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Coptic Language

Coptic Dialects

Coptic dialects are related linguistic varieties distinguished by pronunciation, spelling, grammar, and vocabulary; Sahidic and Bohairic also served as languages of communication beyond individual localities.[^1][^2]

Also known as: Dialects of Coptic · Coptic dialectology

Published 10/1/2026Updated 4 revisionsPage history

In brief

Coptic dialects are the regional and literary varieties of the final stage of the Egyptian language. The principal groups are Akhmimic, Lycopolitan, Sahidic, Mesokemic, Fayyumic, and Bohairic. Their differences are reconstructed chiefly from manuscripts, while Sahidic and Bohairic also functioned as wider languages of communication and church use.

Overview

Coptic dialects represent related varieties of Coptic with differences in pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary, morphology, and syntax.1 Their literary forms were not simply transcriptions of local speech: they reflect processes of adjustment and standardization, including those associated with scribal centers.1

Egypt’s geography favored linguistic differentiation between the Nile Delta and the valley upstream, with further subdivisions into regional and local varieties.2 Sahidic served as a supralocal language throughout the Nile Valley above the Delta; Bohairic very probably fulfilled a comparable role in the Delta.2

Coptic is the final stage of the Egyptian language, whose development can be studied across more than four thousand years.47 The dialects form a linguistic continuum: had only Bohairic and Akhmimic survived as its two extremes, scholars might have classified them as distinct but closely related languages rather than dialects.48

Classification and Principal Groups

The identification of dialects and subdialects expanded with manuscript discoveries, especially during the latter half of the twentieth century.3 Classification rests chiefly on phonology reconstructed from systematic differences in spelling, although some identifications remain disputed.3

One classification recognizes six groups:45

  • Akhmimic (A): the principal dialect of the Akhmimic group.4 It became a written medium by the fourth century, flourished in the fourth and fifth centuries, and began to be displaced by Sahidic in the fifth century, although later nonliterary traces suggest its continued spoken use.16
  • Lycopolitan (L): also called Lyco-Diospolitan or Subakhmimic; the group includes varieties designated L4, L5, and L6, although its unity as a single dialect has been questioned.46 L4 is associated with Manichaean texts, L5 with the London Gospel of John and related fragments, and L6 with texts from Nag Hammadi codices I, X, and XI and the Heidelberg Acts of Paul.17 Kasser proposed the name Lycopolitan in publications beginning in 1972 to avoid the implication that Subakhmimic was merely a subdivision of Akhmimic; numerical indices for its varieties gained general agreement among Coptologists in 1986.18 No textual witnesses of Lycopolitan after the fifth century are known, suggesting that it had ceased to function as a literary language by then.19
  • Sahidic (S): the principal language of the Sahidic group, which also includes dialect P, a variety resembling reconstructed proto-Sahidic.4 Dialect P is represented by the Proverbs manuscript Papyrus Bodmer VI, published by Rodolphe Kasser in 1960.20
  • Mesokemic (M): also called Middle Egyptian or Oxyrhynchite; its homeland may have been the region of Oxyrhynchus, and it developed into a highly standardized written dialect, probably flourishing chiefly in the fourth and fifth centuries.7
  • Fayyumic (F): associated with considerable geographical confidence with the Fayyum oasis and represented by several subdialects.8
  • Bohairic (B): the principal language of the Bohairic group, whose B5 variety is identified as classical Bohairic.5 Earlier scholarship called it Memphitic, the northern dialect, or the dialect of Lower Egypt; Stern first used the designation Bohairic in 1880.21

Not every variety fits neatly into these groups: dialect H is described as difficult to classify, while W combines Fayyumic orthography with Mesokemic morphosyntax.95 An alternative arrangement into three major dialect regions also exists, and both systems should be considered.10

In the six-group system, each group has a well-attested representative possessing the largest number of its characteristic phonological and, where possible, morphosyntactical features; membership depends on shared consonantal and vocalic correspondences, allowing some differences attributable to normal phonological evolution.22 The alternative three-region scheme pairs Akhmimic with Lycopolitan in the southern region, Mesokemic with Fayyumic in the middle region, and Bohairic with Sahidic in a grouping spanning the Delta and the Nile Valley.23

The three-region approach gives particular weight to stressed vowels rather than to consonantal differences or unstressed endings, which can reflect different degrees of phonological change.49 Within this interpretation, Lycopolitan is envisaged as a partly leveled regional medium of communication in the south, while V tends toward a comparable role across the Fayyum and neighboring Middle Egyptian territory.50 Sahidic and Bohairic should not be compared directly with local dialects without accounting for the influence and leveling associated with their supralocal functions.51

Dialect H, also called Hermopolitan or Ashmunic, is identified as the only metadialectal Coptic idiom sufficiently known for studying metadialectalism, which is characterized chiefly by reductions in phonological and morphosyntactical distinctions.24 In Coptological terminology, an “immigrant dialect” is an idiom spoken outside its region of origin.25

The Fayyumic subdivisions include F4, classical F5, and the more eccentric F7, F8, and F9, all characterized by Fayyumic lambdacism; F7 is also somewhat archaic and is tentatively interpreted as a marginal northern protodialect.52 V, also designated South Fayyumic, lacks lambdacism and is classified as a mesodialect between dominant Fayyumic and W or, more distantly, Mesokemic.53 W is likewise without lambdacism and is also called crypto-Mesokemic, allowing an alternative placement within the Mesokemic group.54

The proto-Lycopolitan group includes i7, described as a subdialect of i formed through partial neutralization and evolution toward Lycopolitan.55 Proposed Mesokemic subdivisions distinguish M4, represented by P. Mil. Copti 1 and a Psalms codex, from M5, represented by Codex Scheide and Codex Glazier.56 Within the Bohairic group, B4 is possibly marginal and southern, B7 is eccentric and partly sporadic, and B74 is related to B4 and perhaps located still farther south.57 K is classified as a mesodialect combining strongly dominant Bohairic with V or Sahidic, while K7 is an eccentric subdivision still farther removed from V.58 G is also interpreted as a mesodialect, with dominant Bohairic, a possible Sahidic component, and a further uncertain component that may be partly Hellenic.59 Besides its metadialectal character, H is assigned an intermediate position between Sahidic and Mesokemic, or more particularly between Sahidic and V.60

Idiolectal influence can be indicated by a principal capital siglum and a secondary lowercase superscript: for example, S with superscript a denotes Sahidic influenced phonetically, and to some extent irregularly phonologically, by Akhmimic.61

Phonology, Writing, and Grammar

Unlike pharaonic writing, Coptic writing records vowels as well as consonants, making differences in vocalization directly accessible to comparison.26 Akhmimic and Bohairic retain a somewhat richer phonemic inventory than several other dialects, including /x/, which classical Sahidic and Lycopolitan lost.27 Archaic texts in proto-Lycopolitan, or dialect I, and dialect P preserve both /x/ and /ç/ into the third and fourth centuries, although these phonemes are absent from classical Lycopolitan and Sahidic.28 Such varieties are termed “protodialects,” but their logical anteriority does not necessarily mean that they were the direct ancestors of the corresponding classical dialects.29

At least fourteen Coptic alphabets or alphabetic varieties can be distinguished, and their boundaries do not always coincide with phonological dialect boundaries.30 In Greek-derived vocabulary, dialect H replaces /g/ with /k/ and /d/ with /t/.31 More generally, most later Greek-derived words preserve their Greek spelling exactly or nearly so across the dialects, with H as an exception.32

