From Illahun to Djeme

Papers Presented in Honour of Ulrich Luft

Edited by

Eszter Bechtold András Gulyás

Andrea Hasznos

BAR International Series 2311 2011

Published by Archaeopress Publishers of British Archaeological Reports Gordon House 276 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7ED England bar@archaeopress.com www.archaeopress.com BAR S2311 From Illahun to Djeme. Papers Presented in Honour of Ulrich Luft © Archaeopress and the individual authors 2011 ISBN 978 1 4073 0894 4 Printed in England by Infomation Press, Oxford All BAR titles are available from: Hadrian Books Ltd 122 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7BP England www.hadrianbooks.co.uk The current BAR catalogue with details of all titles in print, prices and means of payment is available free from Hadrian Books or may be downloaded from www.archaeopress.com

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Towards the end of my undergraduate years at the university (ELTE Budapest), I started contemplating about topics fit for me to write in my final thesis. That is when my beloved professor, Ulrich Luft, kindly intervened and drew my attention to the exciting field of greaco-coptica, which was rather underresearched especially from a syntactic point of view; the topic was indeed fit for me as I majored both Egyptology and classical Greek, and my interest in the field has been growing ever since – I will always be grateful to my professor for this.

Here, I will present a Greek – Coptic glossary (Figures 1 – 2) found at Theban Thomb 65 (in fact in its direct vicinity,

in the forecourt of TT 24) in the 2005 excavation season. The leader of the excavation is Tamás A. Bács.

Inv. No.: 07/I.D/06Provenance: TT-NN-24- Forecourt Material: limestone Size: Ht. 10.2 cm; W. 12.4 cm; Th. 1.8 cmDate: AD 6th – 8th centuriesBibliography: Bács, T.A. – Fábián, Z.I. – Schreiber, G. – Török, L. (eds.), Hungarian Excavations in the Theban Necropolis. A Celebration of 102 Years of Fieldwork in Egypt, Budapest 2009, No. 72, pp. 152-153.

A Greek – Coptic Glossary Found at TT 65

Andrea HasznosAbstract

A very rare and thus precious find was unearthed during the excavations of Theban Tomb 65, led by Tamás A. Bács. It is a Greek-Coptic glossary, arranged by topics, one being catachesis, the other baptism. It is in a fairly good condition with most of the words present, some missing.

Keywords

ostracon, glossary, Greek, Coptic, bilingual, Western Thebes, monastic

Fig. 1 greek-CoptiC glossary: reCto Fig. 2 greek-CoptiC glossary: verso

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Content: Greek – Coptic Glossary

Description: The ostracon is fully written on both sides; in the middle on the upper part a piece broke out, and left and right sides are also broken; nevertheless, quite a large surface with well visible letters remains; the surface of the stone is damaged in some places. The letters are black written in an experienced, majuscule hand with some ligatures, the characters are fairly regularly sized, but B is always larger, recto and verso are written by one and the same hand.

In the glossary, the Greek word comes first with the definitie article, followed by the Coptic equivalent also with the definite article; the text was designed in four columns: Greek-Coptic / Greek-Coptic, but the second pair of words is less ordered, words are written above rather than next to one another; on the verso this happens also in the first two columns; when space was not enough, parts of a word were written above the first half of the word.

Text and translation:

Greek Coptic English translationrecto1. h kathy’É[hsi]s instruction, catechesis2. o eudok[…] pentafRxnaf what is desired, right3. to asugyh[to]n pattwx unmixed, unmingled4. h eudokia pouwš will, desire5. o analloiwtos pat¥ibe unaltered; unchangeable6. to dedo3asmenon pentafjieoou something that is glorified7. h akatasyetos tetemeueškateye[mmos] inapprehensible (fem!)8. to zwopoion preftanxo life-giver9. o do3a[… …]+eoou glorify(ing?)10. [o] anamarthtos patnobe sinless, innocent11. h eucaths psooun straightness, rightfulness12. to parado3on petxašphre unexpected, miraculous13. M[ ?14. o tromos pstwt trembling15. aryei[16. o Ierary[hs leading person17. h eudokia tmntRxnaf willing, desire18. to e3aiton pettaeihu honoured, excellent19. etm[

20. o prodromos forerunner, precursor21. h vcoggh pxroou voice22. to kurugma ptašeoei[š preaching, proclamation23. o osic kuru3 preftaše[oeiš messenger24. h yarmosunh pr[aše gladness, joy25. to y[

verso1. b]aptisceis baptized person2. h kata!’3iw[sis pen[t appreciation3. h av]esis pkwebol remission; forgiveness4. ]apmoou

