Copts in Michigan

Historical Legacy

11 HistoricalLegacy A ncient Egypt holds a special place in the modern imagination, which is informed by schoolroom history lessons, films, and visits to museums filled with Egyptian artifacts. One is reminded, perhaps, of the ancient Egyptian dynasties in the Nile River Valley, of mummies, hieroglyphs, the sphinx, and the pharaohs—or perhaps of the great pyramids at Giza, long considered a wonder of the world. As the historian James Henry Breasted put it nearly a century ago, “the roots of modern civilization are planted deeply in the highly elaborate life of those nations which rose into power over six thousand years ago, in the basin of the eastern Mediterranean, and the adjacent regions on the east of it.”25 This history is part of the splendid inheritance of the Copts in Michigan, many of whom see themselves as the original Egyptians and direct descendents of the ancient pharaohs. It is what helps shape the identity of the Copts, creating a sense of community and of placement in time and space. The historical record reveals how the Coptic script evolved, how the Copts became and remained Christian, and why Copts in Egypt and Coptic immigrants in Michigan speak Arabic. Language, Christianity, and the Church The Coptic historical narrative, from the ancient past up to the present, has been heavily influenced by the Greeks, the Arabs, and Christianity. The 12 Eliot Dickinson Greeks exercised immense influence not only on the Mediterranean, Europe, and the course of Western Civilization, but also on Egypt. The Egyptian city of Alexandria, once renowned for its library and scholarship, still bears the name of Alexander the Great, who conquered Egypt in 332 b.c., and made Greek the official language of Egypt. One of the most significant and lasting consequences of the Greek presence in Egypt was the transcription of Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Greek alphabet, which became the written form of the Coptic language. Hieroglyphic was the pictographic script, or pictorial writing, used by the ancient Egyptians. The word “hieroglyph” is derived from the Greek and literally means sacred (hiero) writing (glyph). It was beautifully drawn and colored, but with around four thousand symbols comprised an extremely complex writing system. As a result, hieroglyphic was successively simplified into hieratic (meaning priestly) and then demotic (derived from the Greek “demos,” meaning people), a more popular script used mostly for secular purposes. Demotic was then transliterated using the Greek alphabet, which, with the addition of seven demotic letters, became Coptic. The Coptic script emerged after the Greek conquest of Egypt, became more common after the first century a.d., and experienced its golden age in the fourth and fifth centuries a.d., a time when Christianity also blossomed in Egypt. Christianity has a strong and marked connection to Egypt, of which the Copts are rightly proud. Biblical references to Egypt abound—there are over six hundred—including the oft-cited verses “In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt,” and “Out of Egypt I have called my Son.”26 According to the Bible, the Holy Family of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus fled to Egypt to escape Herod’s decree to kill all of the baby boys in Bethlehem. To this day, visitors to Egypt can trace the route presumably taken by Baby Jesus and his parents. Father Mina Essak of St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church in Troy says of Jesus’ time in Egypt, “it is the only country outside Palestine that the Lord visited while he was on earth. . . . He was there about two years. He drank from the River Nile. He talked the Egyptian language of that time. . . . We of Egypt are very proud of it. We call Egypt a holy land where the Lord has dwelt in our midst.’’27 In approximately a.d. 41 (the exact date is subject to speculation), St. Mark the Evangelist, author of the oldest of the four canonical Gospels, is believed to have arrived in Alexandria, Egypt.28 As a result of St. Mark’s COPTS IN MICHIGAN 13 St. Mark the Evangelist St. Mark the Evangelist is credited with bringing Christianity to Egypt in the first century A.D. and is seen as the first patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church. The earliest and shortest of the four Gospels of the New Testament, the Gospel According to Mark, bears his name. Biblical lore paints an intriguing picture of him, as he is presumed to be one of...