Comparative morphology distinguishes three kinds of variation: different phonological forms of a shared Coptic morpheme, different treatment of allomorphic rules, and morphosyntactic differences, including distinctive grammatical forms.33

Unstressed final vowels offer a particularly clear comparison: L6 preserves both -e and -i, as do proto-Lycopolitan and the varieties V and F, whereas F7 has -i and -a, P has -e and -a, and Bohairic contrasts -i with the absence of a final vowel.62 The open final -a in P and F7 is especially unusual in Coptic and is treated as an archaic feature.63

Coptic alphabets conventionally place letters of Greek origin first and graphemes of demotic origin afterward.64 The supplementary graphemes added to the Greek alphabet number between six and ten, depending on the dialect.65 The Sahidic-type alphabet is estimated to account for almost 92 percent of the textual total considered, the Bohairic-type alphabet for almost 7 percent, and the other twelve varieties together for approximately 1 percent.66 Nevertheless, a grapheme need not have the same phonological value in every alphabet, nor must a phoneme always be represented by the same grapheme, so alphabetic distinctions require interpretation rather than automatic identification with dialect boundaries.67 For example, the grapheme k represents /c/ in P, whereas it represents /k/ in the other dialects included in the comparison.68

Graphic doubling of vowels occurs in Akhmimic, proto-Lycopolitan, L4, L5, L6, V5, F5, and Sahidic, but not in Mesokemic, W, V4, F4, F7, Bohairic and its subdialects, or G.69 The second member of such a doubled vowel can represent a consonantal element, the cryptophoneme /’/, rather than an additional vowel.70 Ancient Egyptian ‘ayin probably no longer belonged to the Coptic phonemic inventory, but it left effects on dialectal vocalization and in numerous cases developed into /’/.71

H strongly favors /a/, whose reported frequency of 35 percent is the highest among the dialects and subdialects compared, and its b has the value /v/, also systematically replacing /f/ in corresponding forms.72 Other H reductions include /z/ to /s/, while its final unstressed vowel disappears after /w/.73

A small, early layer of Greek-derived vocabulary is recognizable by spellings substantially altered from Greek, with examples including words for anchor, skin garment, ax, dish, linen cloth, and stater.74 Greek also transmitted words of other origins into Coptic, including Latin census, Semitic incense terminology, and Persian nard terminology.75

Many grammatical forms are either invariant across Coptic or differ according to general phonological rules rather than specifically morphological rules; for example, the contrast between forms such as eraf and erof follows the wider dialectal contrast in short stressed vowels.76 On the morphological and morphosyntactic levels, there is greater resemblance between dialects but less consistency within individual dialects than on the phonological level, since forms characteristic of one variety can appear in texts otherwise belonging to another.77

Reading Signs and Scribal Practice

The djinkim is a reader’s sign placed above a grapheme, normally a point and, in Bohairic alone, also a grave accent; it is common in Bohairic and Mesokemic, with only a few traces reported in V and none in Fayyumic or the other dialects discussed.78 Its application varies both between dialects and within their histories, with distinct systems identified for classical Bohairic, late Bohairic, pre-classical Mesokemic, and classical Mesokemic.79 In classical Bohairic it marks a vowel forming a syllable by itself or syllabic m and n in specified grammatical or consonantal environments, so that each marked letter has a vocalic function.80 Late Bohairic extends its use, including to the first of two consecutive consonants at the beginning of a word and in certain Greek compounds.81

Historical Development and Language Contact

Direct descent from a particular pharaonic dialect cannot simply be assumed for each Coptic dialect: repeated linguistic leveling, interference, and the emergence of common languages were likely during earlier Egyptian history.82 The resulting loss or alteration of local distinctions makes a linear genealogy between ancient regional idioms and the surviving Coptic literary varieties difficult to establish.83

Akhmimic’s attested distribution extends from Aswan to Akhmim, and Akhmimic and Sahidic were used concurrently in the Upper Thebaid during the fourth century.84 Akhmimic influenced Sahidic in the fourth and fifth centuries, as reflected in Nag Hammadi texts and Shenute’s language, while its later nonliterary traces at Thebes date specifically to the seventh and eighth centuries.85 Lycopolitan, by contrast with highly standardized Mesokemic, was not thoroughly standardized in any of its branches, and individual manuscripts display peculiarities and inconsistencies.86

Sahidic has exceptionally few exclusive dialectal traits and shares many features with other varieties; its standard literary form was substantially shaped by biblical translation, while its expansion is associated with the progressive suppression of distinctive local phenomena.87 Sahidic progressively displaced Lycopolitan, Mesokemic, W, V, and finally Fayyumic, as well as Akhmimic.88

Bohairic originally belonged to the western Delta and Wadi al-Natrun, then expanded eastward and southward after the Arab conquest, challenging Sahidic’s position as a general Coptic medium in the eighth and ninth centuries.89 Although often characterized as innovative, Bohairic is substantially conservative, sharing isoglosses with Fayyumic, Mesokemic, Sahidic, some Nag Hammadi varieties, G, and P.90 Bohairic was the first dialect encountered by Western scholarship and was consequently called simply Coptic in many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century treatises.91

Geographical and Historical Uncertainties

The original homeland of Sahidic remains disputed: proposed origins include the lower Nile Valley, the Saqqara–Memphis area, Thebes, and Alexandria; another interpretation regards it as a common language formed through interaction and leveling among local dialects.11

Graffiti found in situ suggest that Akhmimic was spoken at Akhmim very early, perhaps from its beginnings, while the argument that it originated at Thebes is questioned on grounds of dialectal geography.34 A manuscript’s discovery site need not be its place of origin: the Lycopolitan Manichaean texts were found at Madinat Madi, outside the dialect’s spoken territory, whereas their origin is tentatively placed at Lycopolis, or Asyut.35

The designation Bashmuric has an especially complicated history.1213 The fourteenth-century grammarian Athanasius of Qus named Sahidic, Bohairic, and Bashmuric, but early modern scholars working with limited documentation subsequently identified Fayyumic texts with his Bashmuric.12 That identification was later rejected.13 Separately, dialect G—attested in small eighth-century nonliterary texts and assigned to the Bohairic group—has occasionally been called Bashmuric or Mansuric; its precise location remains uncertain, although features suggest the eastern Delta.14

Athanasius reported that Sahidic remained spoken from Aswan to the area of modern Minya and Bohairic in the Buhairah and Old and New Cairo, while Bashmuric was already extinct.36 The documents associated with dialect G published by Crum in 1939 use a cursive hand composed exclusively of Greek letters.37

Sahidic funerary inscriptions are particularly difficult to localize because Sahidic is attested throughout Egypt and Nubia, and their formulas alone are unreliable guides because several formulas could occur at the same site.38

The physical contrast is between an open, often marshy Delta approximately 200 km on each side and a narrow valley extending approximately 900 km to the First Cataract, with the Fayyum forming an associated oasis region.92 The Delta’s damp soil has limited manuscript discoveries and therefore the evidence for its probable local dialects.93 A more differentiated geographical framework proposed by Kasser separates the Upper Valley, Middle Valley, a central crossroads region around the Fayyum–Delta approaches, the Fayyum itself, and the Delta.94

