Such are the texts written in Coptic in Late Antiquity, but less is known about how people learned to write them. Heading into Late Antiquity, Greek education still flourished throughout Egypt in a variety of settings and fashions (Cribiore 2001; see the many school exercises in Harrauer and Sijpesteijn 1985; Cribiore 1996).
It is more difficult to locate and contextualize the beginnings of learning Coptic. Before the advent of Coptic, education in the Egyptian scripts was largely restricted to the Egyptian temples, and the use of them to priests (Tait 1992; Biedenkopf-Ziehner 1999: 24; Cribiore 2001: 22-3). Although the use of Demotic for documentary purposes had dramatically declined in the Roman period (Depauw 1997: 123-52), temple scriptoria continued to copy Egyptian literature, some into the third century (e. g., at Tebtunis: see Frandsen 1991; Frandsen and Ryholt 2000; Tait 1977; and near Thebes: Dieleman 2005: 40-4). Within the temple compound at Narmouthis, students in the second century practiced writing Greek, Egyptian, and, in some few cases, Egyptian in Greek characters (Gallo 1997; Bresciani et al. 1983; see also in general Zauzich 1983 ; Depauw 1997: 85-121; Frankfurter 1998b: 238-48; Hoffmann 2000).
Christian education in Coptic shows itself in the literary sources first in a monastic setting. The Pachomian Rules detail a rigid educational regime for postulants wishing to enter the monastery (Rule 140; see also Rule49). The monastic evidence is usually given prominence in treatments of Coptic education, and it is tempting to seek for continuity between the temple and monastic educational systems, to parallel the continuity visible in the social roles of priests and monks (see esp. Frankfurter 1998b). Yet, while it is clear that Pachomius himself valued the learning of the Scriptures, the recitations he is pictured engaging in and encouraging (Vit. Pachomii, Bo 15; G1 24) are a long way from the organized schooling envisaged in the Rules (redacted later) (Rousseau 1999: 48-53, 70). Furthermore, the earliest Coptic school texts predate the encouragement of Coptic learning associated with the formation of the koinobia. We need to identify a milieu or a set of practices that stood between those two major promoters of written Egyptian.
This must be sought in the Coptic educational papyri themselves. These indicate in many cases an integration of Coptic into the standard Greco-Roman educational system, similar to the inclusion of Christian texts in Greek (Bucking 1997). A late third-century codex made of wooden tablets, probably from the Great Oasis, bears the texts routinely found in a Greek education setting: a paraphrase of the Iliad, fractions, conjugations, and declensions (Parsons 1970). Among these, the hand that wrote most of the codex also practiced writing a psalm in Coptic (Crum 1934). The hand is perhaps that of a confident student rather than a teacher, and bears the signs of having been copied from dictation. An educational papyrus codex from the Fayum that includes syllables and biblical passages executed entirely in Coptic was dated by its editor to the fourth century (Husselman 1947, with Kahle’s concurrence on the date at 1954, i: 251; but see the caution at Hasitzka 1990: no. 207). Also from the Fayum comes a miniature bilingual exercise book from the fourth or fifth century consisting predominantly of the Psalms (Sanz 1946: no. 24: Henner et al. 1999: no. 42; in general, Cribiore 1999: 282).
Despite the best efforts of commentators (see especially the assumptions of Husselman 1947: 129, 133), none of these betrays an obvious monastic context in its form or provenance, especially the wooden codex. (The bilingual and possibly educational ostracon, purchased near the Theban monastic site of Deir el-Bahri, may be later than the date in the fourth century reported by Kortenbeutel and Bohlig 1935; see Hasitzka 1990: no. 196). Rather than being realized in an organized monastic program, the desire (or the need) to learn Coptic in the first century of its development (c. AD 250-350) seems to have generated diverse responses, dependent on circumstance. Some Christian teachers and students appended Coptic writing practice to their existing curricula; other groups may have integrated it into their religious instruction: in the middle of the fourth century a traveling Manichaean instructed his son by letter to ‘‘write a daily example, for I need you to write books here’’ (Gardner et al. 1999: no. 19).
The exact context of the last example is not known, but is likely to have been community based. If that is the case, to what extent did Christians combine their religious and scribal education in this way? It is tempting to cite the Alexandrian catechetical school alongside early Christian educational papyri, but the great theological establishment and its regional derivatives served different aims, and should not be given explanatory power here: reading - or at least learning - the Scriptures was of course the foundation of catechetical instruction; but it did not, at least in this early period, function as a substitute for a scribal education, nor was it intended to. The Pachomian practice of teaching reading as part of an initiation process (it could have been, for some novices, their first introduction to Christianity itself: Rousseau 1999: 71) may have helped to forge precisely a catechetical education that included the acquisition of more general skills; but it seems unwise to project that development back to the beginning of Late Antiquity.
Beyond this, a synthetic question suggests itself: to what degree did native Greek speakers learn Coptic? In most areas of society there would have been little impulse to do so: until the end of Byzantine rule, full articulation of family, daily, professional, and political life was possible in Greek (indeed, in the latter case, only in Greek). Yet, to pass into certain worlds one had to speak Egyptian. To visit a desert community and speak to a famous monk one could always engage an interpreter (note their ubiquity in monastic literature; e. g., Vit. Antonii, 72. 3, 74. 2, 77. 1; Palladius, HL 35. 5). But to live with and learn from such a monk, spoken Egyptian would have been a distinct advantage; the Pachomian texts in particular (e. g., Vit. Pachomii, G1 94-5; Bo 89,91), with others such as the Life of Hilaria (Drescher 1947: 75), clearly delineate the problem and the solutions, which ranged from the pilgrim or novice learning to speak Egyptian (the usual result) to the constant employment of interpreters recorded in the Letter of Ammon (e. g., Ep. Amm. 4, 5, 6, 22, 28, 29). Such procedures did not always depend, however, on learning to read and write Coptic. Nor do the educational papyri provide much support: while some of the educational material discussed above points in the direction of Greek speakers learning Coptic (note the apparent trouble with Demotic letters faced by the scribe of Crum 1934 - Lefort 1935; Cribiore 1999: 282 - and the deliberate use made of them by the scribe of Gardner et al. 1999: no. 10), the general impression is that the educational texts are largely those of Egyptian speakers learning Greek. During Late Antiquity at least, no rival Coptic education system developed, and high-level education (e. g., advanced exercises and grammar) continued to be possible only in Greek (Cribiore 1999). A group of people who could read and write only Coptic is not readily visible before the later Byzantine or Arab periods.
World History