5. vwtisc]eis pentafjiouoein the one who got light (by baptism)6. o loutr[on pjw]km washing, cleansing; baptizing7. kolumbh]cra pmaNbaptize baptismal tank, place of baptizing8. ]on

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Greek Coptic English translation9. h agi[wsunh] tmntpetouaab saintness, holiness10. pjpo Nkesop rebirth11. to vwtisma pouoein light, enlightenment12. p]entafRbrRe he who became new/young13. o kata3iwsa[s pentafRpM¥a who became/was worthy of14. N]brre ?15. h epouranios pamphue heavenly; belonging to the sky16. ]ex etouaab holy; pure17. to ane3alipton patfwte ineffaceable18. o svragisc[eis sealed, stamped19. h svragis seal; sign20. to e3orkismos ]tarko[ exorcism; adjuring, oath

Notes on the text:

r3: the word originally reads a)su/gxutonr11: the Greek and Coptic words correctly read eu)qu/thj and sooutn respectivelyr22: the Greek word originally reads kh/rugmar23: kh=ruc v4: the Coptic word might be papmoou ’he who belongs to water’ in the sense ’baptized’, and be a translation for baptisceis in line v1?v6: the Greek word is neutrum tÙ loutro/nv20: the Greek word is a masculinum o( e)corkismo/j

Commentary:

On both sides of the ostracon, the first word is left without a Coptic equivalent. On the recto it is h kathy’É[hsi]s, on the verso o b]aptisceis. It seems very probable that these two words indicate the topic of the words to be listed in Greek and Coptic, they act as a kind of title, as indeed on the recto the words are in connection with ’catechesis’ (though sometimes this connection is not clear) and on the verso all are related to ’baptism; being baptized’. Baptism is a highly important sacrament in Christianity; it is the rebirth, the enlightenment when the new person is born, all the sins are erased and forgiven; as Vorbilder in the Old Testament one might recite Moses in Ex 17,6 and Ex 14, 21-22 referring to that is 1 Cor 10,1-2.

r4: This equivalence is attested for example in Rm 10,1 and further in the Apocryphon of John BG 34,12 ff. and NH III 12,20 has the Greek word meaning ’good will’ whereas NH II 8,24 has the Coptic ouw¥e; in BG 37,8 and NH III 15,1 teudokia corresponds to NH II 9,34 pouw¥; as verb eudoki in Ap Jo NH III 14, 19 ’approve’ see also NH II; as verb: Mt 3,17: e)n w=(? eu)do/khsa; S: penta paouw¥

¥wpe xrai nxhtF M: pecaierxnei xrhi nxhtf (’This is my one dear Son;) in him I take great delight.’

r16: The Greek word is used to describe ’one who directs in the sphere of the holy’, it can refer to angels, bishops, priests, see LD 668b-669a. The Coptic equivalent, which could help specify the meaning, is unfortunately missing.

r20: In general, this word may refer to John the Baptist, naturally as forerunner of Jesus, also to St. John Evangelist as ’pioneer of doctrine of Logos’, and also to ’Christ as man’s precursor into heaven’, cf. LD 1144a-b. In this context, however, it is very probably John the Baptist, Forerunner of Christ; among the Greek texts found in the neighbouring Epiphanius monastery, three written on pottery ostraca (texts 598, 599, 601) contain this word, and each of them is about John the Baptist (Crum – Evelyn White, 1926, 132 and 315-316.)

r23: In this context kh=ruc definitely refers to ’a person who brings the gospel (euangelion)’, the evangelist as ta¥eoei¥, the basic element of the Coptic equivalent, refers to euangelion.

v5: the Greek word must be vwtisceis; it means just the same, it could be a precise equivalent as other texts prove it. The equivalence jiouoein = fwti/zw is supported by CD 481 a, referring to Heb 6,4 where exactly the Greek passive aorist participle and Coptic substantivized relative form can be found: toäj a(/pac fwtisqe/ntaj – nentaujiouoein Nousop

v10: see Jn 3, 4-7. ’Rebirth’ always refers to baptism, the start of a new, Christian life (see Tit 3,5-6; and John Chrysostom refers to it as ’bath of rebirth’ (Baptismal Instructions, Wenger, 1957).

v11: In Christian context this term also has a strong connection to baptism, see CD 481a; the strong association

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of baptism with ’light/enlightenment/coming to light’ is present all through the early Christian literature (see for example Gregory of Nazianz, Oration 39)

v12: The word refers most probably to the ’new man/person’ who is born after baptism, see John 3, 4-7

v18: The verb sfragi/zw may refer to the procedure of baptism, especially to the ’baptismal consignation with chrism’ (after water) (LD 1355a); here it most probably has the meaning ‘baptized; given the sign of baptism’.

v19: The noun sfragi/j can also refer to the seal given to Christians in baptism or baptism itself (lD, 1356a-b).