Historical maps remain provisional: Worrell’s 1934 arrangement predated recognition of Mesokemic, while Kahle’s 1954 reconstruction assigned the region between Cairo and Heracleopolis to a semi-Bohairic variety, where Vergote’s 1973 arrangement instead placed Sahidic.95 Large numbers of nonliterary Fayyumic texts support localization in the oasis, but the precise identification of Mesokemic with Oxyrhynchus has been challenged, with an origin somewhat north or south of the city also considered.96 The designation Lyco-Diospolitan deliberately accommodates possible homelands throughout the territory between Asyut and Thebes rather than restricting the group to Lycopolis.97 For the London Gospel of John, Qaw or Antaiopolis may be both discovery site and place of origin, whereas the deliberate assembly of the Nag Hammadi collection prevents its findspot from securely locating the origin of its Lycopolitan texts.98

Reported manuscript findspots require checking against archaeological evidence and the manuscripts themselves, including dialect, reused documents in bindings, and colophons naming scribes or places of copying.99 Such checks are especially necessary because finders and dealers may have reasons to conceal precise locations, while manuscripts could have been moved for safekeeping.100

Scripture and Church Use

The exact date of the first scriptural translations into Coptic dialects is unknown; the earliest surviving biblical manuscripts date from the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century.15 Among surviving Coptic documents dated to the fifth century or earlier, Sahidic texts are more than twice as numerous as those in all other dialects combined.15 About the eleventh century, Bohairic replaced Sahidic as the church’s liturgical language.15

Before written translations, New Testament readings in public worship were translated orally from Greek into Coptic for Christians who did not understand Greek.39 The reading of Matthew 19 heard by Antony of Kome in his home church around 272 was presumably in Coptic, since he did not know Greek.40

Among the six principal literary dialects, Lycopolitan alone had yielded no Old Testament translations at the time of the assessment.41 In the regional and local dialects, only individual biblical books are attested, often fragmentarily, and the extent of the lost material remains unknown.42 Papyrus Bodmer III, published by Kasser in 1971, is an early Bohairic manuscript.43

In Egyptian martyr literature, translation generally proceeded from Greek through the Coptic dialects into Arabic, with Sahidic initially predominating and Bohairic later taking its place.44

New Testament translations were fixed in writing no later than the period after the middle of the third century, while Greek biblical manuscripts continued to be copied after Coptic versions became available.101 More than one Sahidic translation of certain biblical books is attested, and subsequent transmission involved both conflation of versions and revision against Greek.102 George W. Horner’s seven-volume Sahidic New Testament edition, published in 1911–1924 and reprinted in 1969, necessarily combines texts of disparate dates and provenance; the version’s textual affiliations are predominantly Alexandrian but include a strong Western element.103

Monastic development encouraged translation and preservation: Pachomian rules required candidates, novices, and monks to learn to read and memorize scriptural passages, while surviving library remains connect biblical literature with the White Monastery at Suhaj, Hamuli in the Fayyum, the monastery of Jeremias at Saqqara, and the monastery of Macarius in the Nitrian Desert.104 Whole Old Testament books, especially the Psalter, were frequently memorized, and allegorical interpretation gave the Old Testament an important place in early Egyptian Christianity.105

The classical Bohairic scriptural version became the official ecclesiastical text, and Bohairic survives as a liturgical language.106 Its surviving manuscript record is uneven: a small collection of fourth- and fifth-century biblical fragments contrasts with the much larger body of post-ninth-century scriptural, homiletic, interpretative, hagiographical, and liturgical manuscripts.107

Coptic martyr texts must also be studied alongside versions in other languages: a Sahidic and a Latin witness may preserve evidence for the same Greek original, and some Egyptian texts were translated into Ethiopic.108

Principal Manuscripts and Textual Witnesses

Mesokemic was first recognized as an independent dialect by Kahle in 1954 on the basis of a few small fragments, before larger witnesses became available.109 Its principal witnesses include the fragmentary Pauline codex P. Mil. Copti 1, Codex Scheide containing Matthew and the Great Doxology, Codex Glazier containing Acts 1:1–15:3, and a parchment Psalms codex excavated in Egypt.110

The University of Michigan Gospel of John, P. Mich. 3521, published by Elinor M. Husselman in 1962, is an important witness to W and to the difficulty of assigning intermediate varieties to a single major group.111 Kahle interpreted its language as Middle Egyptian with Fayyumic influence, whereas Husselman and, broadly, Polotsky favored a Fayyumic basis with Middle Egyptian influence, making the manuscript an illustrative case of a mesodialect.112

The Hamburg bilingual papyrus, Pap. bil. 1, preserves Coptic versions of Song of Songs, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes that are important for early dialect research and for understanding third- and fourth-century biblical interpretation.113 Its Greek Ecclesiastes is not the source text of the Coptic Ecclesiastes copied in the same codex, whose Greek Vorlage instead shows a closer affinity to Codex Vaticanus.114

Important Sahidic witnesses include fourth-century Bodmer manuscripts of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Jeremiah with Baruch, and Isaiah, while Genesis fragments survive in the binding boards of Nag Hammadi Codex VII.115 The Berlin Psalter, dated around 400, is the oldest surviving codex of that much-used biblical book, and Old Testament quotations in Pachomius and his disciples supplement the manuscript tradition.116 Other early witnesses include the fourth-century Joshua manuscript divided between the Chester Beatty and Bodmer collections, the first-half-fifth-century parchment Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John in P. Palau Rib. 181–83, and the Berlin Acts.117

The history of Lycopolitan documentation began with Carl Schmidt’s publication of the Heidelberg Acts of Paul in 1904, supplemented in 1909, followed by Herbert Thompson’s Gospel of John fragments in 1924.118 A Meletian archive letter published in 1924 was the only nonliterary Lycopolitan text known at the time of the assessment, while the Manichaean Homilies and the Apocryphon of James in Nag Hammadi Codex I provide particularly useful literary representatives of L4 and L6 respectively.119

Comparative Scholarship

Marius Chaîne’s Eléments de grammaire dialectale copte (1933) presented a simultaneous grammatical account of Bohairic, Sahidic, Akhmimic, and Fayyumic.45 Paul Eric Kahle’s two-volume Bala’izah: Coptic Texts from Bala’izah in Upper Egypt (1954), based on literary and documentary material from Dayr al-Balayzah near Asyut, contributed important conclusions about the distribution of Coptic dialects.46

The expansion of classification can be followed through Stern’s three dialects in 1880, Crum’s five in 1939, Kahle’s six in 1954, and Kasser’s fifteen proposed idioms in 1973, five of which were practically abandoned in his 1981 treatment.120 Earlier large-scale groupings also differed: Steindorff in 1951 placed Sahidic, Akhmimic, Lycopolitan, and Fayyumic together as Upper Egyptian, opposing them to Bohairic and the poorly known Bashmuric in Lower Egypt.121

Comparative morphology requires attention to the smallest textual units that maintain a distinct linguistic norm before combining them into larger dialect groups, rather than assuming that every text assigned the same dialect label is uniform.122 Controlled representatives selected for morphological comparison therefore include the Akhmimic Exodus, Epistula Apostolorum, and Strasbourg Codex, biblical Sahidic, and Bohairic features consistent with the older manuscripts.123 Sahidic is frequently used as a comparative norm, but a perfectly pure standard Sahidic is an idealized research construct rather than the full reality of its manuscript varieties.124

Kahle’s 1954 inventory of early literary manuscripts arranged third- to fifth-century witnesses by dialect and recorded writing material and column format, although subsequent discoveries, particularly Bodmer codices, required additions.125 Greek transcriptions of Egyptian names supply complementary evidence for vocalization, accent, word formation, and the earlier distribution of spoken varieties, extending dialect research beyond Coptic manuscripts alone.126

