The earliest example of this demotic or enchorial or vulgar writing belongs to the age of Psammetichus (the latter part of the seventh century b.c.); while the latest example of which I have found a notice must be referred to some time between the years a.d. 165-169, as the titles (Armeniacus, Parthicus, &c.) given to the joint sovereigns M. Aurelius and L. Verus show[94]. During the whole of this period, comprising more than eight centuries, the sacred dialect and character are used concurrently with the demotic.
The term Coptic is applied to the Egyptian language as spoken and written by Christian people and in Christian times. It is derived from the earliest Arabic conquerors of Egypt, who speak of their native Christian subjects as Copts. No instance of this appellation is found in native Coptic writers, with one very late and doubtful exception (Zoega, Catal., p. 648). Whence they obtained this designation, has been a subject of much discussion. Several theories which have been broached to explain the word will be found in J. S. Assemani, Della Nazione dei Copti, &c., p. 172 (printed in Mai, Script. Vet. Coll., V. P. 2), and in Quatremère, Recherches Critiques et Historiques sur la Langue et la Littérature de l'Égypte, Paris, 1808, p. 30 sq. A very obvious and commonly adopted derivation is that which connects it with the town Coptos in Upper Egypt; but as this place was not at that time prominent or representative, and did not lie directly across the path of the Arab invaders, no sufficient reason appears why it should have been singled out as a designation of the whole country. In earlier ages, however, it seems [pg 094] to have been a much more important place, both strategically and commercially (see Brugsch, Die Geographie des alten Ägyptens, i. p. 200; Egypt under the Pharaohs, i. p. 212 sq., Eng. trans.). Even as late as the Roman epoch Strabo (xvii. p. 815) describes it as “a city with a mixed population of Egyptians and Arabians” (πόλιν κοινὲν Αἰγυπτίων τε καὶ Ἀράβων), and elsewhere (xvi. p. 781) he mentions it as a station of Egyptian traffic with Arabia and India. Possibly therefore this Arabic name for the Egyptians is a survival of those early times. On the whole, however, it seems more probable that the Arabic word is a modification of the Greek Αἰγύπτιος (Schwartze, Das alte Aegypten, i. p. 956). [And this derivation seems now to be generally accepted, the Greek word αἰγύπτιος being represented in Coptic by ⲄⲨⲠⲦⲒⲞⲤ, or ⲔⲨⲠⲦⲀⲒⲞⲤ, whence came Qibt (the common form) and our Coptic. (Stern, Koptische Grammatik, p. 1.)]
From this account it will appear that the Coptic, as a language, cannot differ materially from the demotic. As a matter of fact the two are found on examination to represent two successive stages of the same language—a result which history would lead us to anticipate. But while the language is essentially the same, the character of the writing is wholly different. The demotic character was derived ultimately from the hieroglyphic. Hence it represents the same medley of signs. Only a small number are truly alphabetic, i.e. denote each a single sound. Others represent syllables. Others again, and these a very large number, are not phonetic at all, but pictorial. Of these pictorial or ideographic signs again there are several kinds; some represent the thing itself directly; others recall it by a symbol; others again are determinative, i.e. exhibit the class or type, to which the object or action belongs. It is strange that this very confused, cumbrous, and uncertain mode of writing should have held its ground for so many centuries, while all the nations around employed strictly phonetic alphabets; but Egypt was proverbially a land of the past, and some sudden shock was necessary to break up a time-honoured usage like this and to effect a literary revolution. This moral earthquake came at length in Christianity. Coincidently with the evangelization of Egypt and the introduction of a Christian literature, we meet with a new and strictly phonetic alphabet. This new Egyptian or Coptic alphabet comprises thirty letters, [pg 095] of which twenty-four are adopted from the Greek alphabet, while the remaining six, of which five represent sounds peculiar to the Egyptian language and the sixth is an aspirate, are signs borrowed from the existing Egyptian writing. If there is no direct historical evidence that this alphabet was directly due to Christianity, yet the coincidence of time and historic probability generally point to this. The Christians indeed had a very powerful reason for changing the character, besides literary convenience. The demotic writing was interspersed with figures of the Egyptian deities, used as symbolic or alphabetical signs. It must have been a suggestion of propriety, if not a dictate of conscience, in translating and transcribing the Scriptures to exclude these profane and incongruous elements from the sacred text.
