Coptic Sentence Examples

Strabo mentions linen-weaving as an ancient industry of Panopolis, and it is not altogether a coincidence that the cemetery of Akhmim is one of the chief sources of the beautiful textiles of Roman and Coptic age that are brought from Egypt.

Only in Abyssinia the daughter church of the Coptic church succeeded in keeping the whole people in the Christian faith.

The Coptic patriarch uses an iron cross-staff.

His journal and letters show that he had made acquaintance with a large number of languages, including Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopic, as well as the classical and the principal modern European languages.

From the days of Ignatius, down through Paul of Samosata and Lucian to the 'great controversies of the 5th century which began with the theories of Apollinarius, the theologians of Antioch started from the one sure fact, that 1 Coptic Life of Dioscurus (Rev. Egyptologique, 1880-1883).

It is worn girdled by bishops and priests in all rites, by subdeacons in the Greek and Coptic rites.

Akhmim has several mosques and two Coptic churches, maintains a weekly market, and manufactures cotton goods, notably the blue shirts and check shawls with silk fringes worn by the poorer classes of Egypt.

Akhmim was the Egyptian Apu or Khen-min, in Coptic Shmin, known to the Greeks as Chemmis or Panopolis, capital of the 9th or Chemmite nome of Upper Egypt.

The name Esna is from the Coptic Sne.

Coptic papyri mainly contain Biblical or religious texts or monastic deeds.

The discovery of the Coptic translation of these Acts in 1897, and its publication by C. Schmidt (Acta Pauli aus der Heidelberger koptischen Papyrushandschrift herausgegeben, Leipzig, 1894), have confirmed what had been previously only a hypothesis that the Acts of Thecla had formed a part of the larger Acts of Paul.

The Coptic version (C. Schmidt, Acta Pauli, pp. 74-82), which is here imperfect, is clearly from a Greek original, while the Latin and Armenian are from the Syriac. (c) The Acts of Paul and Thecla.

A Christian revision of it is probably preserved in the two dialects of Coptic. Of these the Akhmim text is the original of the Sahidic. These texts and their translations have been edited by Steindorff, Die Apokalypse des Elias, eine unbekannte Apokalypse and Bruchstiicke der Sophonias-Apokalypse (1899).

The work was to have been in four parts - (i) Syrian and allied MSS., orthodox, Nestorian and Jacobite; (2) Arabian MSS., Christian and Mahommedan; (3) Coptic, Aethiopic, Persian and Turkish MSS.; and (4) Syrian and Arabian MSS.

The Coptic name, Phelbes, seems to have been derived from Egyptian, but nothing is known of the place before medieval times.

Here too the Arab conquest (641) put an end to the oppression of the native Christians by the Greek minority; but this did not afford the Coptic church any possibility of vigorous development.

At the time of the conquest of the country by the Turks (1517) the Coptic church seems already to have fallen to the low condition in which the 19th century found it.

Though at the time of the Arab conquest the Copts were reckoned at six millions, in 1820 the Coptic Christians numbered only about one hundred thousand, and it is improbable that their number can have been much greater at the close of the middle ages.

Union with the Coptic Church continued after the Arab conquest in Egypt.

There are many early rock-cut churches in Abyssinia, closely resembling the Coptic. After these, two main types of architecture are found - one basilican, the other native.

They are found in various dialects of Coptic, the mutual relations of which are not Coptic. yet certain, but the only ones which are preserved with any completeness are the Bohairic, or Lower Egyptian, and Sahidic, or Upper Egyptian, though it is certain that fragments of intermediate dialects such as Middle Egyptian, Fayumic, Akhmimic and Memphitic also exist.

It is well represented, as it became the official version of the Coptic Church; its history is unknown, but from internal evidence it seems to have been made from good Greek MSS.

It is possible that this is the oldest Coptic version, and this view is supported by the general probabilities of the spread of Christianity in Egypt.

It must be noted that Westcott and Hort called the Bohairic Memphitic, and the Sahidic Thebaic, and Tischendorf called the Bohairic Coptic.

