The Coptic script is the script used for writing the Coptic language, the most recent development of Egyptian. The repertoire of glyphs is based and derived on the uncial Greek alphabet, augmented by letters borrowed from the Egyptian Demotic. It was the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian language. There are several Coptic alphabets, as the script varies greatly among the various dialects and eras of the Coptic language.
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👉 Coptic alphabet in the context of Decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs
The writing systems used in ancient Egypt were deciphered in the early nineteenth century through the work of several European scholars, especially Jean-François Champollion and Thomas Young. Ancient Egyptian forms of writing, which included the hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic scripts, ceased to be understood in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, as the Coptic alphabet was increasingly used in their place. Later generations' knowledge of the older scripts was based on the work of Greek and Roman authors whose understanding was faulty. It was thus widely believed that Egyptian scripts were exclusively ideographic, representing ideas rather than sounds. Some attempts at decipherment by Islamic and European scholars in the Middle Ages and early modern times acknowledged the script might have a phonetic component, but perception of hieroglyphs as purely ideographic hampered efforts to understand them as late as the eighteenth century.
The Rosetta Stone, discovered in 1799 by members of Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt, bore a parallel text in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek. It was hoped that the Egyptian text could be deciphered through its Greek translation, especially in combination with the evidence from the Coptic language, the last stage of the Egyptian language. Doing so proved difficult, despite halting progress made by Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy and Johan David Åkerblad. Thomas Young, building on their work, observed that demotic characters were derived from hieroglyphs and identified several of the phonetic signs in demotic. He also identified the meaning of many hieroglyphs, including phonetic glyphs in a cartouche containing the name of an Egyptian king of foreign origin, Ptolemy V. He was convinced, however, that phonetic hieroglyphs were used only in writing non-Egyptian words. In the early 1820s Champollion compared Ptolemy's cartouche with others and realised the hieroglyphic script was a mixture of phonetic and ideographic elements. His claims were initially met with scepticism and with accusations that he had taken ideas from Young without giving credit, but they gradually gained acceptance. Champollion went on to roughly identify the meanings of most phonetic hieroglyphs and establish much of the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Egyptian. Young, meanwhile, largely deciphered demotic using the Rosetta Stone in combination with other Greek and demotic parallel texts.
In this Dossier
- ⭐ Core Definition: Coptic alphabet
- 👉 Coptic alphabet in the context of Decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs
- Coptic alphabet in the context of Coptic language
- Coptic alphabet in the context of Pi (letter)
- Coptic alphabet in the context of Johan David Åkerblad
- Coptic alphabet in the context of Horwennefer
- Coptic alphabet in the context of Old Nubian language
- Coptic alphabet in the context of Coptic cross
Coptic alphabet in the context of Coptic language
Coptic (Bohairic Coptic: ϯⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ, romanized: Timetremənkʰēmi) is a dormant Afroasiatic language. It is a group of closely related Egyptian dialects, representing the most recent developments of the Egyptian language, and historically spoken by the Copts, starting from the third century AD in Roman Egypt. Coptic was supplanted by Arabic as the primary spoken language of Egypt following the Arab conquest of Egypt and was slowly replaced over the centuries.
Coptic has no modern-day native speakers, and no fluent speakers apart from a number of priests, although it remains in daily use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church and of the Coptic Catholic Church. It is written with the Coptic alphabet, a modified form of the Greek alphabet with seven additional letters borrowed from the Demotic Egyptian script.
Coptic alphabet in the context of Pi (letter)
Pi (/ˈpaɪ/ ; Ancient Greek /piː/ or /peî/, uppercase Π, lowercase π, cursive ϖ; Greek: πι) is the sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiceless bilabial plosive IPA: [p]. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 80. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Pe (
). Letters that arose from pi include Latin P, Cyrillic Pe (П, п), Coptic pi (Ⲡ, ⲡ), and Gothic pairthra (𐍀).
Coptic alphabet in the context of Johan David Åkerblad
Johan David Åkerblad (6 May 1763, Stockholm – 7 February 1819, Rome) was a Swedish diplomat and orientalist.
Coptic alphabet in the context of Horwennefer
Horwennefer (Ancient Egyptian: ḥr-wnn-nfr "Horus-Onnophris"; Ancient Greek: Άροννώφρις Haronnṓphris) was an Egyptian who led Upper Egypt in secession from the rule of Ptolemy IV Philopator in 205 BC. No monuments are attested to this king but along with his successor, Ankhwennefer (also known as Chaonnophris or Ankhmakis), he held a large part of Egypt until 186 BC. Contemporary accounts suggest that Horwennefer was a Nubian. A graffito dating to about 201 BC on a wall of the mortuary Temple of Seti I at Abydos, in which his name is written Ὑργοναφορ (Hyrgonaphor), is an attestation to the extent of his influence and the ideology of his reign. He appears to have died before 197 BC.
The Abydene graffito, one of the few documents remaining from his reign, is written in Egyptian using Greek letters, the oldest testimony of a development which would end in the Coptic script replacing the native Egyptian demotic.
Coptic alphabet in the context of Old Nubian language
Old Nubian (also called Middle Nubian or Old Nobiin) is an extinct Nubian language, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century AD. It is ancestral to modern-day Nobiin and closely related to Dongolawi and Kenzi. It was used throughout the kingdom of Makuria, including the eparchy of Nobatia. The language is preserved in more than a hundred pages of documents and inscriptions, both of a religious nature (homilies, prayers, hagiographies, psalms, lectionaries), and related to the state and private life (legal documents, letters), written using adaptation of the Coptic alphabet.
Coptic alphabet in the context of Coptic cross
The Coptic cross is any of a number of Christian cross variants associated in some way with Coptic Christians.