History
Egyptian may have the longest documented history of any language, having remained in written use from c. 3200 BC to the Middle Ages and as a spoken language for longer. Coptic belongs to the Later Egyptian phase which started to be written in the New Kingdom. Later Egyptian represented the colloquial language. It had analytic features like definite and indefinite articles and periphrastic verb conjugation. Coptic therefore is a reference both to the most recent stage of Egyptian after Demotic, and to the new writing system that was adapted from the Greek alphabet.
Read more about this topic: Coptic Language
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not history which uses men as a means of achievingas if it were an individual personits own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
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“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
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