Coptic alphabet encyclopedia topics

History

The Coptic alphabet has a long history, going back to the Hellenistic period, of using the Greek alphabet to transcribe Demotic texts, with the aim of recording the correct pronunciation of the Demotic. During the first two centuries of the Common Era, an entire series of magical texts were written in what scholars term Old Coptic, Egyptian language texts written in the Greek alphabet. A number of letters, however, were derived from Demotic, and many of these (though not all) are used in "true" Coptic writing. With the spread of Christianity in Egypt, by the late 3rd century AD knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost, as well as Demotic slightly later, making way for a writing system more closely associated with the Christian church. By the 4th century the Coptic alphabet was "standardised", particularly for the Sahidic dialect. (It should be noted that there are a number of differences between the alphabets as used in the various dialects in Coptic.) The alphabet is still used by the members of the Coptic Church to write their religious texts. All the Gnostic codices found in Nag Hammadi used the Coptic alphabet.

The Old Nubian alphabet—used to write Old Nubian, a Nilo-Saharan language —is written mainly in an uncial Greek alphabet, which borrows Coptic and Meroitic letters of Demotic origin into its inventory.

Unicode

In Unicode, most Coptic letters formerly shared codepoints with similar Greek letters, but a disunification has been accepted for version 4.1, which appeared in 2005. The new Coptic block is U+2C80 to U+2CFF. The Greek block includes seven Coptic letters derived from Demotic, and need to be included in any complete implementation of Coptic.

Alphabet table

image	minuscule	numeric value	name
!	1	alpʰa	a ([ɑ, ʕ, ʔ])
!	2	bēta	b, v, w
!	3	gamma	g (/k/, /g, ŋ, ɣ/)
!	4	dalda	d (/d, ð/)
!	5	ei	e
!	6	sou	–
!	7	zēta	z (/s/, /z/)
!	8	ēta	ē (/eː, ɛː, i/)
!	9	tʰēta	tʰ (/tʰ, θ/)
!	10	iōta	i (/i, j/)
!	20	kappa	k, q
!	30	laula	l
!	40	mē	m
!	50	nē	n
!	60	kˢi	kˢ (/ks/)
!	70	ou	o
!	80	pi	p, b
!	100	rō	r
!	200	sēmma	s
!	300	tau	t (/t, d/)
!	400	he	u (/u, w, i, v/)
!	500	pʰi	pʰ (/pʰ, f/)
!	600	kʰi	kʰ (/kʰ, χ, ʃ/)
!	700	pˢi	pˢ (/ps/)
!	800	ō	ō (/oː/)
!		šai	š (/ʃ/)
!	90	fai	f
!		ḫai	ḫ (/x/)
!		hori	h, ḥ
!		ḏanḏia	ḏ (/ʤ, g, ɟ/)
!		čima	č (/q, ʧ, gʲ, ʃ/)
!		ti	tⁱ (/ti, c/)
!	900	pˢis ənše

Letters derived from the demotic:

hieroglyph		demotic
SA	→	→	š
f	→	→	f
M12	→	→	ḫ
F18:Y1	→	→	h
U29	→	→	ḏ
k	→	→	č
D37:t	→	→	tⁱ

References

Quaegebeur, Jan. 1982. "De la préhistoire de l'écriture copte." Orientalia lovaniensia analecta 13:125–136.
Ritner, Robert Kriech. 1996. "The Coptic Alphabet". In The World's Writing Systems, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 287–290.
Kasser, Rodolphe. 1991. "Alphabet in Coptic, Greek". In The Coptic Encyclopedia, edited by Aziz S. Atiya. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Volume 8. 30–32.
Kasser, Rodolphe. 1991. "Alphabets, Coptic". In The Coptic Encyclopedia, edited by Aziz S. Atiya. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Volume 8. 32–41.
Kasser, Rodolphe. 1991. "Alphabets, Old Coptic". In The Coptic Encyclopedia, edited by Aziz S. Atiya. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Volume 8. 41–45.

External links

The Coptic Alphabet (omniglot.com)
Michael Everson's Revised proposal to add the Coptic alphabet to the BMP of the UCS
Download Free Coptic Fonts
Ifao N Copte - A professional Coptic Unicode font for researchers, students and publishers has been developed by the French institute of oriental archeology (IFAO). Unicode, Mac and PC compatible, this free font is available through downloading from the IFAO website (direct link).
Coptic Unicode fonts ; Coptic fonts made by Laurent Bourcellier & Jonathan Perez, type designers

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