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- Coptic mythology and religious beliefs have their foundation in the ancient Egyptian religion, which was polytheistic. Many deities were worshiped, each representing different aspects of life and nature. Some of the key deities include: Ra: The sun god, associated with creation and the daily cycle of the sun.
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Dec 18, 2014 · The Coptic Church of Egypt is the earliest Christian church in the world, going back to around 42 AD. According to Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, as well as Coptic traditions, Saint Mark the evangelist, who wrote the earliest of the four New Testament gospels, was the founder and first bishop of the Church of Alexandria, even before the Church of ...
Coptic Mythology. The Coptic people of Egypt are an ethnoreligious group, primarily residing in Egypt, who practice the Coptic Orthodox Church's teachings. The Copts trace their roots back to the ancient Egyptians and consider themselves the direct descendants of the civilization that built the pyramids.
Jan 4, 2022 · Founded in the first century in Egypt, the Coptic Christian Church shares many beliefs and practices with the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church. "Coptic" is derived from a Greek term meaning "Egyptian." The Coptic Church split from the Catholic Church in AD 451 and claims its own pope and bishops.
- Jack Zavada
Apr 29, 2024 · Coptic Christians violently attacked in Egypt. Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, Oriental Orthodox church and principal Christian church in predominantly Muslim Egypt. The people of Egypt before the Arab conquest in the 7th century identified themselves and their language in Greek as Aigyptios (Arabic qibṭ, Westernized as Copt).
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Byzantine Egypt
- The Coptic period
- Gravestones
- An architectural element from an early Christian Church
- Pottery sherd with the openings of several verses from the Psalms
Egypt’s dry climate has preserved a range and abundance of architecture, sculpture, artifacts and texts unparalleled in other parts of the Byzantine world. The survival of large numbers of documents, such as contracts, petitions, tax receipts and letters, provide insight into everyday experiences of elites and non-elites, men and women.
The British Museum collection reveals aspects of the visual, social, religious, administrative, and economic lives of Egypt’s inhabitants at the time when they became predominantly Christian.
In the course of the fourth and fifth centuries C.E., Christians transformed the architectural landscape of pharaonic Egypt by building monumental churches, martyrs’ shrines, and monasteries, often converting ancient temples, shrines, and tombs for new purposes. Pilgrims from around the empire flocked to Egypt to visit sites mentioned in the Bible or associated with saints. Coptic, the Egyptian language written in a modified Greek script, flourished as a vehicle to translate the Bible and, later, to compose an original Egyptian Christian literature.
At the same time, individuals and communities continued to engage in many traditional Egyptian and Hellenistic practices. The elite dead were buried in mummiform, swathed in textiles decorated with motifs from classical mythology. Greek literature (for example, Homer and Menander) continued to be copied and read, and Greek poetry and philosophy flourished into the sixth century.
The Persian occupation (619) and, later, the Arab conquest of Egypt (642) increasingly isolated the province from the rest of the Byzantine Empire. From the ninth century Arabic began to replace Coptic and Christians increasingly converted to Islam.
Today Egypt is home to a sizable Christian population known as Copts, a term deriving from the Arabic transliteration of the Greek word for Egyptian (Aigyptios).
The term 'Coptic period' is a very approximate one; it may be thought of as running from the third century until around the time of the visible decline of Christianity in the ninth century. It is roughly equivalent to the Byzantine period elsewhere in the Mediterranean world.
Christianity arrived in Egypt from Judea. It probably first came into Alexandria, which was both an intellectual centre and the home of a large Jewish community. Christianity was heavily persecuted in the third century AD, but was widely accepted by the end of the fourth century. After this time, the number of monastic settlements increased. It was at this time that many ancient rock cut tombs were inhabited and adapted by Christian monks.
Coptic gravestones vary widely in size, and this is one of the larger ones. It is decorated with the Coptic cross at the top, and with various scrolls and foliate patterns. The bird in the centre is a dove, a common image on such stelae. To the Copts the dove and the foliage were symbols of paradise. Above the dove is a short inscription, which rea...
Churches and other religious buildings were highly decorated in the Coptic period. The walls were painted with pictures of bishops and saints, and architectural elements were often carved with floral and faunal motifs. Pillars and friezes were often made of stone, but this example is unusual in that it is of wood. This lion's head, although schematized is still quite recognizable. It is carved in much higher raised relief than the leaves below, making it stand out. The curly leaves are characteristic of the floral motifs common in Coptic art. They are very similar to the acanthus leaves that appear in earlier Roman art, particularly those decorating the capitals of Corinthian columns. The basic color of the lion is reddish brown, with details picked out in yellow and black. The yellow mane can be easily identified, curving around the face from ear to ear. In both pharaonic and Coptic times, black paint was usually derived from charcoal, and yellow and brown from forms of ochre.
The lower edge of the piece of wood is heavily burnt, suggesting that the rest of the object, and perhaps the entire building, was destroyed by fire.
People often used broken pieces of pottery or stone as a convenient surface for recording information or even doodling. These pieces are called ostraka. Written material of the Coptic period often had a religious theme, including extracts from the Bible, church sermons and tales of martyrdom. Ostraka were also used to record aspects of the day to day running of monasteries, such as the delivery of foodstuffs. The broken sherds are often from vessels used for the transport of products, including olive oil and wine.
The Coptic script was widely used in Egypt from the late third century until the Arab conquest in the seventh century. It developed when the use of hieroglyphic and associated handwritten scripts died out when Egypt became a Christian country. Coptic is still the official language of the Christian Church in Egypt, known as the Coptic Church. It is a direct descendent of the language written in hieroglyphs, using Greek characters to record the consonants and vowels of the ancient Egyptian language. Jean-François Champollion's knowledge of Coptic was essential to his decipherment of the hieroglyphic script using the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone.
© The Trustees of the British Museum
Additional resources:
H.R. Hall, Coptic and Greek texts of the Christian Period from Ostraka, Stelae, Etc. in the British Museum (London, 1905)
F.D. Friedman, Beyond the Pharaohs (Rhode Island, 1989)
Oct 26, 2023 · The Coptic cross is no doubt an evolution of the ancient Egyptian ankh, which is also called crux ansata, meaning cross with a handle. In Coptic Christianity, the ankh’s representation of life corresponds with the belief behind crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.
The Coptic Orthodox Church (Coptic: Ϯⲉⲕ̀ⲕⲗⲏⲥⲓⲁ ⲛ̀ⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ⲛ̀ⲟⲣⲑⲟⲇⲟⲝⲟⲥ, romanized: Ti-eklisia en-remenkimi en-orthodhoxos, lit. 'the Egyptian Orthodox Church'), also known as the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, is an Oriental Orthodox Christian church based in Egypt.
