Studies in Coptic Culture: Transmission and Interaction

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Mariam F. Ayad
Oxford University Press, 2016 - History - 220 pages

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.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
1 The Coptic Acts of Ephesus
11
2 The Role of Coptic Translators in the Transmission of Patristic Biblical Commentary in the First Millennium ad
19
3 Toward a Sociohistorical Approach to the Corpus of Coptic Medical Texts1
33
The Case of the Coptic Church
55
5 The Depiction of Muslims in the Miracles of Anba Barsauma al Uryan
65
An Evaluation of the Biographical Data in the Arabic Version
77
The Assimilation of Byzantine Art by Arab Christians in Mamluk Egypt and Syria
93
8 Representations of Copts in Early Nineteenthcentury Italian Travel Accounts
117
9 Copts in Modern Egyptian Literature
143
Expressions of Social Agency and Coptic Identity
155
11 Rehabilitating a Late Antique Mural Painting at the Red Monastery Sohag
173
12 Transmission of Coptic Music from the Past to the Future
185
Bibliography
199
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About the author (2016)

Mariam Ayad is an associate professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, and has previously taught at the University of Memphis. She has worked in the field at Wadi al-Natrun, Giza, Mendes, and Medinat Habu. She is the author of God's Wife, God's Servant and the editor of Coptic Culture: Past, Present, and Future.