Coptic Literature
Examples of purely Coptic literature are the works of Saint Anthony and Saint Pachomius, who only spoke Coptic, and the sermons and preachings of Saint Shenouda the Archmandrite, who chose to only write in Coptic. Saint Shenouda was a popular leader who only spoke to the Egyptians in Egyptian language (Coptic), the language of the repressed, not in Greek, the language of the rulers.
The earliest original writings in Coptic language were the letters by Saint Anthony. During the 3rd and 4th centuries many ecclesiastics and monks wrote in Coptic.
Read more about this topic: Anthony The Great
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“But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not a distance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,—nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)