When Coptic literature declined, it did not vanish entirely. Its legacy survived in at least three ways. First, Christian-Egyptian culture, which Coptic literature served to express, endured. Today, the Coptic or Christian-Egyptian Church constitutes the largest Christian minority in that part of the globe where Islam is prevalent, an area extending from Morocco to Indonesia. When the Coptic language died out not too long after 1000, the term ‘‘Coptic’’ became available to serve as a synonym of ‘‘Christian-Egyptian’’ without reference to the language. The second part of the legacy is that the appreciation of Egyptian Christians for their literary heritage in Coptic persisted. Coptic literature was still read and understood to a degree, mainly by priests and monks, but no new original works were composed. The third legacy is the fact that Coptic literature survived in the linguistic medium of Arabic. This body of writing is known as Coptic-Arabic literature. Coptic-Arabic literature is a subject of study in its own right involving a wealth of sources. It is part of Christian-Arabic studies, which examines the literatures of the Arabic-speaking Christian communities surviving as minorities wherever Islam came to dominate. The cultural break between pagan and Christian Egypt makes treating Coptic literature in this Companion to Ancient Egypt to a degree artificial (as to how Coptic Christians viewed pagan Egypt, see recently Westerfeld 2003). Then again, the linguistic continuity of Egyptian and Coptic does much to justify its inclusion, but the second rift that occurred when Coptic was replaced by Arabic after 1000 leaves hardly any continuity with pagan
Egypt. Suffice it to note briefly that the heritage of Coptic literature survives in three ways in Coptic-Arabic literature, two direct, one indirect.
The two direct links between Coptic literature and Coptic-Arabic literature are translations of Coptic literature into Arabic and grammars and dictionaries of Coptic in Arabic. Around 1000, perhaps a little earlier, the decline of the Coptic language led to a large-scale effort to translate Coptic works into Arabic in order to save them from extinction and keep them generally accessible. This enterprise seems to have come to an end by the thirteenth century. Naturally, a selection occurred as some works were deemed suitable for preservation but others not. The most apparent manifestation of this translation program is the many bilingual manuscripts, all church-books, in which a Coptic text in the Bohairic dialect in the left-hand column faces its Arabic translation in the right-hand column.
Translation presupposes an adequate knowledge of Coptic. When linguistic competence in Coptic strongly declined, and hardly anyone still mastered the language, the need was for grammars and word-lists from which Arabic speakers - mainly clerics presiding over church services - could learn Coptic. Grammars were called ‘‘prefaces,’’ and word-lists were called ‘‘ladders.’’ Several grammatical works on Coptic in Arabic dating to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries have survived (Mallon 1906-7).
An indirect link between Coptic-Arabic and Coptic literature consists of original Christian literature from Egypt composed in Arabic. This literary production in Arabic naturally has much in common with Coptic literature in terms of genres and subject matter. Original Coptic literature written in Arabic experienced a Golden Age in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. A steep and permanent decline in literary productivity followed.
World History
