Coptic identity
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Copts have a long history as a significant Christian minority in Egypt, in which Muslim adherents form the majority. Coptic Christians lost their majority status in Egypt after the 14th century and the spread of Islam in the entirety of North Africa.
The question of Coptic identity was never raised before the rise of pan-Arabism under
Studies have showed the ancient Egyptians to be genetically intermediary between the populations of
Copts as Egyptians
In
The word Copt was then adopted in English in the 17th century, from
After the Arab conquest of Egypt, the term Copt became restricted to those Egyptians who remained adhering to the Christian religion.[5]
In their own
Copts take particular pride in their Egyptian identity. Over the centuries, they have always rejected and fought against other identities that foreign rulers attempted to force upon them, stressing their own Egyptian identity.[6] While an integral part of their society, Copts remained culturally and religiously distinct from their surroundings.
Coptic Greeks
It is estimated that as much as 30 percent of the population of Faiyum was Greek during the
By the Roman period, much of the "Greek" population of Faiyum was made up of either Hellenized Egyptians or people of mixed Egyptian-Greek origins,[8] and by the time of Roman emperor Caracalla in the 2nd century AD, ethnic Egyptians could be distinguished from Egyptian Greeks only by their speech.[9]
Egyptian Greek is the variety of Greek spoken in Egypt from antiquity until the
The following is an example of Egyptian Greek language, used in the
ⲇⲟⲝⲁ ⲡⲁⲧⲣⲓ ⲕⲉ ⲩⲓⲱ: ⲕⲉ ⲁ̀ⲅⲓⲱ ⲡⲛⲉⲩⲙⲁⲧⲓ: ⲕⲉ ⲛⲩⲛ ⲕⲉ ⲁ̀ⲓ̀ ⲕⲉ ⲓⲥ ⲧⲟⲩⲥ ⲉⲱⲛⲁⲥ ⲧⲱⲛ ⲉ̀ⲱ̀ⲛⲱⲛ ⲁ̀ⲙⲏⲛ
Δόξα Πατρὶ κὲ Υἱῷ κὲ Ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι, κὲ νῦν κὲ ἀῒ κὲ ἰς τοὺς ἐῶνας τῶν ἐώνων. Ἀμήν.
Glory to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, both now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
According to Walker, early Ptolemaic Greek colonists married local women and adopted Egyptian religious beliefs, and by Roman times, their descendants were viewed as Egyptians by the Roman rulers, despite their own self-perception of being Greek.[12] The dental morphology of the Roman-period Faiyum mummies was also compared with that of earlier Egyptian populations, and was found to be "much more closely akin" to that of ancient Egyptians than to Greeks or other European populations.[13][14] Victor J. Katz notes that "research in papyri dating from the early centuries of the common era demonstrates that a significant amount of intermarriage took place between the Greek and Egyptian communities".[15]
Egyptian Liberal Age
Egypt's struggle for independence from both the
Rise of Arab nationalism
Arab nationalism began to gain grounds in Egypt in the 1940s following efforts by Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese intellectuals.[19] Nevertheless, by the end of the 1940s and even after the establishment of the Arab League, historian H. S. Deighton was still writing that "Egyptians are not Arabs, and both they and the Arabs are aware of this fact".[1]
It was not until the
Copts and Arab identity
While some non-Coptic authors claim that Copts in Egypt have an Arab identity while Copts in the West tend to identify as "non-Arab",[21][22] other non-Coptic scholars disagree, stating that "Copts are not Arabs" and that they predate the Arabs' arrival to Egypt [23][24]
They viewed Arabs as invaders and foreigners, and glorified the struggles of their ancestors against the Arab invaders between the 7th and the 9th centuries AD. Indubitably, the struggle against these foreign ideologies centered around the Coptic language:
The Coptic language provides a Copt with an identity that spells out an impressive commentary upon the character of such person. It exemplifies in him an unyielding spirit that was tried and came out victorious. A spirit that had to endure endless attempts by those that ruled Egypt for the past 2300 years to replace such language with that of their own. If such was achieved then they can subject the Copts to cultural and religious slavery that would forever made them subservient to such foreign rulers. It was attempted first by the Greeks, through their Hellenizing approach. Then it was continued along the same principles by the successive Arab and Muslim dynasties that ruled Egypt since the 7th century AD. The significance of such character can also inspire the Coptic youth to fight off the many harmful pressures, whether in spirit or in body, that are facing them in this turbulent Society of ours.[25]
