Coptic and Ethiopic Historical Writing

This chapter focuses on how the Christians of Egypt and Ethiopia were closely connected by ecclesiastical bonds for nearly 1,700 years. The connection lasted from the time when Ethiopia's first bishop was consecrated by the Patriarch of Alexandria in the 340s, until the dependence of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church on the Coptic Orthodox Church ended formally in 1951. As a consequence of this long allegiance of the former Church to the latter, contacts in the cultural sphere developed strongly. The chapter shows how Coptic literature was written in two languages: in Coptic itself, written in an original alphabet that was based on the Greek, but expanded with seven letters borrowed from the Demotic writing system to represent sounds that did not exist in Greek; and in Arabic, as after about AD 700 Coptic began to lose its position as the language of the Egyptians.