The wholesale theory of Revillout (35) that all Hebrew and Syrian measures were doubled by the Ptolemaic revision, while retaining the same names, rests entirely on the resemblance of the names apet and epha, and of log to the Coptic and late measure lok.

Later evidence of the decadence of Gnosticism occurs in the Pistis-Sophia and the Coptic Gnostic writings discovered and edited by Schmidt.

In the Armenian, Syrian, Chaldaean and Coptic rites it is copeshaped.

The Coptic rite is in the same relation to the Syrian.

The annexed plan of a Coptic monastery, from Lenoir, shows a church of three aisles, with cellular apses, and two ranges of cells on either side of an oblong gallery.

He thenceforth became passionately interested in Egyptology, devoted himself to the study of hieroglyphs and Coptic, and in 1847 published a Catalogue analytique of the Egyptian Gallery of the Boulogne Museum; in 1849, being appointed to a subordinate position in the Louvre, he left Boulogne for Paris.

Entrusted with a government mission for the purpose of seeking and purchasing Coptic, Syriac, Arabic and Ethiopic MSS.

A passing reference should be made to the Coptic abbot Shenout, who governed on similar lines the great " White Monastery," whereof the ruins still survive near Akhmim; the main interest of Shenout's institute lies in the fact that it continued purely Coptic, without any infiltration of Greek ideas or influence.

The latter in being ordained had the Gospel laid on their heads, and the same feature occurs in old Gallican and Coptic rites of ordaining a bishop.

In Egypt, too, the triumph of Christianity brought into being a native Christian literature, and if this was in one way the assertion of the native against Hellenistic predominance, one must remember that Coptic literature, like Syriac, necessarily incorporated those Greek elements which had become an essential part of Christian theology.

The country to the back of Lagos is largely inhabited by Yorubas, and the people of Borgu according to some native traditions claim to have had a Coptic origin.

The Coptic cathedral, dedicated to St Mark, is a modern building in the basilica style.

The oldest Coptic church in Cairo is, probably, the Keniset-el-Adra, or Church of the Virgin, which is stated to preserve the original type of Coptic basilica.

The Coptic churches in the city are not, however, of so much interest as those in Old Cairo (see below).

In the quarter are five Coptic churches, a Greek convent and two churches, and a synagogue.

The principal Coptic church is that of Abu Serga (St Sergius).

The upper church is basilican in form, the nave being, as customary in Coptic churches, divided into three sections by wooden screens, which are adorned by carvings in ivory and wood.

In the Der Abu Sephin, to the north of Babylon, is a Coptic church of the 10th century, possessing magnificent carved screens, a pulpit with fine mosaics and a semi-circle of marble steps.

This led to the enrichment of the archivolts and imposts with that peculiar type of conventional foliage which characterizes Mahommedan work, and which in this case was carried out by Coptic craftsmen.

Arrangements were made in 1902 for the systematic repair and preservation of Coptic monuments.

The ancient and celebrated Coptic monasteries El Abiad (the white) and El Ahmar (the red) are 3 to 4 m.

There are, besides the more ancient cities and monuments, a number of Coptic towns, monasteries and churches in almost every part of Egypt, dating from the early centuries of Christianity.

Of these the Coptic Orthodox church had some 667,000 adherents.

The Coptic organization includes in Egypt three metropolitans and twelve bishops, under the headship of the patriarch of Alexandria.

The Copts have about 1000 primary schools, in which the teaching of Coptic is compulsory, a few industrial schools, and one college for higher instruction.

Of the Coptic community about 50% can read and write.

The first of these divisions - includes both the Moslem and Coptic inhabitants.

The Coptic inhabitants are described in the article COPTS, and the rural population under FELLAH.

The rise of the Nile is naturally the occasion of annual customs, some of which are doubtless relics of antiquity; these are observed according to the Coptic calendar.

The crier continues his daily rounds, with his former chant, excepting on the Coptic New Years Day, when the cry of the Wefh is repeated, until the Salib, or Discovery of the Cross, the 26th or 27th of September, at which period, the river having attained its greatest height, he concludes his annual employment with another chant, and presents to each house some limes and other fruit, and dry lumps of Nile mud.

