The Transition from Coptic to Arabic

Abstract

The process in which the last stage of the Egyptian language, Coptic, was replaced by Arabic, has not yet received much attention from scholars. When the Arabs conquered Egypt in the middle of the seventh century, Coptic was the vernacular language of the bulk of the population, as well as the major literary language. In addition to Coptic, Greek was still used for administrative purposesaswell as by those sections of the population that remained close to the Byzantine religious and secular c...