According to tradition, Saint Mark brought Christianity to Egypt during the first century, and in so doing formed the basis for the Coptic Orthodox Church. Today, Copts comprise the largest Christian community in the Middle East. They make up perhaps tenth of Egypt’s population, and many hundreds of thousands also live in North America and Australia. This new and comprehensive reference work by a leading Coptic scholar details the history of one of the oldest Christian churches through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and more than 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on important people, organizations, and structures, the theology and practices of the church, its literature and liturgy, and its monasteries and churches.

Coptic contributions to the formative theological debates of Christianity have long been recognized. Less well known are other, equally valuable, Coptic contributions to the transmission and preservation of technical and scientific knowledge, and a full understanding of how Egypt’s Copts survived and interacted with the country’s majority population over the centuries. Studies in Coptic Culture attempts to examine these issues from divergent perspectives. Through the careful examination of select case studies that range in date from the earliest phases of Coptic culture to the present day, twelve international scholars address issues of cultural transmission, cross-cultural perception, representation, and inter-faith interaction. Their approaches are as varied as their individual disciplines, covering literary criticism, textual studies, and comparative literature as well as art historical, archaeo-botanical, and historical research methods. The divergent perspectives and methods presented in this volume will provide a fuller picture of what it meant to be Coptic in centuries past and prompt further research and scholarship into these subjects.