Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/385

Rh the last stage of ancient Egyptian civilization, and that in use at the time of the Romans. In the course of centuries the old Egyptian rapidly changed, especially at the time of th3 19th dynasty, when foreign conquests and high civiliza tion had introduced into it a number of Semitic words, principally of the Aramaean family. This continued till the time of the 26th dynasty, or about the 7th century B.C., when the old forms had almost died out, and not only a great number of new words but also a difference of struc ture appeared in the Egyptian, which approached more nearly to the modern Coptic. This continued till the Ptolemies, under whose government a fresh infusion of words (many of them Greek) considerably altered the language, as they displaced the ancient words, and some nev grammatical forms appeared ; a considerable difference took place in the prefixes and affixes at that period. After the conversion of Egypt to Christianity the old demotic alphabet fell into disuse, and another was sub stituted twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet, to which were added seven others, supposed to be borrowed from the older demotic to represent sounds not found iu the Greek. The language was written in this character from the end of the 4th or beginning of the 5th century, in all works relating to Christianity, and in this con dition has been handed down to the present day in three different dialects, called the Sahidic or that of Upper Egypt, the Memphitic or that spoken in the neighbourhood of Memphis, and the Bashmuric or dialect of the Lake Menzaleh and its environs. Great difference of opinion has prevailed as to the relative antiquity of these dialects, some considering the Memphitic and others the Sahidic to be the most ancient. The Sahidic is softer than the Memphitic, has none of the harder aspirations, and is more intermixed with Greek. It chiefly differs, however, in construction and the use of vowels. The Bashmuric is intermediate between the two, but is softer than the Memphitic, and one great peculiarity is the use of I for r } which last letter was not known to the ancient Egyptians. The Coptic or Egyptian was in use at the 9th century, but had ceased to be intelligible in Middle Egypt in the 12th. It survived, however, as a spoken dialect till the 17th, an old man who spoke it having died only in 1633. In the Coptic Church, however, it is still in use for the religious services, and is read, although not understood except by an Arabic interpretation or glossary. It is partly studied by the Copts, and an attempt to revive the ancient language was made by the missionary Lieder at Cairo, who founded schools within the last half century. The discovery of the mode of reading hieroglyphs has rehabilitated the Coptic language, and there is no doubt that it is essentially the same as the Egyptian of the time of the Pyramids, and has retained many words of that and succeeding epochs. Like the Egyptian it is intermediate between the Aryan and Semitic languages in its copia verborum, and partly resembles the Semitic in its construction, in which, however, it is more closely allied to the African languages than the older Egyptian, while it differs greatly in the copia verborum from them. The Psalms and some other portions of the Scriptures had been translated into Coptic as early as Pachomius, 303, and from that time a succession of works, chiefly religious, were compiled in it. The com mencement of the knowledge of Coptic in modern Europe is due to Kircher, who published his Prodromus Coptus in 1636. He was followed by Blumberg, who compiled a grammar, called Fundamenta Linguae Coptkce, in 1716. A Copt, named Tuki, bishop of Arsinoe, gave out another, the Rudimenfa Linguae Copticce, in 1778, in Arabic and Latin, out still in a very uncritical condition. Scholz s grammar, edited by Woide in the same year, was a remarkable work for the time ; in 1783 Calusius published another grammar ; but these chiefly related to the Memphitic dialect, the Sahidic being imperfectly known, and the Bashmuric quite unknown, the first grammar of the three dialects being that of Tattain in 1830. Another more critical grammar, prepared by Champollion, was edited by Rosellirii and Jngarelli, and another by Peyron in 1841, which was succeeded by the work of Schwartze in 1847. The litera ture chiefly consists of religious works, the Pentateuch, Psalms, Kings, minor prophets, and book of Daniel, existing in Coptic, and few fragments in Sahidic of the book of Chronicles, and several unedited portions in that dialect. Besides these several of the apocryphal gospels and some Gnostic works, as the Pistis /Sophia, are found in the same language; the Acts of the Apostles, sermons, homilies, martyrologies, and many liturgical compositions, and Acts of Councils occur. A great mine of this literature is found in the Catalogus Codicum Coptkorum Manuscriptorum in Museo Borgiano, 4to, Ronue, 1810, and other sources. A great number of fragmentary inscriptions on calcareous stone or pottery, chiefly found at Elephantine, exist in the different museums of Europe. Altogether the Coptic literature is not interesting to general students beyond the relation it bears to the ancient Egyptian and its connec tion with exegetical theology.

1em  COPTOS, the modern Kobt or Koft, a town of Egypt, a short distance from the right bank of the Nile, about 25 miles north-east of Thebes. It is a place of great antiquity, as is proved by the name of Thothmes III. still extant en a granite pillar, but its ruins for the most part belong to a comparatively late period. After the foundation of the port of Berenice on the Red Sea in 266 B.C., its position on. the caravan line raised it to great commercial prosperity; but in 292 A.D. its share in the rebellion against Diocletian led to an almost total devastation. It again appears, how ever, as a place of importance, and as the seat of a con siderable Christian community, though the stream of traffic turned aside to the neighbouring Koos. During part of the 7th century it was called Justinianopolis in honour of the Emperor Justinian.  COPYHOLD, in English law, is an ancient form of land tenure, legally defined as a &quot; holding at the will of the lord according to the custom of the manor.&quot; Its origin is to be found in the occupation by villani, or non-freemen, of por tions of land belonging to the manor of a feudal lord. In the time of the Domesday survey the manor was in part granted to free tenants, in part reserved by the lord himself for his own uses. The estate of the free tenants is tho freehold estate of English law ; as tenants of the samo manor they assembled together in manorial court or court baron, of which they were the judges. The portion of tho manor reserved for the lord (the demesne, or domain) waa cultivated by labourers who were bound to the land (adscripti glebce). They could not leave the manor, and their service was obligatory. These villani, however, were allowed by the lord to cultivate portions of land for their own use. It was a mere occupation at the pleasure of the lord, but in course of time it grew into an occupation by right, recognized first of all by custom, and afterwards by law. This kind of tenure is called by the lawyers vilknagium, and it probably marks a great advance in the general recognition of the right when the name is applied to lands held on the same conditions not by villeins but by free men. The tenants in villenage were not, like the free holders, members of the court baron, but they appear to have attended in a humbler capacity, and to have solicited 