Now, the question as to what might have been the purpose of such a glossary arises. It might have been

1. written by a Greek monk in the monastery who was trying to learn Coptic and for that he wrote down word lists, much the same way as we do nowadays when we write out the new words to be learnt in a vocabulary exercise book. From the monastic lit-erature we know that Greek-speaking visitors and monks did come to monasteries to stay or to visit, and in the Vita Prima (c.94; 63, 4-10 Halkin) of Pa-chom for example, a monk named Theodore, who could speak Greek only, arrived at the monastery and he was lodged in with a monk who mastered both languages until Theodore was able to speak Coptic: kaÌ ou(/twj u(podeca/menoj au)tÙn e)poi/hsen ei=)nai e)n oi)ki/a? para/ tini a)rxai/w? a)delfw?= ei)do/ti t³n e(llhnik³n glw=ssan ei)j paramuqi/an e(/wj ma/qh? a)kou=sai kaÌ t³n qhbaikh/n.

2. or written by a Coptic monk, learning Greek.

These first two ideas imply some kind of self-study, education in some form within the monastery, which is very possible. There is another possible explanation as well, which would better account for the strongly thematic character of the glossary:

3. it might be connected to translation activities: the glossary might have been written after translating several texts and then sorting out the words the-matically. In this case, the order must be indeed 1. catechesis, 2. baptism as the learning phase must be before the receiving of baptism – the two notions and events are really in close connection, putting them on one piece and glossary is logical.

Or, the glossary was compiled while translating one or two concrete text(s), and the text(s) themselves were about catechesis and baptism. In TT 65 and environment no such text has been found so far, however, in the neighbouring Epiphanius monastery three Greek texts were found by Winlock and team in the seasons 1911-12 and 1913-14 and published by Crum (1926), namely numbers 598, 599,

601, which contain Troparia on John the Baptist and on the Baptism of Christ (again mentioning John) – in each the word forerunner occurs, Greek prodromos as in our Glossary. Texts Nos. 598, 601 are from Cell A, text No. 599 is from Rubbish Heap which means it can also be from Cell A originally, to which Bucking (2007, 33) refers as a kind of a school in the monastic community. They might be (some of) the base texts of the Glossary – found just ’next-door’ –, the monks might have wanted to translate them, or might have just read and studied them, might have explained the contents to brothers who did not speak Greek. If indeed one or some particular texts give the basis for the glossary, then the order of the words on this list might be that of their occurrence in the text(s): according to Bell – Crum, (1925, 180) there are ’three possible ways of arranging a glossary. If a single work or author is being glossed the words may be taken in the order of occurrence. Where the words are taken from various sources this arrangement is impossible but they may be arranged either alphabetically or by classes, according to meaning.’ A good example of the glossary on particular texts is Bell – Thompson (1925), where a Greek-Coptic glossary to Hosea and Amos is published which is in the British Museum and perhaps was a glossary to the Minor Prophets as a whole when it was complete, now it is four small fragments (Bell – Thompson, 1925, 241).

Greek-Coptic glossaries like that are rather rare, especially in Western Thebes (Winlock-Crum, 1926, 207). Text 621 in Crum’s publication of the Epiphanius material might have been a Greek-Coptic glossary: bird names can be read there in Greek, the right side is broken off, where the Coptic equivalents might have been. According to Winlock-Crum, there is a small papyrus fragment (Papyrus Nr. 21) with Greek-Coptic, double column in the Ferdinandeum at Innsbruck (Winlock-Crum, 1926, 207, footnote 6) probably from Thebes, however, when I contacted the Ferdinandeum and tried to get some more information (possibly a photo) about it, I was informed that they do not know of its existence.

