LiTRRATTRK. — Jos. Ant. XX. viii. 6 ; BJ n. xiii. 5 ; Schurer, EJP L iL 180 ; Kreakel, Josephua und Lucas, p. 240.
A. C. Headlam.
EGYPTIAN YERSIONS.— The various Egyptian dialects and the Versions contained in them are a Bubject of so much confusion that it will be well for the sake of distinctness to deal in this article first with the Dialects and their proximate dates, and then with the extant remains of the Versions and their proximate dates. We will conclude with a short study of the Greek Text implied by the Versions, ana the history of the criticism of them.
1. Dialects of Coptic— The latest stage of the Egyptian language, and that which was spoken in Christian times, is now known by the name of Coptic. The word itself comes from a corruption of the Greek Ar7inrTos. Coptic was written in Greek characters, with the addition of some extra letters representing sounds which could only im- perfectly be expressed by the Greek alphabet. These letters were modifications of characters found in Demotic — the popular form of the old Egyptian language spoken in the centuries im- mediately before the Christian era. Although it is still used in the services of the Church, Coptic is now practically a dead language. Our knowledge, therefore, of it must be derived from manuscripts and inscriptions. When these began to be studied by European scholars, it soon became evident that the language as spoken in diti'erent parts of the country presented certain dialectical peculiarities. Not only was it early recognized that the dialect nsed in the North differed considerably from that used in the South, but a third dialect was also detected, which, as a general rule, resembled the southern : it had, however, many northern forms, and sometimes showed peculiarities of its own. A long controversy, lasting for more than a cen- tury, was waged over the district to which this third dialect was to be assigned. The attention of Coptic scholars was early directed to a noteworthy passage from Athanasius, a bishop of Kos in the Thebaid, who flourished in the 11th century. In his Arabic-Coptic Grammar, Athanasius says : ' Know that the Coptic language is divided into three branches. One of them is tne Coptic of Misr, which is the Sahidic ; and another is tne Bohairic Coptic, which gets its name from El-Bohaira ; a and the other is the Bushmuric Coptic, which is nsed in the country of El-Bushmur, as thou know- est. But those now in use are only the Bohairic Coptic and the Sahidic. And the origin of them is one language. '/3 Here we have a mention of three dialects — Sahidic, Bohairic, and Bush- kiuric. The first two are, as Quatrem^re pointed
• I.e. the district south of Alexandria.
0 The original of the passage is ^ven in Ouatrem^re, Rfi- ehfrche$ ntr ta Langu* et la LitUrature de I'EjypU (Paris, 1808), p. tL
out,a clearly the same as those sometimes called Thebaic and Memphitic. But what was the lastl Was it to be identified with the third dialect known to us? Or was it the name of a still unknown dialect ? Before this question could be answered, the position of Bushmur had to be determined. Quatrem^re proved tliat it could not be placed in the South of Egj-pt, nor in the Oasis and neigh- bouring deserts, but that it must be situated in the North.;3 It is the country in the east of the Delta bordering on the sea.7 Quairemfere wa? of opinion that our third dialect had no con nexion with Bushmuric, of which we had only a single word preserved to us. 5 But if it was not Bushmuric, now came it not to be mentioned by Athanasius! Quatremfere answered the ques- tion by supposing that it was in use not ex- actly m Egypt, but in a country close by — the great and little Oases, ' whicli, situated at a little distance from Egj-pt, stretch from north to south, from the parallel of Assouan as far as the frontier of the Fayflm.'e Since Quatremiire's time a large number of fragments have come to light which prove that he was riglit in refusing to call the dialect Bushmuric. Whether or not it was spoken in the southern Oasis, we now know for certain that it was used in the neigh- bourhood of the Fayftm and Memphis ; and a study of Middle Egyptian shows us that the reason why Athanasius did not mention it may have been that he did not regard it as a separate dialect. This third dialect, lying as it does geo- graphically and linguistically between Sahidic and Bohairic.f may conveniently be termed Middle Egyptian. When we come to examine it more carefully, we are confronted with fresh difficulties. Whilst Sahidic and Bohairic are for the most part clearly defined and regular dialects. Middle Egyp- tian presents us with an almost bewildering number of alternative forms. When spoken in the Nile Valley the dialect is a kind of mixture between Sahidic and Bohairic. But in some of the frag- ments which come from the Fayflm — a district some distance to the west — the dialect has de- veloped more decided peculiarities of its own. It is dangerous, however, to draw any hard-and- fast distinction between the forms of the language current in the two places ; for at a later date the dialect used in the Fayflm bore a considerable resemblance to that used at one time in Memphis.!; Many of the other varieties are no doubt due to ignorance or indifference on the part of scribes, some of whom in the Fayftm belonged to the peasant and artisan class. S Such an explanation does not, however, cover the case of some frag- ments recently found in Akhmlm and in the Faylim, which present further dialectical peculiari- ties unknown to us before. Stern has carefully examined the dialect of these fragments, and has shown good reason to believe that it presents us with an earlier form of Middle Egyptian, closely allied to the dialect found in fragments written at Memphis.i