The date at which this important change was introduced into Egyptian writing has been a matter of much dispute. If it is correctly attributed to Christian influences, the new alphabet must have been coeval with the birth of a native Christian literature in Egypt. The earliest extant remains of such a literature, to which we can fix a date with any certainty, are the Epistles of St. Antony (who was born about the middle of the third century) to Athanasius and Theodore; but, as we shall see presently, one or both of the two principal Egyptian versions must have been already in common use at this time. Indeed, if the date assigned to a recently discovered writing be correct, the introduction of the new character was much earlier than this. On the back of a papyrus in the British Museum, containing the Funeral Oration of Hyperides, is a horoscope in Greek and Egyptian, the latter written in Greek characters, with the additional six letters almost, though not quite, identical with the forms in the ordinary Coptic alphabet. Mr. C. W. Goodwin, who describes this important document in Chabas, “Mélanges Égyptologiques,” 2me série, p. 294 sq., and in the “Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache,” vi. p. 18 sq., February, 1868, calculates (though he does not speak confidently) that it is the horoscope of a person born a.d. 154[95].
Any account of the Coptic dialects must start from the well-known passage in the Copto-Arabic grammar of Athanasius, bishop of Kos in the Thebaid, who flourished in the eleventh century. “The Coptic language,” he writes, “is divided into three dialects; that is to say, the Coptic dialect of Misr, which is the same as the Sahidic; the Bohairic[96], which gets its name from the province of Bohairah; and the Bashmuric in use in the region of Bashmur. At the present time only the Bohairic and Sahidic continue to be used. These different dialects are derived from one and the same language” (quoted in Quatremère, Sur la Langue &c., p. 20 sq.). For the present I will dismiss the Bashmuric, as it will require further investigation hereafter. The remaining two, the Bohairic and Sahidic, were the principal dialects of the language, being spoken in Lower and Upper Egypt respectively; and are largely represented in extant remains of biblical and ecclesiastical literature[97].
The Sahidic and Bohairic dialects are well defined and separate from each other. Among other distinctive features the Sahidic delights in the multiplication of vowels as compared with the Bohairic; thus it has ⲉⲗⲉⲟⲟⲗⲉ for ⲁⲗⲟⲗⲓ, ⲙⲏⲏⲱⲉ for ⲙⲏⲱ, ϩⲁⲗⲁⲁⲧⲉ for ϩⲁⲗⲁⲧⲓ, ϣⲉⲗⲉⲉⲧ for ϣⲉⲗⲉⲧ, &c. Again the Sahidic has smooth-breathings where the Bohairic has aspirates, e.g. ⲡⲏⲩⲉ for ⲫⲏⲩⲓ “heavens,” ⲧⲏⲩ for ⲑⲏⲟⲩ “wind”; and it substitutes the simple aspirate for the stronger guttural, e.g. ⲱⲛϩ for ⲱⲛⲭ “life,” ⲡⲁϩ for ⲫⲁϧ “rend.” Besides these more general distinctions, the two dialects have special peculiarities, not only in their grammatical forms, but even in their ordinary vocabulary; thus Sah. ⲃⲱⲕ for Boh. ⲓ “to go,” Sah. ϩⲉ for Boh. ⲣⲏϯ [pg 097] “manner,” Sah. ϩⲁϩ for Boh. ⲙⲏϣ “a multitude,” “many,” and so forth. Indeed the relations of the Sahidic and Bohairic dialects to each other may be fairly illustrated, as will have appeared from these facts, by the relation of the Ionic and Attic, though the differences in the Egyptian dialects are greater than in the Greek. Like the Attic, the Bohairic is the more literary and cultivated dialect of the two.