In addition, some Copts resisted Arab nationalism by stressing their pre-Arab identity. They saw themselves as the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians, and their language as a bridge linking the Copts to their Ancient Egyptian roots and their civilization that span over 6,000 years.[25]
The strongest statement regarding Coptic identity came in 2008 from a prominent Coptic bishop, namely Bishop Thomas of Cusae and Meir, who gave the following speech at the Hudson Institute:
What makes a person change the identity of his own nation and shift the focus of his identity from Egypt to become "the Arabs", even though ethnically he/she is the same person? The Copts have been always focused on Egypt; it's our identity, it's our nation, it's our land, it's our language, it's our culture. But when some of the Egyptians converted to
Islamizationas well is a dilemma that started and is still carrying a lot of the problems. [...] So when we hear the word "Copt", that doesn't only mean "Christian", it means "Egyptian".
What makes an Egyptian become a Copt, and an Egyptian not become a Copt? Simply, this is the shift that has happened in Egypt since the
Church will carry the responsibility to take in this heritage and work with it, keeping it in a very good nursery till the time would come when openness and good thinking would occur, when this country will come back to its own roots and lift it up. But, until then we have to keep it in a nursery, in a church. We don't want to keep it in, we don't want to isolate it, but we cannot throw it away so nobody will take care of it. That's why we keep it. This is not withdrawal. We could say that this is keeping the heritage in a nursery till the time comes when it will be open and serve the entire Egyptian community. So the word "Copt" here is not only religious, but it has cultural import.[26]
Bishop Thomas' words gained widespread approval within the Coptic community. One other Coptic bishop, namely Bishop Picenti of
If one reconsiders Bishop Thomas' words, they can discover that he was not wrong. He said that Copts of Egypt are not of Arab origin but rather of Pharaonic origin, and this is correct because it is the truth and history. We are Coptic Egyptians. We are Pharaonic Copts. Coptic meaning ancient Egyptian who then converted to christianity. Copt, is essentially another term for Coptic christians.[27]
Other prominent Coptic figures who supported Bishop Thomas' statement included the Coptic writer Magdy Khalil who wrote in el-Dostoor newspaper:
We [the Copts] are Egyptians, and we are not Arabs, with all due respect to the Arabs. We may live in some sort of cultural Arabism and we may speak Arabic, but we are not Arabs. This is a historical fact, whether some people like it or not. Copts both within Egypt and in the diaspora are insulted and accused because they insist on holding strongly to and taking pride in their national Egyptian identity, rather than having another identity that crosses the borders [of Egypt]. The Copts focus their identity on Egypt's geographical borders, which are deeply rooted in history. [28]
See also
References
- ^ a b Deighton, H. S. "The Arab Middle East and the Modern World", International Affairs, vol. xxii, no. 4 (October 1946), p. 519.
- ^ Deighton, H. S. "The Arab Middle East and the Modern World", International Affairs, vol. xxii, no. 4 (October 1946)
- ^ Klales, A. R. (2014). "Computed Tomography Analysis and Reconstruction of Ancient Egyptians Originating from the Akhmim Region of Egypt: A Biocultural Perspective". MA Thesis. University of Manitoba. [1] Archived 2017-03-11 at the Wayback Machine
- PMID 26017457.
- ^ "The people of Egypt before the Arab conquest in the 7th century identified themselves and their language in Greek as Aigyptios (Arabic qibt, Westernized as Copt); when Egyptian Muslims later ceased to call themselves Aigyptioi, the term became the distinctive name of the Christian minority." Coptic Orthodox Church. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2007
- ^ Werthmuller, Kurt J. Coptic Identity and Ayyubid Politics in Egypt 1218–1250. American University in Cairo Press. 2009
- ^ a b Bagnall, op cit.