Other scholars contributed through teaching and documentation: Stephen Gaselee lectured on Coptic dialects and cataloged Cambridge University Library’s Coptic manuscripts, while Jean Simon addressed the continuance of the dialects for a linguistic congress in 1936 and produced an annual Coptic bibliography in Orientalia from 1948 to 1965.127 Chaîne’s further linguistic studies included his 1934 work on the Asyutic dialects, a 1945 study of the Coptic verb, and volumes published in 1938–1942 relating earlier Egyptian to the Coptic dialects.128 Kasser’s systematic classification studies of 1980–1981 separately addressed principles and terminology, alphabets and phonetic systems, and orthographic systems and dialectal categories; his standard system of dialect sigla appeared in 1990.129

Questions

Frequently asked questions

What are the principal Coptic dialects?
The six principal groups are Akhmimic, Lycopolitan, Sahidic, Mesokemic or Middle Egyptian, Fayyumic, and Bohairic, alongside numerous subdialects and intermediate varieties.
How do scholars distinguish Coptic dialects?
They chiefly compare systematic manuscript spellings to reconstruct pronunciation, supplemented by differences in morphology, syntax, and vocabulary; alphabetic differences do not always indicate separate dialects.
How do Sahidic and Bohairic differ in their historical roles?
Sahidic served as a common language across the Nile Valley above the Delta, while Bohairic probably fulfilled a similar role in the Delta and replaced Sahidic in church liturgy around the eleventh century.
Can a manuscript’s discovery site identify its dialect’s homeland?
Not necessarily: manuscripts could travel or enter collections far from their place of origin, so findspots must be assessed alongside linguistic evidence, bindings, colophons, and archaeology.
Was Bashmuric another name for Fayyumic?
Early modern scholars identified Fayyumic texts with the Bashmuric mentioned by Athanasius of Qus, but that identification was later rejected; the historical Bashmuric dialect remains poorly understood.

References

Sources

  1. 1.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 210)
    The existence of quite a number of differential traits in the fields of morphology and morphosyntax may serve to show that the Coptic literary “dialects” comprise not just different pronunciations and spellings, supported by slightly differing vocabularies, of the same linguistic system but, in fact, different normative systems of written communication reflecting more or less directly some of the locally, regionally, or even sometimes nationally balanced spoken idioms. To be sure, these literary dialects cannot be conceived of as mere transcriptional records of the spoken dialects behind them.
  2. 2.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 178)
    The geographical characteristics of the habitable area of Egypt favored the subdivision of its language. ... It appears very likely that BOHAIRIC (B) was the indigenous language common to the whole of the Nile Delta. It is called a “vehicular,” or supralocal, language because it permitted the inhabitants of the different regions of this Delta (where each spoke his local dialect) to understand one another. ... On the other hand, it is certain that the vehicular language of the whole valley of the Egyptian Nile above the Delta was SAHIDIC
  3. 3.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 200)
    The discovery of many Coptic manuscripts in the latter half of the twentieth century has led to a multiplication in the identification (sometimes disputed) of Coptic idioms, dialects, and subdialects, an identification based mainly on phonology, the most convenient and generally used criterion (see DIALECT, IMMIGRANT). The most likely working hypothesis that has been agreed upon is that the phonology of these idioms can be determined by analysis of their different orthographic systems
  4. 4.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 203)
    In the following list of six groups, //S means “everywhere in contact with S as a supralocal vehicular language” ... Akhmimic Group (//S) A: Dialect; chief of the group ... Lycopolitan Group (//S) ... L: Dialect; chief of group. L4: Subdialect of L. L5: Subdialect of L. L6: Subdialect of L. Sahidic Group (//S) P: Partially sporadic protodialect; it can be considered a regional dialectal variety very like a kind of (reconstructed) proto-Sahidic ... S: Language; chief of group.
  5. 5.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 204)
    Mesokemic Group (//S) M: Dialect; chief of group. ... Fayyumic Group (//S) F: Dialect; chief of group. ... W: Without lambdacism; mesodialect (between V and M). Has a typical FAYYUMIC orthography, on the one hand, but a typical Mesokemic morpho-syntax, on the other hand; hence its name “crypto-Mesokemic.” ... Bohairic Group (//B) B: Language; chief of group. ... B5: (Sub)dialect of B; classical Bohairic.
  6. 6.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 332)
    The traditional view of the “Lycopolitan dialect” (also called “Subakhmimic”) has become increasingly disputed in recent years, and the question arose if Lycopolitan in fact existed as a distinct dialect. ... A group of Coptic subdialects (or, better, dialects) is usually classed together as Lycopolitan or Lyco-Diospolitan
  7. 7.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 359)
    The Mesokemic or Middle Egyptian dialect, siglum M (also called Oxyrhynchite), belongs to the Coptic dialects of Middle Egypt. It is one of the relatively minor Coptic idioms and probably flourished only briefly in the early period of the Coptic language (fourth and fifth centuries), but nevertheless developed in this period into a highly standardized written dialect. ... Its homeland may have been the region of Oxyrhynchus.
  8. 8.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 269)
    Contrary to many others, this dialectal variety appears to be located geographically with some certainty, in the region of the ancient oasis of the Fayyum (hence its name; cf. GEOGRAPHY, DIALECTAL). ... modern research distinguishes in it several subdialects
  9. 9.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 205)
    Difficult to classify in any group remains H: mesodialect, on the one hand (between S and M, or rather S and V, itself a mesodialect associated with the Fayyumic group); on the other hand, a typical metadialect, but too poorly represented to allow one to define it at an earlier (classical) period.
  10. 10.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 207)
    Both systems (six groups of dialects or three major regions of dialects) are to be considered in the present state of knowledge in this field.
  11. 11.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 428)
    Question 1 is controversial: Worrell (1934, pp. 68ff.) considered its initial range to have been Oxyrhynchus and the lower valley ... Vergote (1973b, Vol. 1a, pp. 2f.) and Kasser (1980a, pp. 103ff.) suggested it spread southward from around Saqqara-Memphis ... Polotsky (1970, p. 561) considered Thebes as a possible point of origin. Rather extreme appear Kahle’s thesis (1954, pp. 256ff.) tentatively identifying its point of origin in Alexandria, and Schenke’s denying Sahidic any original local basis, considering it to be a koine type of idiom born out of contacts, interaction, and leveling of l
  12. 12.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 71)
    The history of the Bashmuric dialect is in large measure that of a “phantom dialect.” ... a Coptic grammarian of the fourteenth century (Garitte), Athanasius of Qus ... The first scholars who in the seventeenth century set themselves to the serious study of Coptic had at their disposal only an extremely limited documentation—above all, Bohairic texts, some Sahidic, and Fayyumic texts in even smaller number. ... The Sahidic and the Bohairic of Athanasius having been identified, there remained, on the one hand, the Fayyumic documents and, on the other, the mention of the “Bashmuric” dialect.
  13. 13.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 72)
    Stern (1880, p. 12, n. 1), following Quatremère (1808), had already categorically rejected this terminology ... Shortly after, all Coptologists followed him, and since there was in fact no truly Bashmuric document, people ceased to speak of this dialect
  14. 14.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 140)
    a group of small, late nonliterary Coptic texts of the eighth century ... an idiom of Coptic conventionally called dialect G, occasionally called Bashmuric ... or even Mansuric ... According to orthographical criteria, G should be included in the BOHAIRIC dialectal group ... Although it is difficult to locate this dialect geographically with any precision, several features would support assignment of it to the eastern Delta.
  15. 15.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 212)
    Exactly when translations of the scriptures were first made into one or another of the several Coptic dialects is not known ... The earliest extant biblical manuscripts date from the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century. ... Of the surviving Coptic documents from the fifth century or earlier, those in Sahidic are more than twice as numerous as those in all the other dialects. ... About the eleventh century, Bohairic replaced Sahidic as the liturgical language of the church.
  16. 16.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 3)
    While Akhmimic had not been uniformly standardized, it became a medium of writing as early as the fourth century and reached its zenith in the fourth and fifth centuries. Beginning in the fifth century, it was gradually displaced by the Upper Egyptian koine (S), although for its part A (besides L?) both influenced S—as seen in the Nag Hammadi texts and Shenute—in the fourth and fifth centuries and left traces in nonliterary texts from Thebes dating from the seventh and eighth centuries. These observations imply that even after being displaced by S, A was still in use as a spoken language.
  17. 17.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 3)
    L4 = Manichaean texts; L5 = London Gospel of John, ed. Thompson, 1924, as well as the Dublin fragment of the Gospel of John and the Geneva fragment of the Acta Pauli, the latter two being unpublished; L6 = Nag Hammadi texts of codices I, X, and XI, as well as the Heidelberg Acta Pauli
  18. 18.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 338)
    Recognition that A2 is an independent “dialect” in relation to A and S is contradictory to the still rather widely current description of the dialect as “Subakhmimic,” which, like the siglum A2, tends to lead one to assume a subdialect or collateral dialect of Akhmimic, or A, even if the terminology is only used conventionally. Hence, in a series of publications since 1972, Kasser has proposed instead of “Subakhmimic” the dialectal designation “Lycopolitan” (L), to correspond to the linguistic center of this dialect, or, more exactly, of an important branch of this dialect (see especially Kass
  19. 19.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 336)
    After the fifth century no textual witness of L is attested, and one may conclude that by that time L had gone out of use as a literary language.
  20. 20.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 458)
    Papyrus Bodmer VI, a manuscript of Proverbs written in the Proto-Sahidic dialect and published in 1960 by Kasser, also belongs with the Sahidic.
  21. 21.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 88)
    BOHAIRIC, a major dialect of Coptic, called “MEMPHITIC,” “the northern dialect,” or “dialect of Lower Egypt” in earlier terminology, and simply “Coptic” in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century treatises, Bohairic being the first Coptic dialect with which Western scholarship became acquainted. “Bohairic” (B) was first used by Stern (1880, p. xii).
  22. 22.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 201)
    According to this system, each group of dialects has a “chief,” a dialect that is well represented in texts and is the one with the largest number of phonological (and, as far as possible, morphosyntactical) elements characteristic of its group. In principle, those idioms which have in common a large number of consonantal and vocalic isophones belong to the same dialectal group. Indeed, consonantal isophones are normally the same within a dialectal group, but they may sometimes differ, so long as the differences are tolerable and not decisive. Consonantal differences are tolerable if they fit
  23. 23.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 206)
    I. The southern (dialects) major region (Upper Egypt), including A and L (and their subdialects, etc.). II. The middle (dialects) major region (middle and lower Middle Egypt and the Fayyum), including M and F (and their subdialects, etc., among them V and W). III. The northern (dialects and vehicular language)—southern (vehicular language) major region (Lower Egypt [or the Delta], Middle Egypt, and Upper Egypt), including B and S (and their sub-dialects etc.).
  24. 24.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 368)
    The only metadialectal Coptic idiom actually well enough known to allow one to study the phenomenon is DIALECT H (or Hermopolitan, or Ashmuninic). Since metadialectalism shows itself, above all, through phonological and morphosyntactical impoverishment
