THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

There was certainly a lag between their development in the spoken language
and their appearance in the written language, in Demotic as throughout
Egyptian history. Thus by the Roman period much Demotic was probably
archaic. But some of the innovations did make their way into the written
language. With the adoption of a radical new script for Coptic, there was no
need to preserve archaic forms, and there certainly was a break. 41
Coptic in its inception was never a transliteration of Demotic which remained the
script of arch-conservatism and bureaucracy in Egypt. Above all we sense a
fundamentally pragmatic concern with writing Egyptian as it currently sounded which
was always a problem, a corollary that was no longer practicable within the
consonantal ambiguities of Demotic. 42 Following Sethe and Johnson, I conclude that
there was a difference in the phonetic basis for both scripts. The sociological factors
which created the need for Coptic ensured that it would develop as its own dialectical
entity to a large extent; as the communities involved (Graeco-Egyptian and the more
purely Egyptian) thought differently about things, their written language ineluctably
reflected these differences.
Throughout the critical period of the Early Coptic phase, ca. 200 B.C.E.
onwards, the development of Coptic would have been prompted for reasons of
expediency. For one, the employment of Egyptian with the Greek alphabet allowed
the native language to be effectively taught to Greek-speaking peoples. Complete
familiarity with an alphabet creates an immediate window into a language, and if the
modern mind finds Demotic difficult it is for reasons similar to those faced by the
Ptolemaic Greeks: the Demotic script is entirely foreign. This motive would have
been shared by both Greeks and Egyptians who were desirous of having specific
modes of Egyptian religious thought disseminated.
Philological and linguistic work is to be associated with Alexandria, in
particular her libraries, there as in no other city in Egypt. 43
If this “old” and “new”
split is to have any validity, the rise of Coptic must be associated with Lower Egypt
where Greek literary influence was at its strongest, specifically the heterodox
41
Johnson, The Demotic Verbal System, 301.
42
Johnson, The Demotic Verbal System, 15. In analysing the Leiden Demotic magical
Papyrus, Johnson notes the marked changes in transformational rules – the appearance of a
new rule, the deletion of an old one, changes in order, “generalisation” of old rules, etc. –
achieved by “relaxing the environmental restrictions for its application.” This “relaxation”, I
would suggest, amounted to a cultural openness to the extent of allowing Greek to provide
for a more utilitarian linguistic vehicle – i.e., its alphabet – while ensuring that its
incorporation would not radically alter the tenor of spoken Egyptian beyond the writing of it.
43
In fact the library was in close proximity to the great temple in Alexandria, thus creating the
ideal conditions for religious, philosophical, and scientific cross-fertilisation. “Next door to
the Alexandrian Sarapeum was the great University: the cult of Sarapis and the
establishment of the Library and the Museum were alike due to Ptolemy I. The Library was
to overflow into the Temple and the links were to remain inseparable until the final
onslaught by the Christians.” Witt, Isis in the Graeco-Roman, 190.