The period of the hot winds, called the khamsin, that is, the fifties, is calculated from the day after the Coptic Easter, and terminates on the day of Pentecost, and the Moslems observe the Wednesday preceding this period, called Jobs Wednesday, as well as its first day, when many go into the country from Cairo, to smell the air.

The study of Coptic had begun in Europe early in the I7th century, and reached a high level in the work of the Dane Georg Zoega (1755-1809) at the end of the 18th century.

In 1880 Ludwig Stern (Koptische Grammatik) admirably classified the grammatical forms of Coptic. The much more difficult task of recovering the grammar of Egyptian has occupied thirty years of special study by Adolf Erman and his school at Berlin, and has now reached an advanced stage.

Next followed, in the Zeitschrift fr gyptische Sprache und Alterlhumskunde, studies on the Old Kingdom inscription of Una, and the Middle Kingdom contracts of Assiut, as well as on an Old Coptic text of the 3rd century AD.

The latter is an extensive monograph on the verb in Egyptian and Coptic by a brilliant and laborious philologist.

They begin with the primitive inscriptions of the 1st Dynasty (not later than 3300 B.C.) and end with the latest Coptic compositions of about the v4th century AD.

Coptic.This, in the main, represents the popular language of early Christian Egypt from the 3rd to perhaps the 10th century AD., when the growth of Coptic as a literary language must, have ceased.

The Greek alphabet, reinforced by a few signs borrowed from demotic, rendered the spoken tongue so accurately that four distinct, though closely allied, dialects are readily distinguishable in Coptic MSS.; ample remains are found of renderings of the Scriptures into all these dialects.

This Old Coptic, as it is termed, was still almost entirely free from Greek loanwords, and its strong archaisms are doubtless accounted for by the literary language, even in its most vulgar forms, having moved more slowly than the speech of the people.

Christian Coptic, though probably at first contemporary with some documents of Old Coptic, contrasts strongly with the latter.

There is evidence that the amount of stress on syllables, and the consequent length of vowels, varied greatly in spoken Coptic, and that the variation gave much trouble to the scribes; the early Christian writers must have taken as a model for each dialect the deliberate speech of grave elders or preachers, and so secured a uniform system of accentuation.

The remains of Old Coptic, though very instructive in their marked peculiarities, are as yet too few for definite classification.

Coptic, much alloyed with Arabic, was spoken in Upper Egypt as late as the 15th century, but it has long been a dead language.

The Arabic dialects, which gradually displaced Coptic as Mahominedanism supplanted Christianity, adopted but few words 3f the old native stock.

Coptic is the only stage of the language in which the spelling gives a clear idea of the pronunciation.

A few cuneiform transcriptions, reaching as far back as the XVIIIth Dynasty, give valuable hints as to how Egyptian was pronounced in the 15th century B.C. Coptic itself is of course quite inadequate to enable us to restore Old Egyptian.

It is only by the most careful scrutiny, or the exercise of the most piercing insight, that the imperfectly spelled Egyptian has been made to yield up one grammatical secret after another in the light brought to bear upon it from Coptic. Demotic grammar ought soon to be thoroughly comprehensible in its forms, and the study of Late Egyptian should not stand far behind that of demotic. On the other hand, Middle Egyptian, and still mote Old Egyptian, which is separated from Middle Egyptian by a wide gap, will perhaps always be to us little more than consonantal skeletons, the flesh and blood of their vocalization being for the most part irretrievably lost.

The characteristic triliteral roots of all the Semitic languages seemed to separate them widely from others; but certain traits have caused the Egyptian, Berber and Cushite groups to be classed together as three subfamilies of a Hamitic group, remotely related to the Semitic. The biliteral character of Coptic, and the biliteralism which was believed to exist in Egyptian, led philologists to suspect that Egyptian might be a surviving witness to that far-off stage of the Semitic languages when triliteral roots had not yet been formed from presumed original biliterals; Sethes investigations, however, prove that the Coptic biliterals are themselves derived from Old Egyptian triliterals, and that the triliteral roots enormously preponderated in Egyptian of the earliest known form; that view is, therefore, no longer tenable.