The demotic writing does not give the slightest indication that there were different dialects of the spoken language (see Brugsch, Grammaire Démotique, p. 10). In the Coptic, i.e. Christian, literature we learn this fact for the first time; and yet in the earliest age of this literature the dialects are found to be fully developed. Brugsch, however, has shown (De Natura &c., p. 10) that transcriptions of several Egyptian words into Greek in the age of the Ptolemies occur in two different forms, which correspond fairly to the two dialects; and indeed it would seem probable that the separation of the Bohairic and Sahidic should be ascribed to the more remote time, when these regions formed separate kingdoms. The older Egyptian writing, whether sacred or demotic, would obscure the distinction of dialects, partly from a conservative fondness for time-honoured modes of representation, but chiefly owing to the nature of the character itself. Thus this character makes no provision for the nicer distinction of the vowel-sounds, while the dialectic differences depend very largely on the divergent vocalization. Thus again it sometimes represents allied consonants, such as l and r, by the same sign; while one of the most striking peculiarities of dialect is the common substitution of l in the dialect of the Fayoum for r in the Sahidic and Bohairic, as e.g. ⲏⲗⲡ for ⲏⲣⲡ “wine,” ⲗⲁⲙⲡⲓ for ⲣⲟⲙⲡⲓ “year,” ⲗⲓⲙⲓ for ⲣⲓⲙⲓ “weeping,” and the like.
Of the time when the Scriptures were translated into the two principal dialects of Egypt no direct record is preserved. Judging, however, from the analogy of the Latin and Syriac and other early versions, and indeed from the exigencies of the case, we may safely infer that as soon as the Gospel began to spread among the native Egyptians who were unacquainted with Greek, the New Testament, or at all events some parts of it, would be translated without delay. Thus we should probably not be exaggerating, if we placed one or both of the principal [pg 098] Egyptian versions, the Bohairic and the Sahidic, or at least parts of them, before the close of the second century[98]. There are, so far as I am aware, no phenomena whether of text or of interpretation in either, which are inconsistent with this early date. Somewhat later than this we meet with notices which certainly presuppose the common use of a native version or versions of the Scriptures. Quatremère (Sur la Langue &c., p. 9 sq.) and Schwartze (Das alte Aegypten, p. 956 sq.) have collected a number of such notices, from which we may gather that it was the exception and not the rule, when a native Egyptian bishop or monk in the early centuries could speak the Greek language besides his own. Thus for instance St. Antony, who was born about the year 250, could only speak his native tongue, and in conversing with Greeks was obliged to use an interpreter (Athan., Vit. Ant. 74; Hieron., Vit. Hilar. 30; Pallad., Hist. Laus. 26). His own letters, of which fragments are extant, were written in Egyptian. Yet he was a son of Christian parents, and as a boy listened constantly to the reading of the Scriptures (Athan., l. c., § 1). When only eighteen or twenty years old, we are told, he was powerfully influenced by hearing the Gospel read in church (§§ 2, 3); and throughout his life he was a diligent reader and expositor of the Scriptures. Indeed it is quite plain from repeated notices, that the Scriptures in the Egyptian tongue were widely circulated and easily accessible at this time (see esp. § 16 ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς [i.e. τοῖς μοναχοῖς] τῇ Αἰγυπτιακῇ φωνῇ ταῦτα; τὰς μὲν γραφὰς ἱκανὰς εἶναι πρὸς διδασκαλίαν κ.τ.λ.). Again his contemporary Theodore, a famous abbot to whom one of his letters is addressed, was equally ignorant of any language but his own, and had to use an interpreter in speaking with strangers and Alexandrians (Sahid. MS. clxxvii in Zoega, Catal., p. 371). The notices of Theodore's master Pachomius, the founder of Egyptian monasteries, point in the same direction. This famous person, who was converted as a young man in the early years of the fourth century, was till late in life unacquainted with any language but his own. Receiving a visit from an [pg 099] Alexandrian, another Theodore, he assigned to him as his companion and interpreter a monk who could speak Greek. After some time he