- ^ Bagnall, pp. 28–29
- ^ qtd. in Alan K. Bowman, Egypt after the Pharaohs, 332 BC – AD 642, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, p. 126: "genuine Egyptians can easily be recognized among the linen-weavers by their speech."
- ^ Lennart Sundelin; Petra Sijpesteijn (2004). Papyrology and the History of Early Islamic Egypt. Brill. p. 165.
- ^ Lennart Sundelin; Petra Sijpesteijn (2020). Varieties of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek. De Gruyter. p. 447.
- ^ Walker, Susan, op cit., p. 24
- ^ Dentition helps archaeologists to assess biological and ethnic population traits and relationships
- ^ Irish JD (2006). "Who were the ancient Egyptians? Dental affinities among Neolithic through postdynastic peoples.". Am J Phys Anthropol 129 (4): 529-43
- ISBN 0-321-01618-1: "But what we really want to know is to what extent the Alexandrian mathematicians of the period from the first to the fifth centuries C.E. were Greek. Certainly, all of them wrote in Greek and were part of the Greek intellectual community of Alexandria. And most modern studies conclude that the Greek community coexisted [...] So should we assume that Ptolemy and Diophantus, Pappus and Hypatiawere ethnically Greek, that their ancestors had come from Greece at some point in the past but had remained effectively isolated from the Egyptians? It is, of course, impossible to answer this question definitively. But research in papyri dating from the early centuries of the common era demonstrates that a significant amount of intermarriage took place between the Greek and Egyptian communities [...] And it is known that Greek marriage contracts increasingly came to resemble Egyptian ones. In addition, even from the founding of Alexandria, small numbers of Egyptians were admitted to the privileged classes in the city to fulfill numerous civic roles. Of course, it was essential in such cases for the Egyptians to become "Hellenized," to adopt Greek habits and the Greek language. Given that the Alexandrian mathematicians mentioned here were active several hundred years after the founding of the city, it would seem at least equally possible that they were ethnically Egyptian as that they remained ethnically Greek. In any case, it is unreasonable to portray them with purely European features when no physical descriptions exist."
- ^ Makropoulou, Ifigenia. Pan – Arabism: What Destroyed the Ideology of Arab Nationalism? Hellenic Center for European Studies. January 15, 2007. Archived October 2, 2018, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Jankowski, James. "Egypt and Early Arab Nationalism" in Rashid Khalidi, ed. The Origins of Arab Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990, pp. 244–45
- ^ Syrian Arab nationalist Sati' al-Husri qtd in Dawisha, Adeed. Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton University Press. 2003, p. 99
- ^ Jankowski, "Egypt and Early Arab Nationalism," p. 246
- ^ Dawisha, pp. 264–65, 267
- ISBN 978-0-8143-2812-5.
- S2CID 143826025.
- ^ Prof. Constantine Gutzman, Chair of the Department of History at Western Connecticut State University: "Copts are not Arabs. Rather, they are the people who lived in Egypt before the Arabs arrived. The pharaohs were Copts, as were St. Athanasius and St. Anthony."
- ^ Washington Post: Copts are not Arabs. January 4, 1994
- ^ a b Takla, Hany. The Value of Coptic, The Ecclesiastical and Coptic Principles. Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite Society for Coptic Studies. 02/10/1996
- ^ Bishop Thomas of Cusae and Meir. Egypt's Coptic Christians: The Experience of the Middle East's largest Christian community during a time of rising Islamization. July 18, 2008
- ^ Ranya Badawi. An interview with Bishop Pecenti of Helwan and Massarah. El-Masry El-Yom Newspaper. November 11, 2009
- ^ Khalil, Magdy. Copts are truly facing a problem of Islamization, and what Bishop Thomas said was said before by many Egyptian intellectuals. In el-Dostoor newspaper. 08/17/2008 Archived 2009-02-20 at the Wayback Machine