SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

material, jewelry, silver, precious stones, devotional items such as crosses, and manuscripts. The most interesting text is a group of illuminated leaves belonging to a Sahidic Gospel of John. Despite the wealth of items found, including over 400 corpses, solid conclusions cannot be drawn with certainty about the site. Worthy of mention is that the monks of the monastery did some of the excavations earlier. I suspect that no scientific records were kept for such work. The third paper was by Dr. Lyzwa-Piber, titled: The Basketry from Excavations at Naqlun . This paper is the third detailed one about objects found by the PCA in their excavation of that cemetery. It dealt with the weaved basketry or mats found there, specifically in the Northern part of the cemetery. The period of these, as mentioned above, falls during the Fatimid-Ayyubite rules in Egypt. She surveyed the plaiting techniques employed there, including continuous plaiting, coiling, and twining. She described further the colors and decorations found there such as dyes, ornamental bands, and geometric patterns. The latter is one of the new visual elements found in the Coptic Art of the area that Prof. Bolman has dealt with in her earlier paper . The location of these items was generally on top of the coffins, and at this time they are presumed to be part of the burial ritual. It worthy to mention that such basketry is still in use in rural Egypt to this day. The fourth and final paper of this session was by Prof. Tomaz Derda, titled, The Greek Papyri from Deir al-Naqlun . This was the concluding paper on the Naqlun excavation. The author dealt with the Greek material found in the excavation of the monastic settlements. Although they were rare, their dates were early, which explains their existence on Papyrus, the writing material of choice in Egypt up to the 8 th and 9 th century. The author assumed that such material was not in use in the later period of the monastic settlement, which explained their early dates. The conventional wisdom is that the longer the manuscripts are put in use, the less likely they survive. The texts found included biblical and

economic texts but no legal documents. The corpus is described as belonging more likely to individuals than to a community. It seems that these texts fell in disuse or dumped by the late 6 th or early 7 th Century, which points to the dominance of Greek in the early monastic period of that settlement. Also three ostraca were found, bearing texts from the Greek Gospel of St. Matthew. Biblical texts found showed more affinity to Codex Alexandrinus. They tended to be mostly from the Psalms and the author presumes that they were intended for memorization. The high salinity in the region has contributed to the poor condition of the papyrus. Session Seven, February 9, 2004; Chairman: Dr. Jacques van der Vliet. This session included three papers that dealt with a variety of subjects related to al-Fayoum. The first was by Prof. Bagnall, titled: Linguistic Change and Religious Change in Relation to the Temples of the Fayoum in the Roman Period . The period dealt with the change in the Egyptian language primarily in the context of a writing system that was taking shape during the Roman Period. Al-Fayoum has yielded much material that shows the rise of Coptic in that period. Pagan Coptic material or Old Coptic was the oldest and it gave way to Standard Coptic, which was generally Christian in subject matter. David Frankfurter described the primary early use of Coptic as a ritual and as a monastic system. The 4 th Century witnessed the systemization of the script for literature. Madinat Madi, along with its Manichean corpus that will be presented below, has yielded Coptic glosses from the late 2 nd to early 3 rd Century. The author credits the transition made in the writing system, from the old Hieroglyphic-Demotic script to the new Coptic one, to the fact that the old script was becoming less and less recognized by the literate Egyptians. A by-product of the Greco-Roman period in Egypt! The second paper was by Dr. Davis, titled: Biblical Interpretation and Alexandrian Episcopal Authority in the Early Christian Fayoum . In this paper he explored the

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