ilies, lives of saints and anecdotes of
holy men, acts of martyrs extending from the persecution of Diocletian
to that of the Persians in the 7th century, and lives of later ascetics
and martyrs reaching down to the 14th century. Unless some of the
Egyptian _acta sanctorum et martyrum_ should prove to have been
originally written in Coptic, almost the only original works in that
language of any importance are the numerous sermons and letters of
Shenoute, a monk of Atr[=e]pe near Akhm[=i]m, written in the Sahidic
dialect in the 4th century. After the Arab conquest, as a defence to the
threatened church, language and nationality, versifications of the
Proverbs, of Solomon's Song and of various legends were composed, with
other religious songs. They are mostly antiphonal, a number of stresses
in a line marking the rhythm. There is no musical notation in the MSS.,
but traditional church tunes are generally referred to or prescribed for
the songs. Of secular literature strangely little existed or at least
has survived: only a few magical texts, fragments of a medical treatise,
of the story of Alexander, and of a story of the conquest of Egypt by
Cambyses, are known, apart from numerous legal and business documents.

Coptic was occasionally employed for literary purposes as late as the
14th century, but from the 10th century onward the Copts wrote mostly in
Arabic. Severus of Eshmunain (c. 950), who wrote a history of the
patriarchs of Alexandria, was one of the first to employ Arabic; Cyril
ibn Laklak and others in the 13th and 14th centuries translated much of
the older literature from Coptic into Arabic and Ethiopic for the use of
the Egyptian and Abyssinian churches. From this period also date the
native Coptic grammars and lexicons of Ibn 'Assal and others. At the
present time literature among the Copts is represented by Claudius
Lab[=i]b, an enthusiast for the revival of the Coptic tongue, Marcus
Simaika, a leader of the progressive movement, and others.
(F. LL. G.)

_The Coptic Church._--Up to the 5th century the church of Alexandria
played a part in the Christian world scarcely second to that of Rome:
the names of Origen, Athanasius and Cyril bear witness to her greatness.
But in the time of the patriarch Dioscorus the church, always fond of
speculation, was rent asunder by the controversy concerning the single
or twofold nature of our Lord, as stated by Eutyches. The Eutychian
doctrine, approved by the council