An interesting ‘predecessor’ from the mid 3rd century BC is P.Heid. inv.no. 414 verso: a Greek–Egyptian glossary, which contains a list of Greek words with their Egyptian counterparts, and the reason it is of special interest is that the Egyptian counterparts are written in the Greek alphabet (Quaegebeur, 1991, 190); the available data are:

leka/nion krwria)ci/nh kolebeinma/xaira shfimo/sxoj ag/ol

Again, the question as to what the purpose of that special word list was arises. Bilabel, discussing the text in 1937 (79-80), said: ’Der Text zeigt (…) dass auch in den Kreisen der herrschenden Griechenschicht das Interesse an der alteinheimischen Sprache aus dem praktischen Bedürfnis heraus bestand.’ It may be that, or, to be more specific, it was written again in the course of learning. Either for

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Greeks to learn speak (rather than write, seemingly) Egyptian, hence the Greek writing, or for Egyptians capable of reading the Greek alphabet already to learn Greek vocabulary. Nevertheless, the possibility that it was the word list of a translator cannot be excluded.

The glossary from TT 65 shows well the importance of knowing Greek also in such anchorite establishments. The use of this language in Late Antique Thebes is further proven by the Greek biblical and liturgical texts found on the site of the Monastery of Epiphanius as well as the four Greek texts found by Winlock and Crum in TT 65. These four texts are different from the Coptic ones found here: only one of them may be a letter, although the piece is very fragmentary; one is a list of the Coptic months on wood, and the other two are literary texts. Text 583, fragments of a once papyrus codex, contains parts of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of John, the codex was possibly a lectionary. Text 594 is a hymn to an ascete or martyr. The fact that the language used in private letters is Coptic shows that the language of everyday life was Coptic rather than Greek, in which only official or semi-official letters were written (Bucking, 2007, 23-24) besides the literary texts mentioned above. This is not surprising as the language of administration in 6-7th century Egypt was Greek (Bucking, 2007, 24) but in Upper Egypt it most probably never replaced the Egyptian tongue as the spoken idiom. In the northermore parts of the country, however, Greek may have been more dominant also in everyday use, as the case of the Naqlun Monastery in the Fayum seems to show, here Greek was the dominant language at the earliest stage of the monastery, see Bucking (2007, 22). In the monastic and anchorite establishments here, the background was basically Coptic but there were always Greek-speaking monks or visitors, and there were monks who could translate. Based on the text material from Western Thebes, Greek was used in the liturgical sphere in the 6-8th centuries, and it was probably part of the education and religious-spiritual readings of these communities, as such glossaries may indicate.

Bibliography

Bilabel, F., ”Neue literarische Funde der Heidelberger Papyrussammlung” in: Actes du Ve Congrès international de papyrologie, Oxford 30 aout – 3 septembre 1937, pp. 72-84, Brussels 1938

Bucking, S., ”Scribes and Schoolmasters? On Contextualizing Coptic and Greek Ostraca Excavated at the Monastery of Epiphanius” Journal of Coptic Studies 9 (2007), 21-47

Crum, W.E., A Coptic Dictionary, Oxford: at the Clarendon Press 1939 (abbreviated as CD)

Crum, W.E. – Evelyn White, H. G., The Monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes, Part II. Coptic Ostraca and Papyri. Greek Ostraca and Papyri, New York 1926

Gregory of Nazianz, Oration 39, in: Patrologia Graeca 36, 336-360 (in Hungarian translation Nazianzoszi

Szent Gergely, „Beszéd vízkeresztre” in: Vanyó L., Az egyházatyák beszédei Krisztus-ünnepekre I, Budapest: JEL Kiadó 1995, 36-60)

Halkin, F. (ed.), S. Pachomii Vitae graecae, (Subsidia hagiographica), Brüssel 1932

Lampe, G. W. H., A Patristic Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford University Press 1961 (abbreviated as LD)

Quaegebeur, J., ”Pre-Old Coptic” in Atiya, A. S. (ed), The Coptic Encyclopedia, Macmillan Publishing Company 1991, 190-191

Wenger, Antoine (ed.), Huit chatéchèses baptismal de Jean Chrysostome, Sources Chrétiennes 50, Editions du Cerf, Paris 1957, 150-167 (in Hungarian translation: Aranyszájú Szent János: „Beszéd az újonnan megkereszteltekhez”, in: Vanyó L., Az egyházatyák beszédei Krisztus-ünnepekre II, Budapest: JEL Kiadó 1998, 217)

Winlock, H. E. – Crum, W. E., The Monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes, Part I, New York 1926

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