Many remarkable In the articles referring to matters of Egyptology in this edition, Graecized forms of Old Egyptian names, where they exist, are commonly employed; in other cases names are rendered by their actual equivalents in Coptic or by analogous forms. Failing all such means, recourse is had to the usual conventional renderings of hieroglyphic spelling, a more precise transcription of the consonants in the latter being sometimes added.

The typical Coptic root thus became biliteral rather than triliteral, and the verb, by means of periphrases, developed tenses of remarkable precision.

Such verbal resemblances as exist between Coptic and Semitic are largely due to late exchanges with Semitic neighbors.

It will serve to contrast with Coptic grammar on the one hand and Semitic grammar on the other.

The suffixes of all numbers and persons except the dual were in full use throughout, to Coptic; an, however, giving way to a new suffix, -w, which developed first in the New Kingdom.

The infinite is of special importance on account of its being preserved very fully in Coptic. It is generally of masculine form, but feminine in III.

The history of the Coptic Version has yet to be written.

Generally the Coptic Christians were content to build their churches within the ancient temples, plastering over or effacing the sculptures which were nearest to the ground and in the way of the worshippers.

The former, called by the Arabs Mukaukis (Muqauqis) from his Coptic name Pkauchios, had for ten years before the arrival of Amr maintained a fierce persecution of the Jacobite sect, to which the bulk of the Copts belonged.

The development of the poll-tax imposed on members of tolerated cults seems to be due to various causes, chief of them the acquisition of land by Moslems, who were not at first allowed to possess any, the conversion of Coptic landowners to Islam, and the enforcement (towards the end of the 1st century of Islam) of the poll-tax on monks.

This event finally crushed the Coptic nation, which never again made head against the Moslems. In the following year the caliph Motasim, who surrounded himself with a foreign bodyguard, withdrew the stipends of the Arab soldiers in Egypt; this measure caused some of the Arab tribes who had been long settled in Egypt to revolt, but their resistance was crushed, and the domination of the Arab element in the country from this time gave way to that of foreign mercenaries, who, belonging to one nation or another, held it for most of its subsequent history.

The Latin, the Peshitta Syriac and the Targum occasionally offer suggestions; the Hexaplar Syriac and the Coptic are of value for the determination of the text of the Septuagint.

At the age of sixteen (1807) he read before the academy of Grenoble a paper in which he maintained that the Coptic was the ancient language of Egypt.

Muller, daughter-tongues of the old Sabaean and Minaean, standing in the same relation to the speech of the old inscriptions as Coptic does to that of the hieroglyphics.

Mutatis mutandis, the same applies to Africa also, and Christianity still survives in both continents in the Coptic, Abyssinian and Armenian Churches.

Of these the four greater patriarchates are those of Alexandria (with two patriarchs, Latin and Coptic); Anticch (with four, Latin, Graeco-Melchite, Maronite and Syriac); Constantinople (Latin) and Jerusalem (Latin).

But the secession of the greater part of his church to Monophysitism [[[Coptic Church]]], and the Mahommedan conquest of Egypt, have left him but the shadow of his former greatness; and at the present time he has only the bishop of Libya under him, and rules over some 20,000 people at the outside, most of whom are settlers from elsewhere.

Damietta is a Levantine corruption of the Coptic name Tamiati, Arabic Dimyat.

He is specially commemorated in the calendars of the Greek, Coptic and Armenian churches.

When the rays are parallel, the reflecting surface 1 Elie Bocthor (1784-1821) was a French orientalist of Coptic origin.

The education was to be state provided, Coptic teachers were brought from Egypt and school buildings were erected.

In the early days of Christianity the town became the seat of a bishopric, and numerous ruins of Coptic convents are in the neighbourhood.

This is an Arabic work perhaps based on a Coptic and ultimately on a Greek original, embodying with modifications large portions of the Canons of Hippolytus.

The priority of the Greek Life of Pachomius over the Coptic may be said to be established; the historical character and value of this life are now fully recognized.

The practice of the Coptic church is almost identical with this.

Pelusium ("the muddy") is the Farama of the Arabs, Peremoun in Coptic; the name Tina which clings to the locality seems etymologically connected with the Arabic word for clay or mud.

