The first examples of what is traditionally recognized as Coptic appear in Christian contexts in the middle of the third century ad. A range of earlier, non-Christian experiments, however, helps us to place those Christian examples in a broader context (Quaegebeur 1982; Satzinger 1984; Pestman 1977: no. 11). Most important are examples of Egyptian transcribed into Greek characters dating from the first to the fourth centuries (principal texts listed in Satzinger 1991; see Dieleman 2005: 69-80 and, on issues of dependence, Kahle 1954, i: 252-6). Primarily intended to assist ritual pronunciation, these transcriptions are embedded, both as glosses and as more substantial sections, within a wider bilingual set of texts, popularly (although inaccurately) known as the ‘‘magical papyri’’ (and usually, until recently, as the ‘‘Greek magical papyri’’: see Dieleman 2005: 11-23). These manuals of ritual power are the product of an authentic Egyptian priestly milieu. Yet, they are articulated in a ritual vocabulary that includes Hellenic and even pan-Mediterranean elements, a syncretism reflected also in their multiple languages and scripts (Dieleman 2005). The common term for these pre-Christian transcription systems, ‘‘Old Coptic’’ (Satzinger 1991), exemplifies the distance frequently placed between them and ‘‘Coptic proper.’’ While the distance is in many senses real, the evidence they supply cannot be excluded from our discussion without limiting the questions we can ask.
Early Christian literature in Coptic has been thoroughly discussed (e. g., Metzger 1977: 99-132; Orlandi 1986: 53-5; Wisse 1995; Smith 1998: 722-3), and it will suffice here to mention only the important points. The earliest texts (middle to late third century) are glosses and glossaries (Bell and Thompson 1925; Sanders and Schmidt 1927; Kenyon 1937), bearing witness to the tools by which Christianity was spreading through the chora: translation into, and preaching in, Egyptian. The earliest full translations of the late third and early fourth centuries include canonical and apocryphal material with an (as yet not fully explained) emphasis on Old Testament texts (Kasser 1960; Diebner and Kasser 1989; Goehring 1990). While the translation of the Bible gathers pace and is completed and linguistically standardized in Sahidic at least by the end of the fourth century, traditions evolving on the edge of and alongside Christianity were also quick to employ the script. Notable are the ‘‘Gnostic library’’ found near Nag Hammadi (Robinson 1988: 1-26; Smith 1998: 730-3) and the Manichaean texts from Narmouthis and Kellis (modern Medinet Madi and Ismant el-Kharab; see Gardner and Lieu 1996; 2004: 35-45).
Few contemporary papyri bear witness to original Coptic productions in this period, but Epiphanius ascribes Coptic writings to Hieracas, an extreme ascetic based near Leontopolis under Diocletian (Panarion 67. 1. 3; see Goehring 1999), and later manuscripts survive of the letters and other writings of Pachomius and his first successors (Lefort 1956; Quecke 1975; see Orlandi 1986: 60-3). The Coptic fragments of the letters of Antony may also reflect their original language (Rubenson 1995; but see Lucchesi 2002: 561). Later in the fourth century, the preeminent Coptic author, Shenoute, begins a literary career stretching from the ad 380 s to his death in ad 465 (for the date, see Emmel 2002: 96-8). Many of his letters, sermons, catecheses, and other treatises are extant, and all in Coptic. They were collected in his ‘‘White’’ monastery across the river from Panopolis (Akhmim), and transmitted in two parts, ‘‘Discourses’’ (logoi) and ‘‘Canons’’ (Emmel 2004; see Timbie 1986; Orlandi 1998: 133-5).
From the time of Shenoute onward, there stretches a tradition of textual production lasting nearly a millennium, until Coptic was superseded by Arabic. Apparently original compositions continue to appear in a limited range of genres; but they are as often as not spuriously attributed to earlier church luminaries (Orlandi 1991: 1456-8). They are complemented by a continuing and wide-ranging program of translation of patristic texts (Orlandi 1991: 1453-8; 1998: 135-7). Virtually no secular literature was ever produced in Coptic, and to a real extent no native literary culture ever developed outside a religious context. The millennia-old literary heritage of Egypt left its traces in Coptic texts (especially in ‘‘Gnostic,’’ Hermetic, apocalyptic, and above all ‘‘magical’’ traditions: see Behlmer 1996) but was never absorbed into Coptic in any substantial form (Barns 1978: 20-1). Coptic literature does transmit elements of Hellenic culture, but even texts such as the ‘‘sayings of the philosophers’’ preserved in a White monastery manuscript (Till 1934) are transmitted within a Christian framework.