  25. 25.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 131)
    In Coptology, the term “immigrant dialect” means any idiom spoken outside its region of origin.
  26. 26.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 421)
    The phonological evolution observable in Egyptian before the Coptic era is unfortunately limited to consonants since pharaonic writing exhibited no vowels. In Coptic, on the other hand, the vowels were written along with the consonants.
  27. 27.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 421)
    some, particularly Akhmimic (A) and Bohairic (B), have a phonemic inventory slightly richer than certain others, such as Sahidic (S), Lyco(Dios)politan (L), Mesokemic (M), crypto-Mesokemic (W), South Fayyumic (V), and Fayyumic (F). For example, A and B have retained phonemes such as /x/ from pharaonic Egyptian, which classical S and L have lost.
  28. 28.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 422)
    “proto-Lyco(Dios)politan” (see DIALECT I and Kasser, 1990), and of a “proto-Sahidic” (according to Vergote’s terminology, now rather to be considered a “proto-Theban” very similar to some reconstructed “proto-Sahidic”; see DIALECT P and Kasser, 1990), sigla respectively pL and P. These remarkable idioms had conserved up to the third-fourth centuries two phonemes that can reasonably be considered archaic in the Lyco-(Dios)politan cluster, and also in comparision with Sahidic. Still surviving in pL and P, they have disappeared from L, and also cannot be found in S. The first is /x/, which is der
  29. 29.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 423)
    the protodialect exists as an entity logically anterior to the Coptic “dialects” that have been defined and named according to the habitual and traditional criteria. It is anterior not exactly in the same way that a father is anterior to his son, but as someone of the father’s generation, perhaps the father’s brother or cousin, is logically anterior to the father’s son.
  30. 30.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 43)
    There are then in Coptic not only several Coptic dialects but also several Coptic alphabets employed to render these various dialects, the limits of the field of application of these alphabets not always coinciding with the phonological interdialectal limits. From this perspective, a search through the most diverse Coptic texts finally ends in the identification of at least fourteen different Coptic alphabets.
  31. 31.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 148)
    g/g/ (appears only in the Copto-Greek vocabulary): H does not have this g/g/ of V etc., and it replaces it by k/k/, for instance, H kar, V gar, for. d/d/ (appears only in the Copto-Greek vocabulary): H does not have this d/d/ of V etc., and it replaces it by t/t/
  32. 32.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 486)
    In all the Coptic dialects except H (which follows its own ways; see Kasser, 1975-1976, and DIALECT H, OR HERMOPOLITAN OR ASHMUNINIC), these words of Hellenic origin have preserved their original orthography, either exactly or nearly so
  33. 33.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 213)
    “Morphological” traits, in the sense in which the term will be applied here, fall into three groups: (i) variables in terms of different phonological representations of the same Pan-Coptic, transdialectal morpheme, or “diamorpheme,” which may be called “diamorphemic variables”; (ii) variables in terms of a different handling of allomorphic rules, or “allomorphic variables”; (iii) morphosyntactic variables, including some idiosyncratic grammatical morphs.
  34. 34.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 297)
    it does indeed seem from graffiti found in situ that A was spoken very early, and probably from the beginning, at Akhmim
  35. 34.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 297)
    But the arguments (e.g., Kahle, 1954, pp. 198-99) according to which A was at first the idiom of Thebes, before being driven out, especially by S, are not entirely convincing.
  36. 35.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 336)
    Crum’s dictum is to be kept in mind: “Place of finding is not necessarily place of origin.” The Mani texts were discovered in Madinat Madi, a place where the L-dialect never had been spoken. Rather, the place of origin of the Coptic Manichaean texts seems to have been Lycopolis (Asyut).
  37. 36.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 375)
    There were still two dialects alive: (1) Sahidic, spoken from Aswan to Munyat al-Qays (i.e., Munyat Bani Khasib, today Minyah), and (2) Bohairic, spoken in the “Bohairah” (Buhairah), probably the northwestern Delta, in Old and New Cairo. A third, Bashmuric, formerly spoken in “the region of Bashmur” (probably the eastern Delta), was extinct.
  38. 37.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 308)
    A special case is the collection of texts published by Crum (1939b). These documents of the eighth century or later in the Coptic language are written in a cursive hand making exclusive use of the Greek alphabet. They are much too late to be considered Pre-Old Coptic and seem to represent a particular idiom related to BOHAIRIC (see DIALECT G).
  39. 38.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 4 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 737)
    the localization of Sahidic stelae presents great difficulties, because Sahidic can be traced throughout all Egypt and Nubia. The formula of the Sahidic tombstones can be employed for the localization of the stelae only with reservations, since at almost all sites not only one formula but several were utilized—whether contemporaneously or in succession.
  40. 39.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 2 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 166)
    In public worship the New Testament was read in Greek and—so far as this language was not understood by the Christians—translated orally into Coptic. Fixing the translations into the Coptic dialects in writing followed
  41. 40.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 2 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 166)
    Antony of Kome (b. 251/252) heard a reading from Matthew 19 in his home church about 272. Since he did not know Greek, the reading must have been in Coptic.
  42. 41.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 334)
    Among the literary dialects of Coptic—Akhmimic, Lycopolitan (also called Subakhmimic), Middle Egyptian, Fayyumic, Sahidic, and Bohairic (we may here disregard the further specification that is gaining ground in the study of the Coptic dialects)—only the Lycopolitan dialect has (so far) yielded no Old Testament translations.
  43. 42.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 334)
    In the regional or local dialects only individual books are attested (often only fragmentarily), but it is not known how much of the stock that once existed has been lost.
  44. 43.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 458)
    An early Bohairic manuscript is Papyrus Bodmer III, published by Kasser in 1971.
  45. 44.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 5 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 495)
    In Egypt the trend of translating activities runs from Greek via the Coptic dialects to Arabic. Sahidic initially predominated, then Bohairic.
  46. 45.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 2 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 474)
    Eléments de grammaire dialectale copte (Paris, 1933), which gave a simultaneous account of the four principal Coptic dialects, Bohairic, Sahidic, Akhmimic, and Fayyumic.
  47. 46.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 5 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 94)
    He published a large collection of literary and documentary material from the monastery of Dayr al-Balayzah, at Asyut in Upper Egypt, arriving at important conclusions regarding the distribution of Coptic dialects: Bala’izah: Coptic Texts from Bala’izah in Upper Egypt (2 vols., Oxford, 1954).
  48. 47.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 316)
    Coptic is the last stage of the Egyptian language in the course of its very long existence and slow evolution (we can observe it over a period of more than four thousand years
  49. 48.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 210)
    If only the records of, say, Bohairic and Akhmimic had survived as the two extremes of this continuum, one would hardly be able to treat them as “dialects” but would rather classify them as distinct, though closely related, languages.
  50. 49.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 205)
    this method would rely particularly on vocalic phonology, and especially the phonology of the tonic vowels. It thereby relegates to the level of secondary importance certain spectacular phenomena
  51. 50.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 206)
    would have L as the semineutralized vehicular dialect of this whole region
  52. 50.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 207)
    would have V as a slightly neutralized dialect tending to become vehicular for the region
  53. 51.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 201)
    Coptic (supralocal etc.) languages (in touch with many local and regional dialects, which influence and neutralize them appreciably) cannot be compared without great caution with individual (local or regional) dialects.
  54. 52.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 204)
    F5: Subdialect of F; classical FAYYUMIC. F7: Eccentric and somewhat archaic subdialect of F; possibly a marginal northern protodialect ... F4, F5, F7, F8, and F9 all have the typical Fayyumic lambdacism.
  55. 53.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 421)
    South Fayyumic (V)
  56. 53.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 204)
    V: Without lambdacism; mesodialect (between a dominant F and W, and further M)
  57. 54.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 204)
    W: Without lambdacism; mesodialect (between V and M). Has a typical FAYYUMIC orthography, on the one hand, but a typical Mesokemic morpho-syntax, on the other hand; hence its name “crypto-Mesokemic.” One might also associate it with the Mesokemic group.
  58. 55.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 203)
    i7: Subdialect of i, through partial neutralization and evolution toward L.
  59. 56.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 204)
    P. Mil. Copti 1 and the codex of the Psalms attest a variety of M that could be denominated M4 and that the subdialect of Codex Scheide and Codex Glazier is M5.
  60. 57.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 205)
    B74: Eccentric (sub)dialect of B; in some way subdialect of B4, and perhaps more to the south.
  61. 57.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 204)
    B4: (Sub)dialect of B, possibly rather marginal and to the south. ... B7: Eccentric and partially sporadic subdialect of B.
  62. 58.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 205)
    K: Mesodialect (between a very dominant B and V [or S]). K7: Eccentric subdialect of K (still further removed from V than K is).
  63. 59.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 205)
