Pachomius and his milieu The writings of Pachomius the Great and his milieu form a distinctive body of work that was early translated into Greek. It is preserved on
scrolls and
rolls of the 4th to 6th centuries, often made with recycled parchment or papyrus. Pachomius' rules for communal monastic living, inspired in part by his
Roman military background, were a major influence on European monasticism. His literary influence, however, was relatively meagre. Besides his rules and letters, there are also letters of his disciples
Theodorus of Tabennese and
Horsiesi. Horsiesi also wrote a book, known as the
Liber Orsiesii, in which the Pachomian style attains its most literary form. He also wrote a set of rules. Both Pachomius and Horsiesi make use of the "spiritual alphabet", an alphabetic cipher. Two later and anonymous texts belong to the Pachomian tradition, the
Apocalypse of
Kiarur and the
Visit of Horsiesi (which may have been originally written in Greek). A biography of Pachomius, originally written in Coptic, survives in a later Bohairic version and in translations in Greek, Latin and Arabic.
Shenoute and his milieu The monk
Shenoute (died 465), head of the White Monastery, was "perhaps the most prolific writer" in the Coptic language. He is its "one truly remarkable individual author", whose writing is by far "its most sophisticated". He raised Coptic to the rank of literary language. He was, however, almost unknown outside the Coptic tradition. His works were never translated into Greek. They were gradually brought to the attention of western scholars between about 1750 and 1900. Shenoute made unprecedented use of features of Coptic grammar not directly translatable into Greek. His writing is highly literary and often difficult. He received a classical education in
rhetoric and was influenced by the Greek style of the
Second Sophistic. He quotes extensively from the Bible, especially the
wisdom books, the
Gospels and the
Pauline epistles. In one place, he quotes
The Birds of
Aristophanes. He wrote treatises against Gnosticism, Manichaeism,
Origenism and
Melitianism. Shenoute's writings are divided into two collections, the nine-volume
Canons, which are addressed to his monastic community and mainly concern discipline, and the eight-volume
Discourses, which are addressed to outsiders and mainly concern ethics. His letters are a separate collection that may not have been supervised by him. This tripartite classification was apparently made by him. He also prohibited his works from being disseminated outside his monastic federation, limiting their impact. They were, however, highly revered there, since the manuscript tradition reveals very few variants, indicating that they were treated almost on par with the Bible. His influence on Coptic literature may extend beyond his own writings, if his monastery was also the site of many translations of Greek works, as Tito Orlandi has argued. Shenoute was succeeded as head of the White Monastery by
Besa. Several of his letters and sermons, written in Shenoutean style, survive. His work is less colourful than his predecessor's although equally refined. Besa's writings, unlike Shenoute's, belong mainly to the period after the
Council of Chalcedon (451). Shenoute's biography, the
Vita Sinuthii, has been falsely attributed to Besa. It is a collection of various stories of independent and anonymous authorship and questionable historical value.
Magic There are approximately 600 surviving magical or ritual manuscripts in Coptic from between the 4th and 12th centuries. Coptic magic originates as translations from the
Greek tradition. The vast majority of manuscripts come from a Christian milieu. Many of the texts probably date to the period of Coptic literary creativity in the 6th century (often associated with Patriarch
Damian of Alexandria). The copying and composition of magical texts in Coptic declined with the rise of Arabic and Islam. Texts ceased to be produced in the 12th century.
Later literature Coptic writing after 451 is mostly
non-Chalcedonian, theologically
miaphysite and hence isolate from the Chalcedonian mainstream. Important writers from the latter half of the 5th century include
Paul of Tamma,
Paphnute,
Makarius of Tkow and Patriarch
Timothy II of Alexandria. The next most pivotal moment in Coptic history after Chalcedon was the
Arab conquest of Egypt in 641, which placed the Copts under
Islamic rule and introduced Arabic. Its immediate impact on Coptic literature, however, was small. Important Coptic writers from the latter half of the 7th century include the Patriarchs
Benjamin I and
Agathon,
Samuel of Qalamun,
Isaac of Qalamun,
John of Nikiu and
Menas of Nikiu. Official documents and correspondence were sometimes written in Coptic into the
Abbasid period in the late 8th century. Coptic seems to have been in decline as a literary language by the early 9th century, since few original works later than that can be attributed to a named author. For reasons not fully understood, it was moribund as a language of original composition by the 11th century. Much Coptic literature is now lost, as the Copts began to use Arabic. Texts such as the
Apocalypse of Samuel of Kalamoun deplore the loss of Coptic, but are themselves now only extant in Arabic.
Coptic in Arabic William Worrell argues that Coptic went through three stages in its contact with Arabic. First, it borrowed the odd Arabic word. Second, while still a living language, some texts were written in Arabic but in Coptic script. Finally, after having been completely supplanted as the spoken language by Arabic, Coptic was rendered as needed in
Arabic script. A major movement to translate Coptic works into Arabic began around 1000 or shortly before and lasted into the 13th century. Many bilingual church texts with Bohairic on the left and Arabic on the right are a product of this period. During the period of translation, Coptic was still widely and deeply understood. In the 13th–14th centuries, as knowledge of Coptic declined, grammars of the language, called "prefaces", and word lists, called "ladders", were written in Arabic to help priests read and pronounce Coptic. ==Relation to earlier Egyptian literature==