Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/422

 842 NOETH-EAST AFEICA. make them be regarded as Mussulman converts. Formerly the men were dis- tinguished by the colour of their turban, the women by that of their veil, from the Mohammedan fellahin ; and even then the Copts would often afPect the white turban and general costume of their neighbours, in order to command greater personal consideration. At present there are one himdred and twenty Coptic churches in the various provinces ; but in many districts where the Copts are no longer found, the ruins of religious edifices attest the survival of Christianity down to comparatively recent times. The Christian communities are now once more normally increasing by the natural excess of births over deaths ; for the Copts, who usually marry later than the other Egyptians, pay more regard to the family ties, and bestow greater care on their children. But if the religion of Mohammed has failed to triumph over that of the cross, the language of the Arab Mussulmans now everywhere prevails in Egypt. The old Coptic tongue, which has afforded the key to the interpretation of the hierogly- phics, thus restoring the speech of the Pharaohs, from which it differs little, is no longer anywhere current. Most of the Copts learn the ancient language only for the purpose of reciting the prayers of a liturgy the sense of which they do not always understand. Some of their religious books are even now written in Arabic. The Coptic writing system is merely a modified form of the Greek alphabet, to which have been added a few letters borrowed from the cursive or demotic forms of the national hieroglyphic writing. The oldest document in the Coptic language dates from the middle of the third century of the vulgar era ; in the tenth century it was still currently spoken by all Egyptians except their rulers. But since the seventeenth century Arabic has become the general language throughout Eg3rpt, although a great number of old Egyptian terms still survive in the local dialects. Ancient rites, undoubtedly long anteiior to the introduction of the foreign religions, have also been maintained among the Copts. Thus their tombs are still built in the form of houses, and each family continues to assemble once a year in the mausoleum for a funeral banquet. One of the names frequently given at baptism is Menas, which recalls that of Mena or Menes, true or pretended founder of the first Eg}*ptian dynasty. Those of the Copts who have received some education usually display a remark- able talent for keeping accounts and managing money matters. They are the worthy descendants of those ancient Retu whose day-books, and ledgers, and treatises on arithmetic, with sums in fractions, rules of partnership in business, equations of the first degree, have recently been brought to light.* Under the government of the Mameluks the administration of the finances was entirely in the hands of the Copts, who by means of a specially devised sj-^stem of book-keeping had rendered the public accounts so incomprehensible to all others, that they had secured an absolute monopoly of this department. But the introduction oi European financial methods, and especially the continually increasing immigration of the Syrian Catholics, no less skilful intriguers and even more instructed, with a wider • The "Rhind Papyrus" in the British Museum.