    G: Partially sporadic mesodialect (between a very dominant B and S [?], with probably also a third component, perhaps partly Hellenic and difficult to determine).
  64. 60.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 205)
    H: mesodialect, on the one hand (between S and M, or rather S and V, itself a mesodialect associated with the Fayyumic group); on the other hand, a typical metadialect
  65. 61.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 315)
    indicating, first, their principal component with an italic capital and then their secondary component(s) with an italic lower-case superscript; for example, Sa signifies Sahidic influenced phonetically (and to some extent, but irregularly, phonologically) by Akhmimic.
  66. 62.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 422)
    L6 still possesses two (-e and -i), as do V and F (-i and -e). F7 also has two (-i and -a). One could also say that B retains two (-i and Ø, that is, zero vowel, no vowel at all). Further, one also sees two in proto-Lyco(Dios)politan (pL, -e and -i) and in proto-Theban (P, -e and -a)
  67. 63.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 422)
    the archaic P and F7 show in that position a very open, unstressed final vowel, -a, an unusual and remarkable phenomenon in Coptic.
  68. 64.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 148)
    Any Coptic alphabet ... conventionally begins with those phonemes that are rendered by Coptic letters of Greek origin; it continues with phonemes rendered by Coptic graphemes of demotic origin.
  69. 65.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 327)
    alphabet by adding some supplementary graphemes (between six and ten, depending on the Coptic dialects
  70. 66.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 37)
    one of these alphabets, the of S etc., is employed almost everywhere (it is that of almost 92 percent of the total) ... the alphabetic variety of B etc. (almost 7 percent) ... the twelve other varieties (about 1 percent only)
  71. 67.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 38)
    a given grapheme rendering a given phoneme in one idiom, and the same grapheme rendering another phoneme in another idiom; or a given phoneme being rendered by a given grapheme in one idiom and by another grapheme in another idiom
  72. 68.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 47)
    k for /c/ in P, although everywhere else k = /k/
  73. 69.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 24)
    especially in A, pL (=i), L4, L5, L6, V5, F5, S, but not in M, W, V4, F4, F7, B and its subdialects, G—a graphic vocalic gemination (succession of two identical vowels graphemes
  74. 70.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 24)
    the first element is, in phonology, an authentic tonic vowel, but the second seems manifestly to render a consonantal phoneme
  75. 70.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 49)
    a way of rendering /’/ in writing as a cryptophoneme and not a phoneme in the ordinary sense.
  76. 71.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 67)
    it probably does not belong any longer to the phonological inventory of Coptic or even Pre-Coptic, not even as a CRYPTOPHONEME, in contrast to ALEPH. ... has also often left its mark in the vocalization of certain Coptic dialects and subdialects ... being transformed into /’/
  77. 72.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 148)
    H greatly favors this phoneme (where it has the maximum presence among the Coptic dialects and subdialects, 35 percent ...); ... the b of H is equivalent to /v/ ... since it also systematically replaces f/f/ of V etc.
  78. 73.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 151)
    Finally, the final atonic vowel disappears completely after /w/
  79. 73.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 49)
    Line 6: H z /z/ > c /s/.
  80. 74.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 486)
    A very small part of the Copto-Greek vocabulary appears to have entered into the Egyptian language a very long time before the beginnings of literary Coptic ... One can recognize these words from their orthography, often somewhat distorted in Coptic in comparison with their Greek orthography.
  81. 75.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 486)
    “derived from Greek” here may also signify “derived from other languages via Greek,” as is the case, for example, with the Latin census ... incense ... derived from the Semitic linguistic domain, and ... nard ... derived from Persian
  82. 76.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 213)
    the majority of formal grammatical devices ... are either phonemically and graphemically invariable for all Coptic dialects ... or their varying phonemic/graphemic representations are conditioned by general phonological rules. ... a/eraf erof
  83. 77.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 210)
    on the morphological and morphosyntactic levels, in general, there is greater similarity between dialects, but a lower degree of consistency (i.e., less standardization) within each dialect than there is on the phonological level.
  84. 78.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 235)
    The djinkim ... is a Coptic reader’s sign in the form of a point ... or, in BOHAIRIC (B) only, a grave accent, placed above a grapheme—a sign that is commonly found in B ... or in M ... only a few traces have been discovered in V. (None are known in F or in any other of the Coptic dialects.)
  85. 79.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 235)
    one may distinguish at least four systems of its use, those of classical B, late B, pre-classical M, and classical M.
  86. 80.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 235)
    In classical B the only letters marked with a djinkim are (1) any vowel forming a syllable by itself ... (2) the letters m and n when they are grammatical elements ... or the first radical before another graphic consonant ... each letter marked with a djinkim in classical B is a phoneme with a vocalic function
  87. 81.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 235)
    In late B ... (3) the first of two consecutive consonants at the beginning of a word or within the word when it is a case of Greek compounds
  88. 82.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 324)
    Prudence in any case advises one to keep some distance from the optimistic hypothesis that would consider each Coptic dialect as the direct descendant of a pharaonic Egyptian dialect corresponding to it.
  89. 83.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 324)
    This koine may have been able to eliminate certain local idioms, profoundly inhibiting and radically modifying the others in such a way as to efface the greater part of the differences that constituted their originality.
  90. 84.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 3)
    Its range of distribution extends from Aswan to Akhmim ... in the fourth century A and S were in concurrent use in the Upper Thebaid.
  91. 85.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 3)
    A (besides L?) both influenced S—as seen in the Nag Hammadi texts and Shenute—in the fourth and fifth centuries and left traces in nonliterary texts from Thebes dating from the seventh and eighth centuries.
  92. 86.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 338)
    practically every manuscript exhibits peculiarities and even inconsistencies, as L in fact is not a thoroughly standardized dialect in any of its branches.
  93. 87.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 428)
    the one with the fewest exclusive traits and the most isoglosses shared with others ... standard literary Sahidic is largely “a gift” of the translation of the Bible ... Sahidic probably owes its drastic expansion to the progressive suppression of distinctive phenomena.
  94. 88.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 207)
    S, being dominant throughout the Egyptian Nile Valley above the Delta, progressively stifled there A, L, M, W, V, and finally F.
  95. 89.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 88)
    Originally the northern local dialect of the western Delta (Buhaira) and Wadi al-Natrun, Bohairic spread dramatically (beginning after, and as an indirect result of, the ARAB CONQUEST OF EGYPT) eastward and southward. In the eighth and ninth centuries it broke the monopoly of Sahidic as a Pan-Coptic idiom
  96. 90.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 88)
    Bohairic shares isoglosses with most other dialects of Coptic, mainly with Fayyumic, Middle Egyptian (MESOKEMIC), Sahidic, and, more subtly, certain Nag Hammadi varieties of Sahidic ... DIALECT G and DIALECT P. ... examination ... shows it to be rather of a conservative nature
  97. 91.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 88)
    simply “Coptic” in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century treatises, Bohairic being the first Coptic dialect with which Western scholarship became acquainted.
  98. 92.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 293)
    the Nile Delta, the vast triangle, practically flat and often marshy, about 125 miles (200 km) on each side ... the long, threadlike valley ... extending nearly 560 miles (900 km) ... The ancient oasis of the Fayyum may be considered an appendage of the valley
  99. 93.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 178)
    the paucity of discoveries of texts in the soil of the Delta, which is too damp, prevents detection of these dialects
  100. 94.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 293)
    It has also been suggested (Kasser, 1980a, pp. 74-76) that Egypt be divided, moving downstream, into five regions: (1) the Upper Valley ... (2) the Middle Valley
  101. 94.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 294)
    (3) the Center (so called because its situation makes it a crossroads between the Middle Valley, the Fayyum, and the Delta) ... (4) the Fayyum; and (5) the Delta.
  102. 95.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 295)
    Worrell did not yet know the existence of MESOKEMIC ... Kahle (1954) ... Worrell’s region 2 (to Heracleopolis), a variety of B particularly close to S (“semi-Bohairic” ...); ... Vergote (1973 ...): ... the valley from Cairo to Heracleopolis, S
  103. 96.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 297)
    the large quantity of nonliterary F texts found in this region allow one to believe that the cradle of his dialect is the Fayyum. ... this too-precise localization has been contested with serious arguments ... M should perhaps be located not exactly at Oxyrhynchus but a little farther north (or south?).
  104. 97.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 331)
    not only Lycopolis (Asyut) and its area but virtually every place between this area in the north and the area of Diospolis Magna (Thebes, Luxor) in the south must be taken into consideration as a possible home of the L dialects
  105. 98.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 336)
    In the case of JoL, there is no compelling reason why the place of discovery should not be considered the same as the place of origin (Qaw/Antaiopolis). As the Nag Hammadi Library resulted from the purposeful collection of various texts, the place of origin of the L texts of Nag Hammadi is not guaranteed.
  106. 99.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 493)
