Christian Perspectives on Pharaonic Religion: The Representation of Paganism in Coptic Literature

Abstract

During the period following the Edict of Milan, passed in a.d. 313, and the consequent legitimization of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, the earliest Egyptian Christians were everywhere faced with the presence of their pagan contemporaries and the literally monumental evidence of their own pagan heritage. This confrontation was played out repeatedly in Coptic literature as different writers took up the issue from their own perspectives, and looking at the ways in which Coptic authors depicted paganism in a literary context allows us to observe how these early Christians conceptualized their own religion and their relationship with the broader, multi-cultural society of early