Coptic alphabet: Encyclopedia - Coptic alphabet

Coptic alphabet

Middle Bronze Age 19-15th c. BC

• Proto-Canaanite 14th c. BC
  • Ugaritic 13th c. BC
  • Phoenician 11th c. BC
    • Samaritan 6th c. BC
    • Aramaic 9th c. BC
      • Brāhmī 4th c. BC
      • Hebrew 3rd c. BC
      • Syriac 2nd c. BC
      • Avestan 3th c.
      • Arabic 4th c.
    • Greek 8th c. BC
      • Old Italic 8th c. BC
        • Latin 7th c. BC
        • Runes 2nd c.
      • Gothic 4th c.
      • Armenian 405
      • Glagolitic 862
      • Cyrillic 10th c.
    • Iberian
      • Celtiberian
  • South Arabian 9th c. BC
    • Ge'ez 3rd-4th c.

The Coptic alphabet is an alphabet used for writing the Coptic language. It is based on the Greek alphabet, but contains some extra letters for sounds used in Coptic but not in Greek. Those letters are derived from the Demotic script, a highly cursive writing system used to write the Egyptian language.

The Coptic alphabet came into general use in Egypt during the 4th century AD. It 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 Coptic alphabet did not appear overnight. There was 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 magicial 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 Old Nubian alphabet—used to write the Old Nubian language [unrelated to the Coptic language]—is written mainly in a uncial Greek alphabet, but it borrows Coptic and Meroitic letters of Demotic origin into its inventory. It is often, though incorrectly, thought that Old Nubian used the entire Coptic alphabet directly, but this is not the case.

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 ... U+2CFF. See also: Coptic block in Unicode (PDF), Greek block in Unicode (PDF) (which includes 7 Coptic letters derived from Demotic, and need to be included in any complete implementation of Coptic).

Coptic alphabet - Alphabet table

Note: the letter sou was used only for its numerical value, 6.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Coptic alphabet", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki