Selected Bibliography on the Coptic Language
Compiled by Heike Behlmer, November 2004 |
This bibliography does not include research focussing exclusively on Coptic dialects. Some of the subtitles contains links. These links will lead to an explanation of the linguistic term (e.g. "Phonology"). To view the words written in Coptic please download the font SPAkhmim from the Society for Biblical Literature website |
Coptic Language in General
The 8th volume of the Coptic Encyclopedia is almost exclusively dedicated to Coptic language, with particular attention to Coptic dialects:
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Progress Reports
| At the international congresses for Coptic Studies held every four years starting in 1976, progress reports are given on the different areas of the field. Linguistics is traditionally one of these areas. |
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Dictionaries
Introductory remarks on dictionaries |
| Coptic dictionaries traditionally only contain the part of the lexicon of the Coptic language derived from Ancient Egyptian. This is due to the fact that they were first compiled in an age in which every educated person was expected to read the classical languages fluently. Little attention was then given to the fact that the words of the Coptic language derived from Greek may have a meaning which differs considerably from the meaning the same words have in the Greek of a, let's say, Plato or Aristotle. A noticeable part of the lexicon of Coptic (in some texts up to 20%) is made up of Greek words. Greek words are especially prominent among the religious terms used by Christians and adherents of faiths competing with Christianity (Gnosticism, Manichaeism) or among the terms used in the administrative, legal, and fiscal system of Egypt. The latter derives from the fact that Greek was used as an administrative language in Egypt from the conquest of the country by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE up to the early 8th century CE. In the Ptolemaic era, before the Roman conquest of Egypt in 31 BCE, it was partly used alongside Demotic (a cursive form of the hieroglyphs), which could be used (this was done mainly by Egyptians) for administrative documents. However, by the middle of the 1st century CE, Greek had become the only administrative language, since the new rulers, the Roman emperors, discouraged the use of Demotic. Coptic on the other hand, as a non-literary language (e.g. for letters), flowered first mainly in monastic circles. The end of the Roman (Byzantine) rule with the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641/2 opened up possibilities for the wider use of Coptic as an administrative language. So since for 600 years Greek was the language in which government and subjects communicated, it is no wonder that Coptic possesses so many so-called "loan" words from Greek. These words, unfortunately, because of the scholarly tradition in lexicography described above, are not contained in the "Coptic" dictionaries even though they should have been. For the purposes of this course you can use the glossary of Greek words provided in the textbook. More advanced students will learn to look them up in the Greek dictionaries listed below. Apart from the large dictionary by Liddell and Scott, for religious terms Bauer and Lampe may be fruitfully consulted, for administrative or military terms Sophocles is useful. |
Coptic |
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Greek |
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Grammars (Sahidic and Bohairic) and Chrestomathies
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History of the Egyptian Language
General |
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Studies on detail problems |
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Development of Coptic and disappearance of Demotic |
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Loan words in Coptic
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Phonology
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Morphology
Nominal |
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Verbal |
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Other categories |
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Syntax
General |
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Nominal Sentences |
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Verbal System |
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Semantics and Pragmatics
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Online Resources
Study Aids |
On the home page of Dr Lance Eccles at Macquarie University, several valuable study aids for Coptic are available in pdf-format:
http://laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au/~leccles/coptic.html
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Coptic Fonts |
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Other categories |
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Morphology
Nominal |
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Verbal |
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Other categories |
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