itself, forms “line III.” (Vergote adds a line IV, of which no account will be taken here: it is the Greek of Egypt, contemporary with the autochthonous stages of the Egyptian language from about the sixth and seventh centuries B.C.).

On the other hand, Vergote considers that at the time when the orthography and related matters become remote from the spoken language to such a point that the rupture takes place, entailing a reform of the orthography, this reform is never accepted at a stroke by the whole intellectual class, in all its milieus and in all the literary genres. There are then always some more conservative circles which, at least for some very particular usages to which an archaizing style is especially appropriate, tend to make the ancient state of the language endure, and for as long as possible and as intact as possible in the midst of an environment henceforth greatly changed. Thus, an ancient stage of a language may survive for several centuries, or even millennia, alongside stages that logically have succeeded it (somewhat as, in Coptic, a protodialect may have survived for some time alongside the dialect that, in the logic of dialectal evolution, has succeeded it).

The scheme that results from these considerations (Vergote, 1973, Vol. 1b. p. 3) thus shows a line I (“written classical Egyptian” is equated with Ancient Egyptian followed by Middle Egyptian) which starts from the beginnings of the third millennium B.C. (or even a little earlier), deviates perceptibly from the line of the spoken language toward [-2400], and nevertheless extends down to the middle of the third century AD. (+250). Next is a line II (“written vulgar Egyptian” being Neo-Egyptian followed by demotic) starting from the middle of the second millennium B.C. (or even a little earlier, toward [-1800]), which deviates perceptibly from the line of the spoken language toward [-1200], and nevertheless extends beyond the middle of the fifth century A.D. (+470). Finally, there is a line III (Coptic), a simple prolongation of the line of the earlier spoken language (after its separation from line II), starting from the middle of the third century A.D. (+250), which no doubt also deviated to some extent from the line of the spoken language at a certain point (but this does not appear in Vergote’s scheme) and which extends approximately down to the end of the first millennium. In this scheme, then, in the third century A.D. the three stages of Egyptian happen to exist simultaneously: line I (very close to extinction), line II (on the way to decline, but still capable of enduring for another two centuries), and line III (still very close to its birth).

This very nuanced conception of the evolution of the Egyptian language, from Ancient Egyptian down to Coptic (the Coptic languages S and B, with the various regional dialects that accompany them) appears the most probable in the present state of knowledge in this field. It may be represented as in Figure 1.

[See PDF version of this article for FIGURE 1. EVOLUTION OF THE EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE. Adapted and simplified from Vergote, 1973, Vol. lb. p.3, and Luddeckens, 1980, p. 251.]

The “Coptic” of this scheme is in fact the totality of the two “Coptic languages” (S and B) with the various regional dialects which accompany them (A, L, M, W, V, F, H, G, not to speak of the protodialects P and i). Does this signify that each of these idioms is the direct prolongation of a like earlier dialectal form which existed in Egypt already in Neo-Egyptian and in demotic (not to speak of Ancient and Middle Egyptian)? A “prolongation” probably yes, but perhaps not quite “direct,” in the sense that one might be tempted to give it in a rather simplistic fashion (cf. Chaîne, 1933, p. xviii, and 1934, pp. 2-3, which must, however, be adapted to the present knowledge of matters of Coptic dialectology). The Coptic dialects (and languages) are idioms of late Egyptian that appeared in the middle of the Greco-Roman period and are particularly perceptible thanks to the Coptic documents, which in contrast to the older Egyptian documents provide information not only about the consonants but also about the vowels. It is thus extremely difficult to compare these idioms with this or that orthographic or semisystematic variant encountered in the Pre-Coptic Egyptian texts, in the hope of thus effecting a comparison between the Coptic and the Pre-Coptic Egyptian dialects.

