SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

Jacques Tagher dissertation, which used extensively Arabic documentary sources. He succeeded to a large extent in introducing the general public to the importance of such documents. This work was done originally in French and translated in Arabic. Recently it was translated and published in English by Mr. Ragai Makar of Utah. In a similar way Dr. Alan Bowman, showed the importance of such documents in his popular history of Egypt from the Alexander the Great to the Arab conquest. The techniques employed in extracting the information from these documents is especially valuable to those of us that do not have an extensive background in the subject. In the field of monasticism, Dr. Paul Kahle, Jr. 1954, meticulous study and edition of the Bala‘iza yielded very valuable information, among others, about the closing of many of the smaller monasteries in Middle Egypt in the 8th and 9th centuries. His investigation of these documents led him to conclude that the burden of taxation during that period led to literally to their bankruptcy. Also we have Dr. L. S. B. MacCoull monograph on the 6th century, Dioscorus of Aphrodito. She elaborately used the literary and non-literary documents from the Aphrodito Archive to piece together the life and works of this rather unknown figure of Coptic History. Both Coptic and Greek documents were used in the study. Dr. Walter C. Till's study of the prosopography of two centuries of generations from Djeme Archive is a unique example of local Coptic genealogy. This study, published in German, utilized mainly Crum and Steindorff edition of many of these Coptic texts. There is at least one more text that can be added to this archive, which is preserved in a small museum in Pennsylvania (Cf. vol 4 no. 1 of this Newsletter, October 1997). These works most likely helped Dr. Terry Wilfong in his recent dissertation of the women of Djeme (Jeme). Worthy of mention also are the numerous studies published by Dr. Bagnall of Columbia University of the first few centuries of Christianity. His

investigations are usually dependent on the Greek documents which is richer in scope for this period. There are a lot more contributors to this branch of scholarship to mention in this general article. Suggested Reading: The literature in this field is plentiful, especially dealing with Greek documents. Most of them are beyond the scope of the general readers. There are however some studies that either give general introduction or introduce the readers to how these documents were used to treat elements of Coptic History. Some of these were mentioned in name above. They will be listed below in full bibliographical notation. Bagnall, R. S. Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History . Routledge, New York. 1995 Bowman, A. K. Egypt after the Pharaohs 332 BC- AD 642 from Alexander to the Arab Conquest. California University Press, Berkeley, Calif. Paperback edition 1989. Edgar, C. C. & A. S. Hunt. Select Papyri . Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge Mass. 1932-34, 2 volumes. MacCoull. L. S. B. Dioscorus of Aphrodito: His Life, His Work, His World . California University Press, Berkeley, Calif. 1988. Pestman. P. W. The New Papyrological Primer . Brill, Leiden. 5th edition 1990. Roberts, C. H. Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt . Oxford University Press, London 1979. Tagher, J. Christians in Muslim Egypt - A Historical Study of the Relation between Copts and Muslims from 640 to 1922 . Translated from Arabic by Ragai N. Makar. Altenberg, Germany 1998. Other References: The following is a supplementary list for other references, briefly mentioned above: Crum, W. E. & G. Steindorff Koptische Rechtsurkunden des Achten Jahrhunderts aus Djeme (Theben) . Leipzig, 1912 Kahle, P. Jr. Bala‘iza . 2 vol, Oxford 1954

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

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