Attacks on churches, communal divisions – Cairo has recently seen conflicts between some Muslims and Coptic Christians.
But who exactly are the Copts and how did they come to be in Egypt?
Part of the answer lies in Coptic art.
The
sands of Egypt make it an archaeological wonderland. Ancient Egyptian
statues and buildings rise above those sands, and these stony sepulchres
made the wonders of the pharaohs famous down the millennia.
But in the
19th and 20th centuries excavators such as William Flinders Petrie
developed truly scientific archaeological techniques and looked beyond
the tombs of the kings into the buried worlds of Egypt's past. Petrie,
who excavated at Fayoum, looked not just for treasures but pottery and
cloth.
Egypt's climate preserves materials that usually perish, including wood, papyrus, and cloth. Even shoes from ancient Egypt's
later period under Roman rule have survived.
Another stunning type of
material discovered by early 20th-century archaeologists was Coptic woven art.
Early Christians in Egypt buried their dead with finely woven clothes
and shrouds that have survived along with Biblical papyri, paintings and
sculpture.
In 1910, the Coptic Museum in old Coptic Cairo opened to show such relics released from the earth.
The attraction of Coptic art is that it is full of Mediterranean, Greek and Roman echoes, such as border decorations of embroidered grapes that recall the god Bacchus, while being anti-classical and popular because of its raw portrayal of all-too-human faces.
Another fascination is the possible connection between early Christian
portrayals of Mary and Jesus, and ancient Egyptian statues of Isis and Horus.
So to return to that question I asked above, exactly who are the Copts? The answer is clear from this connection. Coptic Christianity
dates back to the first couple of hundred years after the lifetime of
Christ.
The people who converted to Christianity were the ancient
Egyptians, as well as Jewish, Greek and Roman inhabitants of Egypt.
This
is even clearer when alongside the art of Coptic Egypt you consider the
Coptic language preserved in ancient papyri and manuscripts and still
used in the Coptic liturgy today.
In the British Museum in London is the Rosetta Stone, a black inscribed slab that has been central to world history ever since the French scholar Jean-François Champollion
used its specimens of the same text in different ancient languages to
decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Champollion studied Coptic as part of
his quest, because he rightly saw that it was descended from ancient
Egyptian.
That is, the language of the Coptic liturgy is the language of
ancient Egypt.
So who are the Copts?
They are the ancient Egyptians.
Their art, language and religion are directly descended from the art, language and religion of the land of the pharaohs.
Their
survival is a tribute to the religious tolerance of Islam.
How many
Islamic communities survived in medieval Christian Europe?
As for modern
times, a Europe that murdered six million Jews less than a century ago
is in no position to vaunt its tolerance.
But, the Coptic minority is no
side issue.
This culture has the right to respect, protection and a
political voice in the new Egypt.
It can claim to be the most Egyptian
culture of all.