Coptic Christians are the largest ethnoreligious minority in Egypt, nearly 10 percent of the country’s population of 112 million. They are distinct from Arabs in origin, widely recognized as the descendants of Egypt’s ancient Pharaonic people. The country’s oldest Christian community, the Copts are tied to the arrival of Saint Mark in 62 c.e. Over time, the Coptic Church became the spiritual hub for Christians in Egypt, serving as a vital link between the faith and the region’s indigenous culture.
The Coptic language, a direct descendant of ancient Egyptian, evolved from the language of the pharaohs and was written using the Greek alphabet with additional characters from Demotic Egyptian. The language is perhaps most famous for its role in deciphering the Rosetta Stone, the trilingual artifact that, inscribed with the same text in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Greek and Demotic scripts, allowed scholars to unlock the meaning of ancient Egyptian writing. The Coptic language served as a key to interpreting the hieroglyphs, allowing modern historians to access Egypt’s ancient past.
Read Full Article »