Page:EB1911 - Volume 07.djvu/131

Rh were compelled to wear heavy crosses and black turbans as an ignominious distinction. Salaheddin (Saladin) in 1171 reenforced these statutes and defiled the churches. In 1301, the blue turban was introduced, but many Copts preferred a change of religion to the adoption of this head-dress. In 1348 a religious war, attended by the destruction of churches and mosques and great loss of life, raged at Cairo between the Copts and Mahommedans, and large numbers of the former embraced Islam. Their oppression practically ceased under Mehemet Ali (1811).

There have been very few cases of conversion from Mahommedanism to Christianity; and, as intermarriage of Christians with Mahommedans implied conversion to Islam, the Copts have undoubtedly preserved the race of the Egyptians as it existed at the time of the Arab conquest in remarkable purity. The Coptic agricultural population (fellahīn) in the villages of Upper Egypt and elsewhere are not markedly different from the Mahommedan fellahīn, who, of course, are of the same stock, but mixed with Arab blood. The Copts in the towns, who have always been engaged in sedentary occupations, as scribes and handicraftsmen, have a more delicate frame and complexion, and may have mingled with Syrian and Armenian Christians.

According to the 1907 census, there were 667,036 orthodox Copts in Egypt, or less than $1⁄14$th of the total population, this being the same proportion as in 1830, when, according to Lane, they numbered about 150,000. The number of churches and monasteries at the same time had risen from 146 to 450, not including Protestant chapels nor Coptic Catholic churches. At the 1907 census the total number of Christians in Egypt described as Copts was 706,322; among them there were 24,710 Protestants and 14,576 Roman Catholics.

Monogamy is strict among the Copts, and divorce is granted only for adultery. Circumcision of both sexes is common before baptism. In regard to dress, at present only the clergy retain the old distinctive costume and black turban. The rest of the Copts dress exactly like their Moslem brethren, from whom they can be distinguished only by the cross which many of them still have tattooed just below the palm of the right hand. Since the British occupation of the country there has been a tendency amongst the Coptic women to give up the veil, which they had borrowed from the Mahommedans; this is especially noticeable at places like Assiût, where, thanks to the efforts of American missionaries, female education has made much progress.

In trades and professions, so long as the Copts had no foreign competition to contend against, they maintained their supremacy over the rest of the population. They filled government offices; in towns and villages they monopolized trades and professions requiring care and skill. They were the accountants, the architects, the goldsmiths, the carpenters, the land-surveyors, the bonesetters, &c. But, with the extension of railways and agricultural roads and the increased facilities of communication and prosperity, there has been a great influx of Italian, Greek, Armenian and other Levantine workmen, who, with their better tools, are undoubtedly superior to the Copts, and have proved most formidable rivals. Furthermore, the importation of cheap European wares of every description is slowly killing all native industry. Lastly, since the British, as the dominant race, have filled most posts of responsibility in the government, the Moslems, in general, are obliged to content themselves with the subordinate posts which in the past they left to the Copts. Some Copts have attained high office, and in 1908 a Copt became prime minister. Moreover, the Copts have to a certain extent made up for the ground they lose elsewhere by engaging in agriculture and banking, and there are now to be found many rich Coptic landowners and farmers, especially in Upper Egypt.

Language.—The language spoken by the Copts was of various dialects, named Sahidic, Akhmimic, Fayumic, &c., descended from the ancient Egyptian with more or less admixture of Greek (for the Coptic dialects see : Language). Coptic, however, has been entirely extinct as a spoken language for over 200 years, having been supplanted by Arabic; in the 13th century it was already so much decayed that Arabic translations of the liturgies were necessary. The Gospels, however, are still read in the churches in the Bohairic dialect. This dialect appears in literature later than the others, having become of importance only with the extinction of Greek in Lower Egypt; for a time it shared the field with Sahidic, after the disappearance of Akhmimic and Fayumic, but eventually displaced it in the churches, where it now survives alone.

Coptic literature is almost entirely religious, and consists mainly of translations from the Greek. Such was the enthusiasm for Christianity amongst the lower classes in Egypt that translations of the Bible were made into three of the dialects of Coptic before the council of Chalcedon; they probably date back at least as early as the middle of the 4th century. For the dwellers in the Delta the Greek version was probably sufficient, until the break with the Greek (Melkite) Church in the 5th century induced them to make a separate translation in their own native northern or Bohairic dialect. The Gnostic heresy, otherwise known only through the works of its opponents, is illustrated in some Coptic MSS. of the 4th century, the so-called Pistis Sophia or Askew Codex, and the Bruce Codex, respectively in the British Museum and Bodleian Libraries. According to Schmidt and Harnack, they are translations dating from the 3rd century and belong to an ascetic or encratitic sect of the Gnostics which arose in Egypt itself. There is abundance of apocryphal works, of apocalypses, of patristic writings from Athanasius to the council of Chalcedon, homilies, lives of saints and anecdotes of holy men, acts of martyrs extending from the persecution of Diocletian to that of the Persians in the 7th century, and lives of later ascetics and martyrs reaching down to the 14th century. Unless some of the Egyptian acta sanctorum et martyrum should prove to have been originally written in Coptic, almost the only original works in that language of any importance are the numerous sermons and letters of Shenoute, a monk of Atrēpe near Akhmīm, written in the Sahidic dialect in the 4th century. After the Arab conquest, as a defence to the threatened church, language and nationality, versifications of the Proverbs, of Solomon’s Song and of various legends were composed, with other religious songs. They are mostly antiphonal, a number of stresses in a line marking the rhythm. There is no musical notation in the MSS., but traditional church tunes are generally referred to or prescribed for the songs. Of secular literature strangely little existed or at least has survived: only a few magical texts, fragments of a medical treatise, of the story of Alexander, and of a story of the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, are known, apart from numerous legal and business documents.

Coptic was occasionally employed for literary purposes as late as the 14th century, but from the 10th century onward the Copts wrote mostly in Arabic. Severus of Eshmunain (c. 950), who wrote a history of the patriarchs of Alexandria, was one of the first to employ Arabic; Cyril ibn Laklak and others in the 13th and 14th centuries translated much of the older literature from Coptic into Arabic and Ethiopic for the use of the Egyptian and Abyssinian churches. From this period also date the native Coptic grammars and lexicons of Ibn ‛Assal and others. At the present time literature among the Copts is represented by Claudius Labīb, an enthusiast for the revival of the Coptic tongue, Marcus Simaika, a leader of the progressive movement, and others.

The Coptic Church.—Up to the 5th century the church of Alexandria played a part in the Christian world scarcely second to that of Rome: the names of Origen, Athanasius and Cyril bear witness to her greatness. But in the time of the patriarch Dioscorus the church, always fond of speculation, was rent asunder by the controversy concerning the single or twofold nature of our Lord, as stated by Eutyches. The Eutychian doctrine, approved by the council of Ephesus, was condemned by that of Chalcedon in 451. But to this decision, though given by 636 bishops, the Copts refused assent—a refusal which profoundly affected both the religious and the political history of their country. From that moment they were treated as heretics. The emperor appointed a new bishop of Alexandria, whose adherents the Copts styled Melkites or Imperialists, while the