On the left bank of the Nile opposite Merawi are the pyramids of Nuri, and a few miles distant in the Wadi Ghazal are the ruins of a great Christian monastery, where were found gravestones with inscriptions in Greek and Coptic. Ruins of various ages extend from Merawi to the Fourth Cataract.

He was the author of Biblical commentaries both in Greek and Coptic, and is said to have composed many hymns.

Hierax may be called the connecting link between Origen and the Coptic monks.

I will use the story of Ibrahim Khalil the former Egyptian Coptic priest.

Some new compositions of significant colors were also discovered, which had not been reported previously in Coptic textiles.

Within the city walls are the Latin Patriarchal church and residence; the school of the Freres de la Doctrine Chretienne; the schools and printing house of the Franciscans; the Coptic monastery; the German church of the Redeemer, and hospice; the United Armenian church of the Spasm; the convent and school of the Seeurs de Zion; the Austrian hospice; the Turkish school and museum; the monastery and seminary of the Freres de la Mission Algerienne, with the restored church of St Anne, the church, schools and hospital of the London mission to the Jews; the Armenian seminary and Patriarchal buildings; the Rothschild hospital; and Jewish hospices and synagogues.

Monasteries abounded in this neighbourhood from a very early date; Shenout (Sinuthius), the fiery apostle and prophet of the Coptic national church, was a monk of Atrepe (now Suhag), and led the populace to the destruction of the pagan edifices.

In both chapters an Egyptian month is named, and elsewhere the antelope bears its Coptic name of "antholops."

It succumbed to the ceaseless alternation of tolerance and persecution which characterized the Arab rule in Egypt, and the mass of the Coptic people became unfaithful to the Church.

The two " Coptic Ieu " books unfold an immense system of names and symbols.

Petri (Petri apostoli apocalypsis per Clementem), the late Syrian apocalypse of Ezra (Bousset, Antichrist, 45 &c.), the Coptic (14th) vision of Daniel (in the appendix to Woide's edition of the Codex Alexandrinus; Oxford, 179 9), the Ethiopian Wisdom of the Sibyl, which is closely related to the Tiburtine Sibyl (see Basset, Apocryphes etlziopiennes, x.); in the last mentioned of these sources long series of Islamic rulers are foretold before the final time of Antichrist.

It was in great vogue in the early centuries, and was translated and adapted into Armenian, Syriac, Coptic, and Arabic.

The Coptic Catholics now use this more ornate design.

The equivalent of the alb in the ancient Churches of the East is the sticharion (art bpeov) of the Orthodox Church (Armenian shapik, Syrian Kutina, Coptic stoicharion or tuniah).

The colour of the vestment is usually white for bishops and priests (this is the rule in the Coptic Church); for the other orders there is no rule, and all colours,.

In the Armenian and Coptic rites the vestment is often elaborately embroidered; in the other rites the only ornament is a cross high in the middle of the back, save in the case of bishops of the Orthodox Church, whose sticharia are ornamented with two vertical red stripes (7rorayof, " rivers").

Girga is the seat of a Coptic bishop. It also possesses a Roman Catholic monastery, considered the most ancient in the country.

In the neighbourhood are remains of Coptic buildings, including a subterranean church (discovered 1895) in the desert half a mile beyond the limits of cultivation.

Coptic priests and bishops wear the ballin, a long strip of stuff ornamented From Braun's Lit with crosses &c., and wound turban-wise gische Gewandung.

His principal discovery has been the extensive remains of the Coptic monastery of St Jeremias, with remarkable sculptures and frescoes.

The architect is said to have been a Coptic Christian who deprecated the destruction of ancient buildings to obtain columns and blocks of stone, and who undertook to design a mosque which should be built entirely in brick, which when coated with stucco and appropriate decorative designs would rival its predecessors.

The bishops of the Coptic, Syrian and Nestorian Uniate Churches have adopted the Roman pastoral staff.

This third work contained in the Coptic MS. referred to under Gospel of Mary gives cosmological disclosures and is presumably of Valentinian origin.

This gospel is found in a Coptic MS. of the 5th century.