# Papyrus M 636

Source: https://coptic-lore-forge.lovable.app/wiki/papyrus-m-636 — Coptic Orthodox Wiki (updated 2026-10-02)

Papyrus M 636 is a Coptic liturgical manuscript in the Pierpont Morgan collection, dated to the ninth or eighth–ninth century, and a principal witness to dialect H, or Hermopolitan.[^1][^4]

## Date and collection

Papyrus M 636 belongs to the Pierpont Morgan collection in New York and is dated to the ninth century, or more broadly to the eighth–ninth century.[^1]

## Contents

The manuscript contains mainly *hermeneiai*: liturgical texts assembled from biblical quotations, chiefly from the Psalms, grouped around a word considered central to the composition.[^1][^2]

## Script and language

M 636 is written in three different hands. One, designated **hand a**, occurs in several sections and uses a distinctive spelling system with considerable regularity. The identification of a corresponding dialect or subdialect depends on whether this spelling system adequately reflects a distinct phonological system.[^3]

The language represented by hand a is called **dialect H**, also known as **Hermopolitan** or **Ashmuninic**. The orthography of these sections is the principal basis for descriptions of H, while other late texts have language that resembles it less consistently.[^4]

## Linguistic classification

Scholarly classifications have varied. Earlier treatments regarded the language as a peripheral form of Fayyumic or as intermediate between Fayyumic and Sahidic. In Crum’s 1939 classification, twenty-three of the thirty-four cited words from hand a were assigned to F, six to Sf, and five to S.[^5]

H instead falls largely outside the Fayyumic dialectal group and is described both as a mesodialect, possibly between V and S, and as a metadialect representing a strongly evolved form of Coptic. M 636 was unpublished at the time of writing.[^6]

## Grammatical features

The discussion of hand a notes systematic omission of the preposition *e-* and of prepositions or particles *n-*. It associates these omissions with changes in grammatical distinctions, including the loss of a distinction between a verb’s absolute and prenominal infinitive forms.[^7]

## Sources
[^1]: The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8, Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 146)
[^2]: The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8, Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 146)
[^3]: The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8, Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 147)
[^4]: The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8, Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 147)
[^5]: The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8, Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 147)
[^6]: The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8, Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 270)
[^7]: The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8, Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 153)