Egyptian versus Greek in Late Antique Egypt: The Struggle of Coptic for an Official Status, IV: The Role of the Church in the Growth of Legal Coptic, lecture by Jean-Luc Fournet (Collège de France, Paris), ISAW-NYU, April 12, 2017, 6:00 pm

This lecture will present an unpublished set of wooden tablets from Panopolis (now in the Louvre) attesting the use of Coptic for tax receipts in the 6th century, and revisit the archive of Apa Abraam bishop of Hermonthis (c. 595-621) and of the monastery he founded—the largest group of legal Coptic texts prior to the Arab Conquest. These texts will lead us to examine the role of the Church and especially monasticism in the development of Coptic for official transactions.

Jean-Luc Fournet is a papyrologist and a specialist in late antiquity. In March 2015, he was appointed professor at the Collège de France (Paris), which created for him its first chair of papyrology named “Written Culture in Late Antiquity and Byzantine Papyrology.” Prior to his current position, he was a scientific member of the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale in Cairo (1992-1996), researcher at the CNRS in Strasbourg (1996-2004), and professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Department of Historical and Philological Sciences) in Paris (2004-2015). He devotes much of his scholarly activity to editing new texts, including papyri and Greek inscriptions on late antique amphorae, which he was the first to decipher, and has a special interest in the culture of late antiquity—particularly poetry, multilingualism, and modalities of written culture.

This lecture is the final of four lectures on Egyptian versus Greek in Late Antique Egypt in the Rostovtzeff Lecture Series.

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