himself applied himself to the study of this language that he might be able to converse with his new friend (Zoega, p. 77 sq., and references in Quatremère, Sur la Langue &c, p. 12). Pachomius drew up rules for the guidance of his monastery in the Egyptian language. These rules, which are extant in Greek and Latin translations (Migne, Patrol. Graec., xl. p. 947; Hieron., Op., ii. p. 53 sq.), demand a very diligent study of the Scriptures from the brethren, even from novices before admission into the order. Again and again directions are given relating to the use of manuscripts. These notices indeed refer chiefly to the Thebaid, which was the great seat of the Egyptian monasteries; but the first part of St. Antony's life was spent in the monasteries of Alexandria, and it was only later that he retired to the Thebaid (Athan., Vit. Ant. 49). Though probably more common in Lower than in Upper Egypt, the knowledge of Greek was even there an accomplishment denied to a large number of native Christians. Thus for instance, when Palladius visited John of Lycopolis, an abbot of the Nitrian desert, he found his knowledge of Greek so slight that he could only converse through an interpreter (Hist. Laus. 43). These, it will be remembered, are the most prominent names among the Egyptian Christians; and from such examples it must be plain that the ordinary monk would be wholly dependent on a native version for his knowledge of the Scriptures. Yet the monks swarmed both in Upper and Lower Egypt at this time. Palladius reckons as many as 7,000 brethren under Pachomius in the Tabennitic monastery (Hist. Laus. 38; comp. Hieron., Praef. in Reg. Pach. 2, ii. p. 54), while Jerome states that close upon 50,000 would assemble together at the chief monastery of the order to celebrate the anniversary of the Lord's Passion (ib. § 7). After all allowance made for exaggeration, the numbers must have been very great. Even at a much later date the heads of the Egyptian Church were often wholly dependent on their native tongue. At the Robber Synod of Ephesus (a.d. 449) Calosirius, bishop of Arsinoe, spoke and signed through his deacon, who acted as interpreter (Labb., Conc. iv. p. 1119, 1179, 1188, ed. Colet.). And again two years later, when Dioscorus of Alexandria started for the Council of Chalcedon, he was [pg 100] accompanied by one Macarius, bishop of Tkou, a man of some note in his day, who could not be made to understand a word of Greek (Memph. MS. liv, in Zoega, Catal., p. 99).
[The above was the most complete account of the dialects of the Coptic language and of the early history of the Coptic versions at the time when it was written; but in the last ten years immense additions have been made to our knowledge—additions which have rather complicated than solved the problem. These have been mainly due to the process of new discovery and to the labour of many scholars. A large number of previously unedited Coptic MSS. have been published; many new MSS. have been discovered, and the grammar of the language has been studied with great minuteness. The credit of the discovery and editing of new MSS. must be largely given to the energy and industry of the French school at Cairo, and especially to a former member of it, M. Amélineau, who has published a very large number of texts; the advances in our knowledge of the grammar are due to the labours of the German school of Egyptologists, notably Stern, Erman, and Steindorff. More important in some ways has been the discovery of an immense number of documents of a completely new class, written on papyrus, partly in and near the Fayoum, but also throughout the whole of Upper Egypt. These documents present us with the language in an earlier stage than we had previously known, and in a class of writings such as letters, contracts, and other legal documents, which conform to the spoken language of different parts of Egypt[99].
It is on the subject of the Egyptian dialects that our views have been most modified. We have seen that three dialects in all are mentioned by Athanasius of Cos: the Bohairic, the Sahidic, and a third, the Bashmuric. When therefore fragments of a third version of the Scriptures were discovered, the name Bashmuric was at once assigned to them. The early history of the discussions on this dialect were admirably summed up by Bishop Lightfoot. (3rd edition, pp. 401-403.)]