THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN & COPTIC LANGUAGES
-The Coptic Language-
Script, Dialects, and Literature
The importance of Coptic philologically is due to its being the only form
of Egyptian in which the vowels are regularly written . . . The
vocabulary is very different from that of the older period and
includes many Greek loan-words . . .
The word order is more Greek than Egyptian . . . at all events it is extensively
influenced by Greek biblical literature. The first entative efforts to transcribe
the old Egyptian language into Greek letters belong to the second century A.D.,
and are of a pagan character (horoscopes, magical texts, and the like).22
Attempts toward Proto-Coptic:
It is difficult to accept that the Egyptian language
“is basically derived from Coptic, assuming that Coptic
is the origin.”23 More usually, Coptic is considered
a continuation of the ancient Egyptian language but written
in with the Greek and Demotic alphabets in the third
century A.D. There were some attempts to write the ancient
Egyptian language using the Greek Alphabet before this
time.
One of the oldest attempts to write verbal Egyptian
(Proto-Coptic) with Greek script is the Heidelberg
Papyrus no. 414 which goes back to the middle of the
third century B.C. It contains a list of Coptic terms
written with Greek script and a Greek-Coptic glossary,
which is written by a Greek . . .. Another text, however,
is a collection of Inscriptions at Abidos (Abydos) (the
western side of Balyana), which is dated to the second
century.24
Old Coptic:
Father Shenouda continues his study concerning the development
of the pronunciation system of the ancient Egyptian vocabulary,
noting that “during the Roman period . . . an increasing
number of Greek characters mixed with words derived from
Demotic, most particularly in the cases where the accurate
pronunciation of certain Egyptian terms is mostly needed.”25
As an example, Father Shenouda writes about the Munich Papyrus, the Egyptian
Pagan Papyri dated from the second Century A.D., the London and Leiden Magical
Papyrus dated in the third century A. D., and other magical papyri dated in the
first three centuries A.D. Why are all these papyri written in Greek scripts
with Demotic characters? Father Shenouda answers.
Writing in Greek script with
Demotic characters is a safeguard in these magical
papyri against mispronunciation of certain terms
related to magic and the devils . . .. It becomes evident then
that the above papyri which are known as Old Coptic
and to which we refer in the Coptic dictionaries
with this sign O evolved out of necessity among pagan groups
before the appearance of Christianity in Egypt.26