THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

“Early Coptic”, and as a working hypothesis we should look to Ptolemaic times,
especially the later period of Ptolemaic rule when a significant number of Greeks
were becoming Egyptianised to a quite remarkable degree, for the sort of deep
Graeco-Egyptian cultural fusion which would have generated the impetus to create a
systematic script for spoken Egyptian employing the Greek alphabet.
The Early Coptic period, as I am defining it, is contemporaneous with the rise
and fall of Demotic which for 1000 years was the written language of Egypt (ca. 650
B.C.E. - 450 C.E.). 17
During the main development of Coptic, Demotic was the script
in use among Egyptians. This cursive script, descended from Hieratic, continued on in
use until the final phases of Early Coptic (100 B.C.E. - 384 C.E.) and so we have the
interesting phenomenon of two radically different scripts for the same language
existing side by side during late Ptolemaic and Roman times. 18
A study of Demotic material from the Ptolemaic Period, much of it as yet
unpublished, shows that the Egyptian language attained vigorous expression in this
written form, both in the quantity of the texts which have come down to us, and in the
broad array of its textual applications. 19
What interests us is the overlap of Greek and
Demotic in a bilingualised Ptolemaic social stratum, and I would cite but one example
from many. 20
Greeks Overseas, 129f. The date of 384 C.E. marks the closing down of the temples of
Egypt by the decree of Theodosius, which signalled the end of Egyptian “paganism.”
17
See Lewis, Life in Egypt under Roman Rule, 82: “Demotic... began to fade in the second
century, though vestiges are at hand for some two hundred years after that.” See also W.E.H.
Cockle’s article, “State Archives in Graeco-Roman Egypt from 30 BC to the Reign of
Septimius Severus,” JEA 70 (1984): 106-122, in which archival records in Greek and
Demotic are examined. Also, Janet H. Johnson, The Demotic Verbal System (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1976), 1, dates the rise of Demotic to the reign of
Psammetichus I (ca. 664-610). Since the last extant cohesive Demotic text is dated to the
third century I am using this as well to define the end of the Early Coptic period, in
conjunction with Theodosius’ decree, for it is at this point that Coptic begins overtake
Demotic as the written language of the vulgate.
18
There were, of course, even more variants in limited use during this period, specifically
Ptolemaic, a vibrant renaissance in temple hieroglyphic, and some forms of hieratic as noted
by Clement: “Those instructed among the Egyptians learn first of all the genre of Egyptian
letters which is called ‘epistolographic’; secondly, the ‘hieratic’ genre which is used by the
sacred scribes; finally and in the last place, the ‘hieroglyphic’ genre, which partly expresses
things literally by means of primary letters and which is partly symbolical. In the symbolical
method, one kind speaks ‘literally’ by imitation, a second kind writes as it were
metaphorically, and a third one is outright allegorical by means of certain enigmas.”
Stromata V 4, 20.3; fragment 20D, from Pieter Willem van der Horst, Chaeremon: Egyptian
Priest and Stoic Philosopher (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984), 35. Diodorus Siculus writing in the
first century B.C.E., mentions the fact that Egyptian priests were, at this time, still teaching
their sons the hieroglyphic or hieratic script (referred to as “sacred”, along with Demotic);
Diodorus Siculus I, 81.1-6.
19
Besides a large array of prosaic (largely legal and economic) texts, we have the genre of
Egyptian wisdom literature in its final phase, written in Demotic. See Miriam Lichtheim,
Late Egyptian Wisdom Literature in the International Context (Freiburg, Switzerland:
Universitätsverlag, 1983).
20
I am drawing primarily from Lewis, Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt, 124-39.