    Their information must be checked, preferably by an excavation at the site named. ... Among these statements in Coptic manuscripts are, for one thing, the dialect. ... old papyri, especially documents, were pasted into the binding. ... later manuscripts, which contain a COLOPHON with information about the scribe and the place of writing.
  107. 100.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 493)
    manuscripts, which had to be brought to a place of safety. ... The interests of the finders and dealers are at variance with those of the scholars. ... caution is advisable with regard to their statements ... about its precise location.
  108. 101.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 2 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 166)
    Fixing the translations into the Coptic dialects in writing followed, at the latest, after the middle of the third century. ... Despite the translation of the New Testament into the Coptic dialects, further Greek manuscripts were copied in Egypt
  109. 102.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 212)
    The manuscripts attest to more than one Sahidic translation of certain biblical books. These were conflated in subsequent transmission, as well as revised against the Greek.
  110. 103.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 212)
    George W. Horner (7 vols., 1911-1924; reprinted 1969), lacks homogeneity, having been edited of necessity from diverse texts with quite disparate dates and provenance. The textual affinities of the Sahidic version are mixed. Alexandrian readings predominate, but there is also a strong "Western" element.
  111. 104.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 334)
    The increase in translation activity is closely connected with the development of the Coptic monasteries. In accordance with the rules of Pachomius, a knowledge of reading ... as well as the learning by heart of portions of scripture was already obligatory for candidates and novices, and all the more for the monks ... the White Monastery at Suhaj ... the Hamuli monastery ... the monastery of Jeremias at Saqqara, and the monastery of Macarius in the Nitrian Desert
  112. 105.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 2 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 166)
    Through the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, the Old Testament played a great role in the church in Egypt, particularly in its early period. ... Frequently whole Old Testament books, especially the Psalter, were memorized.
  113. 106.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 88)
    Bohairic became the official ecclesiastical language, and the classical Bohairic version of the Scriptures, the official text. Bohairic, which survives only as a liturgical language
  114. 107.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 88)
    manuscripts later than the ninth century with scriptural, homiletic, hermeneutic, hagiographical, and liturgical texts and, on the other hand, a much smaller collection of fourth- and fifth-century fragments, all biblical
  115. 108.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 5 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 495)
    Sometimes texts originating in Egypt were translated into Ethiopic. ... a Sahidic and a Latin version may be witnesses to a Greek original. Consequently, regard must be given to all these languages in undertaking a reconstruction of Egyptian martyr hagiography.
  116. 109.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 359)
    P. E. Kahle ... on the basis of a very few small fragments he was the first to postulate M as an independent dialect (1954).
  117. 110.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 359)
    P. Mil. Copti 1, a fragmentary papyrus codex containing the whole Corpus Paulinum (Pauline Epistles), and Codex Scheide and Codex Glazier ... the first containing the Gospel of Matthew with the so-called Great Doxology, the second containing the first half of Acts (1:1-15:3). Another parchment codex containing the Psalms has since been excavated in Egypt.
  118. 111.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 458)
    a manuscript of the Gospel of John from the University of Michigan collection (P. Mich 3521), which was published in 1962 by Husselman.
  119. 111.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 213)
    St. John, ed. Husselman, 1962 [the most important member of Kasser’s former V. now W]
  120. 112.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 357)
    Kahle calls it ‘Middle Egyptian with Fayyumic influence.’ The editor, however, maintains (11) that the basis of the dialect appears to be typical Fayyumic nonetheless, in which I must agree with her. ... P. Mich. 3521 ... illustrates well the properties necessary for defining a mesodialect.
  121. 113.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 4 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 500)
    The Coptic versions of Pap. bil. 1 of Song of Songs, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes are important in the investigation of early Coptic dialects. ... the examination of the technique of the Coptic translators offers a glimpse of the interpretation of Old Testament texts in the Coptic church of the third and fourth centuries.
  122. 114.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 4 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 500)
    points to a closer affinity of the Greek Vorlage of Coptic Ecclesiastes to B than can be observed in Greek Ecclesiastes transmitted in the same codex. At all events, Greek Ecclesiastes is not the Vorlage of the Coptic version of Ecclesiastes in the Hamburg papyrus
  123. 115.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 334)
    fourth-century manuscripts: Genesis (fragments in the boarding of Nag Hammadi Codex VII), Exodus (Papyrus Bodmer XVI), Deuteronomy (Papyrus Bodmer XVIII and British Library, Or. 7594 ...), Joshua (Papyrus Bodmer XXI), Jeremiah with Baruch (Papyrus Bodmer XXII), Isaiah (Papyrus Bodmer XXIII).
  124. 116.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 334)
    the oldest codex of the most-used book in the Coptic Bible, the Psalter, is no earlier than about 400 (Berlin Psalter, ed. A. Rahlfs). The manuscript tradition is supplemented by the Old Testament citations in the original Coptic literature (Pachomius and his disciples)
  125. 117.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 458)
    From the Chester Beatty collection the manuscript of Joshua, dated to the fourth century ... The second part of it is in the Bodmer collection (Bodmer XXI). ... three parchment manuscripts of the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John, written in the first half of the fifth century (P. Palau Rib. 181-83 ...), as well as the Berlin Acts
  126. 118.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 332)
    The first textual witness to become known was the Acta Pauli (AP. Heid.), which Carl Schmidt published from the Heidelberg Papyrus Collection (1904 and a further folio in 1909). In 1924 Sir Herbert Thompson published extensive fragments of St. John’s Gospel
  127. 119.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 213)
    its most normalized representative being the Homilies (Polotsky, 1934).
  128. 119.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 332)
    In the same year, a letter of the Meletian archives (Crum, in Bell, 1924, no. 1921), the sole nonliterary text thus far known in L, was edited
  129. 119.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 212)
    the Nag Hammadi type (L6) ... its most valuable representative in Codex I, 2, The Apocryphon of James
  130. 120.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 200)
    Stern (1880) has only three “dialects,” S, B, and F; Crum (1939) has five ... Kahle (1954) has six ... Kasser (1973) reaches fifteen, of which, however, five are practically abandoned in Kasser (1981)
  131. 121.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 201)
    Steindorff (1951) presented two groups of dialects: Upper Egyptian (S, A, L, F) and Lower Egyptian (B, and Bashmuric, a dialect practically unknown).
  132. 122.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 212)
    comprehensive comparative analysis will have to start by grouping and classifying the smallest discernible units of texts that follow a distinct linguistic norm and joining them gradually together into natural groups (major dialects)
  133. 123.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 212)
    for A, the AKHMIMIC “medial” group of Exodus ... Epistula Apostolorum ... and the Strasbourg Codex ... for B, biblical BOHAIRIC ... only such traits as are in concord with the usage of the “old-Bohairic” manuscripts ... for S, biblical (in particular, New Testament) SAHIDIC.
  134. 124.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 428)
    standard, or pure, Sahidic is more of a construct, an idealized average, a research point de repère than linguistic reality
  135. 124.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 49)
    For convenience, S has been assigned the function of a norm or standard
  136. 125.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 6 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 458)
    P. E. Kahle (1954, pp. 269-78) has published a list of earlier Coptic literary manuscripts ... with information on the writing material (papyrus or parchment) and the writing format (one or two columns). It comprises manuscripts from the third to the fifth century, arranged according to the Coptic dialects. To these must be added the early papyrus codices published since 1954
  137. 126.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 308)
    Greco-Egyptian onomastics also supply interesting information on the vocalization of Egyptian ... research on word accent and word formation ... the study of spoken dialects and their dispersion must be undertaken for the Pre-Coptic period in the light of present knowledge of Coptic dialects.
  138. 127.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 4 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 332)
    He lectured on Coptic dialects, cataloged the Coptic manuscripts in the University Library, Cambridge
  139. 127.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 7 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 277)
    took an interest in the continuance of the Coptic dialects for a linguistic congress (1936). ... the annual publication in Orientalia from 1948 to 1965 of a "Bibliographie copte"
  140. 128.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 2 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 474)
    Notions de langue égyptienne ... (Paris, 1938-1942). ... Les Dialectes coptes assioutiques (Paris, 1934), Le Verbe copte (Paris, 1945)
  141. 129.The Coptic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 — Aziz S. Atiya (Editor in Chief) (p. 426)
    “Prolégomènes à un essai de classification systématique des dialectes et subdialectes coptes selon les critères de la phonétique, I, Principes et terminologie.” ... (1980a) ... “. . ., II, Alphabets et systèmes phonétiques.” ... (1980b) ... “. . ., III, Systèmes orthographiques et catégories dialectales.” ... (1981) ... “A Standard System of Sigla for Referring to the Dialects of Coptic.” Journal of Coptic Studies 1 (1990):141-151.

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