Certainly the latter must have existed; that is highly probable. But how is one to know them? Prudence in any case advises one to keep some distance from the optimistic hypothesis that would consider each Coptic dialect as the direct descendant of a pharaonic Egyptian dialect corresponding to it. Certainly each historical period in Egypt must have seen the manifestation of numerous local idioms existing side by side (a circumstance evidently favored by the geographical conditions of the country), but one cannot simply affirm that each of them was content to perpetuate itself, if it could, in a linear fashion, reappearing from one period to another in rejuvenated form. Considering the relative orthographic uniformity of the successive pharaonic Egyptian languages, in all probability Egypt also knew periods in which there was something like a linguistic leveling; as a result of reciprocal interferences that had accrued or under the constraining action of a “dialect” that had acquired some supremacy in its field of influence (geographic or social)—for example, becoming a supraregional vehicular language—there must have been formed several times over in the course of Egyptian history a kind of koine whose influence extended itself over the greater part or even the whole of one or the other of the halves of Egypt (the Nile Delta, on the one hand, and the valley of the Egyptian Nile above the Delta, on the other). This koine may have been able to eliminate certain local idioms, profoundly inhibiting and radically modifying the others in such a way as to efface the greater part of the differences that constituted their originality. Thus, each local dialect when it reappears after such a leveling is the synthesis of two different currents. Like a son in whom one finds certain features of his father associated with others coming from his mother, the reemergent dialect has quite certainly something of the dialect formerly used in the same region but also bears very strongly the mark of the koine that, at least on the literary level, has supplanted the earlier dialect. The relation between the Coptic idiom and its putative ancestor cannot then be other than ambiguous.

Anyone who examines the scheme above will note that the passage from language I (Ancient Egyptian and Middle Egyptian) to language II (Neo-Egyptian and demotic) represents a “leap” much less great than that from language II to language III (Coptic). Despite their by no means negligible differences, II is easily compatible with I, and there is no doubt the reason for their long coexistence (over about two millennia). III, on the contrary, is much less easily compatible with II (and with I), and that no doubt is the cause of the rapid and, so to speak, catastrophic disappearance of II as soon as III has reached its zenith (reducing their coexistence to some two centuries only; the coexistence of III with I was chronologically zero, or nearly so).

The writing expressing I and II is purely Egyptian and, on the level of phonology, shows only the consonants. The writing of III, on the contrary, is about four-fifths Greek and, in comparison with I and II, presents the immense advantage of showing not only the consonants but also the vowels. The slight inconvenience linked to this advantage is that henceforward the same orthography can no longer, as formerly, be common to all the dialects, thus veiling their existence on the level of writing.

It is thought that the idea of writing Egyptian by means of graphemes fixing not only the consonants but also the vowels could have been born in the bosom of certain bilingual social groups in Egypt who desired to practice magic with greater security. The majority of the texts called Old Coptic are in fact magical texts, disparate essays from the first to the fifth centuries AD. that logically, if not always chronologically, preceded the first truly Coptic texts.

Certainly the idea of using, even for Egyptian, an alphabet showing the vowels also had already been in the air for several centuries. More than once, and above all from the second century AD., some man of letters had tried to apply it for his personal use, and this evidently with recourse to Greek, a script with which every Egyptian was confronted every day (and whose convenience he well knew), since it was that of the Greek language, the administrative language of the country over a very long time and thus omnipresent in the innumerable documents that one of necessity had to have written or be able to read to get out of difficulty in the face of the authorities in everyday life.

Such initiatives were taken in the Greco-Egyptian milieus in Egypt above all when it was a case of writing in a manner comprehensible for a Greek some magic formula that brought healing or life to oneself or a friend or suffering and death to a hated enemy. A Greek in Egypt endeavoring to read aloud a text in Ancient Egyptian would perhaps have pronounced his consonants correctly, but he would probably have been mistaken several times in articulating his vowels, since they do not appear in the hieroglyphs or in demotic. Now the demons whom the magician invokes to employ positively in his service or to unleash against an enemy are like fierce dogs accustomed to obeying precise orders. If the formula is ill pronounced, however slightly, their reflexes make them act in a manner impossible to foresee. If they are content to remain asleep and inactive, that is still a lesser evil; but the far worse risk is that they may awake, excited and bewildered by the incomprehensible order, the magic phrase ill pronounced: in fury, they will turn against their bungling master and tear him to pieces. Egyptian written in Greek letters (consonants and vowels, with some additional letters for special sounds) permitted a much more sure pronunciation and thus seemed to protect the Greco-Egyptian magician against regrettable “technical accidents.”