Early Coptic documents (as opposed to the literary texts discussed above) have received less attention. From the fourth and fifth centuries, some 200 codices or fragments thereof preserve literary texts in Coptic (the list in Kahle 1954, i: 269-74 is out of date but still useful). While this is far smaller than the number of literary productions in Greek from the same period (closer to 2,000), it still bears witness to a widely diffused program of literary production in Coptic.
Similar claims cannot be made for the use of Coptic for documents in Late Antiquity. Against over 5,000 documents of all sorts on papyrus in Greek from ad 284-451, fewer than 180 Coptic documents can be dated to that period with any confidence (including about sixty unpublished but certainly fourth-century documents from Kellis, noted here for statistical purposes only). While a still nascent understanding of Coptic paleography in this early period inhibits our understanding (Kasser 1991c), texts found in fourth-century archaeological context and those in more easily datable bilingual archives permit a sketch of the use of Coptic for documentary purposes in the period.
The record begins with the piece least representative, a single sherd from Kellis (the ‘‘old Coptic ostracon’’) that bears greetings and the opening of a short and perhaps incomplete letter (Gardner et al. 1999; Kasser 2004). Its archaeological context anchors it in the mid to late third century, and its orthography shows that it clearly predates the previously known earliest Coptic documents from the fourth century.
These come from the second quarter of the fourth century, and are written to a monastic leader at the Melitian monastery of Hathor in the Heracleopolite nome, Paieous (Bell 1924: nos. 1920-2; Crum 1927). A generation later (c. ad 350-60), one of his successors, Nepheros, also received letters in Coptic (Kramer and Shelton 1987: nos. 15-16; on the monastery and the Melitians see Hauben 2002). We should probably also date to the middle of the century the Christian letters in the binding of Nag Hammadi Codex VII, in which a monk named Sansnos is a prominent figure (Barns et al. 1981: Copt. 4-8, 15-18; see also Wipszycka 2000; Goehring 2001). These letters may come from the Diospolite area in the Thebaid near where the codices were found; no such uncertainty attaches to the documents from Kellis, found at the modern site (Ismant el-Kharab in the Dakhleh Oasis), in controlled archaeological context. This and internal indications date them to c. ad 350-80 (Gardner et al. 1999); those so far published include not only letters (nos. 11-43, 49-52), but also household accounts (nos. 44-8). They are largely the textual remains of the village’s Manichaean community, and our understanding will be usefully augmented by those still to be published.
Toward the end of the fourth century come the letters sent to an Apa John, at least ten of which are in Coptic (Crum 1909: nos. 268-76, 396; for others see Van Minnen 1994; Zuckerman 1995 suggests that they are the papers of John of Lyco-polis). Then, stretching from the fourth into the fifth centuries, there are the records of the Roman administrative center at Kysis (Douch) in the Khargeh Oasis. Hundreds of the ostraca found on this site are in Greek; but a small number are in Coptic. Although these are largely unpublished (described only in Cuvigny and Wagner 1986-92; Wagner 1999-2001; see also Choat and Gardner 2003; Bagnall et al. 2004), it seems that some of them at least overlap the genres represented in the Greek texts (overwhelmingly instructions for delivery of food and other products); one (Cuvigny and Wagner 1986-92: ii. no. 183) was sent by an optio.
With the Apa John and Kysis texts, we are at the turn of the fifth century. There we find not only a low point in papyrus survival in general (Habermann 1998), but also no prominent bilingual archives to locate a Coptic component in time, as with the fourth century assemblages discussed above. Without this assistance, few Coptic papyri can or have been dated specifically to the fifth century. Yet, the paleography is still poorly understood, and it is likely that at least some early-looking texts associated by purchase with the archive of Apa John and others among the forty-odd texts dated by paleography alone (some listed at Richter 2002: 20) come from the fifth century.
World History
