Welcome, Newcomers

The Coptic Church was established in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ by St. Mark the Evangelist, in the city of Alexandria, around 43 A.D.

Coptic comes through Greek. The Greek word for Egypt was Aigyptos; when the Arabs reached Egypt in the seventh century they shortened it to qibt. Because the Egyptians they found there were Christians, the same word came to carry both meanings at once — Egyptian, and Christian.

Orthodoxy means keeping the original faith. The Creed settled at Nicaea in 325 A.D. has been attacked repeatedly in the centuries since, and the Coptic Church has defended it each time. At Nicaea itself the defence of Christ’s divinity was led by St. Athanasius, later the 20th Pope of Alexandria, who is called the Father of Orthodoxy and the Apostolic for it.

The Orthodox Creed, as printed in the Agpeya

We believe in one God, God the Father, the Pantocrator, who created heaven and earth, and all things, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages. Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not created, of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made; who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary, and became man.

And He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried. And on the third day He rose from the dead, according to the scriptures, ascended into the heavens and sat at the right hand of His Father; and He is coming again in His glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.

Yes, we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father; who, with the Father and the Son, is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church. We confess one baptism for the remission of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come. Amen.

The first Christians in Egypt prayed in Coptic — not a borrowed language but their own, the ancient Egyptian of the pharaohs carried forward and written in Greek letters, with seven extra letters kept from Demotic for the sounds Greek had no use for. It remained the Church’s main language until the eleventh century, and it is still what the hymns are sung in.

Here is one of them.

Write your own name in the same letters:

The Alexandrian calendar is the oldest calendar in history, and it was set by the stars. The Egyptians watched for the star they called Sothis — Sirius — to reappear at dawn, and fixed the year by it.

Its count of years begins in 284 A.D. and is called Anno Martyrum, the Year of the Martyrs. That date is the start of the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, who is remembered for persecuting Christians more savagely than any emperor before him. Choosing it was deliberate. The Church dates itself from the worst thing that was ever done to it, because what the years count from is the point at which dying stopped being a reason to stop believing.

The month names are the ancient Egyptian ones, each named for a god held to govern that stretch of the farming year, and the year divides into three seasons of the Nile with one short month left over:

A relic is a fragment associated with a saint, kept by the Church because the saint is a role model and not a memory. On the saint’s feast day the relics are brought out during the service and carried in procession while the melody belonging to that saint is sung.

Nothing worn at the altar is decoration. Every garment is a statement about the person wearing it, and a priest and a deacon are dressed differently because they are doing different things.

The ney is an end-blown flute — a length of reed with six holes in front and one behind, and no mouthpiece at all. It is central to Persian, Turkish, Jewish and Arabic music, and in several of those traditions it is the only wind instrument used.

It has been played continuously for something between four and a half and five thousand years, back to ancient Egypt, which makes it one of the oldest instruments still in use anywhere in the world. The musicians painted on the walls of Egyptian tombs are playing an instrument a player today would recognise.

Because there is no mouthpiece, the sound is made entirely by the player’s lips against the rim of the reed. That is why it takes years to get a note out of one, and why it sounds like breath.

The ney’s usual companion: a short-necked lute with a bent-back pegbox and no frets, which is what gives it the sliding tones that a guitar cannot make.