Taking up and systematizing better the idea of these isolated predecessors (each of whom had invented his own recipe without knowing too much of those of others), the Copts then decided to adopt the popular Egyptian of their time, and since their language had some phonemes that did not exist in Greek, they completed their alphabet by adding some supplementary graphemes (between six and ten, depending on the Coptic dialects; cf. ALPHABETS, COPTIC).

An admirable reform of the orthography, one will say, but why did no one think of it sooner? Yes indeed, but a reform as dangerous as it was admirable. In fact, in any language, the more fundamental a reform of the orthography is, the more it produces revolutionary and destructive effects, including above all a radical incision in the very heart of the national culture. The “old” literature, that from before the reform, becomes immediately incomprehensible, hence more than difficult, impossible of access, for all those who have been intellectually molded according to the “new” principles (to the exclusion of the old principles, quickly fallen into desuetude and forgotten). We know how many projects for reform of the orthography of numerous modern languages have failed in the face of this formidable obstacle.

The obstacle can only be surmounted if the partisans of fundamental reform are animated by a revolutionary spirit, little disposed to be hampered by scruples about a despised and hated past. If the champions of the new system are ready without regret to see the ancient literature of their people sink into oblivion and disappear, its centuries-old or millennial traditions (at that period evidently above all religious traditions), they will not hesitate to sacrifice to the “progress” that they proclaim a whole cultural heritage; not only have they no esteem whatever for its value, but they probably even judge it inauspicious, dangerous, deserving of being destroyed.

So aggressive and destructive an attitude is evidently very remote from the more respectful state of mind that animated the promoters of the cultural reform which permitted the Egypt of the second millennium B.C. to create its language II and to use it in parallel with its language I (in no way threatened with disappearance on the occasion of the birth of this rival); it was no doubt found convenient and appropriate to be able to employ II alongside I for certain preferential usages, but nobody desired the death of I on the occasion of this innovation.

This revolutionary and iconoclastic attitude appears, on the contrary, to have been that of the promoters of the cultural reform which in the third century AD. provoked the birth and the prompt flowering of III, on the one hand, and the rapid decadence and soon the extinction of I and II, on the other. The partisans of the old system of Egyptian writing, the “conservatives,” were the pagans of Egypt, particularly attached to their thousand-year-old traditions of a dazzling richness. But over against them were arrayed, in ever-increasing numbers, the creators and partisans of the new system of Egyptian writing, the Coptic alphabet; for these Christians of Egypt, revolutionaries so convinced that they scarcely troubled themselves with nuances, the whole pagan past of their country was not only without value, but also inauspicious, diabolical, to be extirpated from their civilization for reasons of mental hygiene. The Copts then did not shed a single tear, rather the contrary, over the death of the hieroglyphic Egyptian preserved in the written cultural language I or over the definitive disappearance of Neo-Egyptian, above all in its demotic form as it then still appeared in the written cultural language II. For them, these means of expression were indissolubly linked to the manifold and at all points monstrous phenomenon of a diabolical and detested paganism, which struck fear into the simple soul and provoked the horror of the Christian. Far from regretting the treasures of their own civilization sinking henceforth into general incomprehension and oblivion, the Copts on the contrary applauded what they considered a salutary intellectual cleansing: the triumph of the Truth.

One must keep equally present in memory this dramatic aspect of a choice now seventeen centuries old, brutal as every revolutionary choice is; a cruel choice, but nonetheless one of genius, since it was only through Coptic that Egyptology was able in 1822, thanks to the perspicacity of Champollion, to attain to a real knowledge of the ancient Egyptian (pharaonic) language, and it is through Coptic that even now Egyptology can “hear” in a manner certainly approximate but nevertheless concrete and, beyond hypothesis and the dry conventional notation, nevertheless gripping, the true “sounds” of a mysterious language, the voice of antique Egypt.

RODOLPHE KASSER