Coptic Language (from Greek Aigyptos, meaning “Egypt,” by way of Arabic qubt), the final phase of the Egyptian language. It is a member of the Egyptian branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family and has borrowings from Greek and various Semitic languages. Coptic at first existed alongside demotic Egyptian, which was the accepted literary language of Egypt from about 700 bc to ad 400. This literary Egyptian was written in demotic script, a cursive form of writing that had replaced the simplified hieroglyphs of Egypt’s earlier hieratic script. But the Coptic script outlived demotic and took its place. Unlike earlier forms of Egyptian, Coptic had a true alphabet.

By the 3rd century a Christian literature began to appear in Coptic. Surviving non-Christian Coptic writings from ancient times include a fragment of Plato’s Republic, medical texts, and magical spells. During that era Greek was the language of intellectual circles in Egypt, and so the Greek alphabet was adopted for Coptic. The Coptic alphabet was expanded by seven letters taken from demotic Egyptian. Because of its use of the Greek alphabet, Coptic is the only phase of the Egyptian language written in a way that makes the pronunciation clear to modern scholars.

Coptic was to some extent supplanted by Arabic between the 8th and the 14th centuries. It is preserved today as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church. Most of the surviving Coptic texts are religious works translated from the Greek. The only works originally written in Coptic are Gnostic and Manichaean texts, and a vast number of letters, sermons, and treaties written by Shenoute, the abbot of the so-called White Monastery at Sohag, near Akhmīm.

Coptic resembles demotic Egyptian except that in Coptic many non-Christian terms have been replaced by religious terms of Greek origin. Scholars usually recognize five Coptic dialects, of which Sahidic was the classical or standard dialect. Others are Bohairic, Al Fayyūmic, Akhmīmic, and Sub-Akhmīmic. Efforts have been made to have Bohairic taught in some schools.