The Coptic Contribution to Christian Civilisation

By the late Prof. Aziz Surial Atteya

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INTRODUCTION
The Copts occasionally have been described as a schismatic eastern Christian minority, a lonely community in the land of
their forebears. They have been forgotten since they chose living in oblivion after the tragedy of Chalcedon (451AD), which was followed by a new wave of persecution inflicted upon them by fellow Christians and Byzantine rulers. Though not unknown to medieval and early modern travellers from Europe, Western Christendom appeared to have lost sight of the Copts until 1860, when a Presbyterian mission came to convert them to Christianity and the Coptic Archbishop of Asiut asked them the rhetorical question: “We have been living with Christ for more than 1800 years, how long have you been living with him?”
However, since the rediscovery of the Copts and their Christianity, interest has been intensified in the attempt to explore the religious traditions and the historical background of this most ancient form of primitive faith. Scholars of all creeds were stunned as the pages of Coptic history began to reveal the massive contributions of the Copts to Christian civilisation in its formative centuries. This brief essay is intended to outline the major segments of these contributions and show the need forthe rewriting of numerous chapters of early Christian history.But let me first define the term ‘Copt’ and introduce you tom some of the relevant data about the community. In all simplicity, this term is equivalent to the word ‘Egyptian.’ It is derived from the Greek Aigyptos, which in turn is a corruption of the ancient Egyptian Hak-ka-Ptah – the house of the temple of the spirit of Ptah a most highly revered deity in Egyptian mythology; this was the name of Memphis, the oldest capital of the unified Upper and Lower Egypt…

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