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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
In the year 619 the forces of Sassanid Persia crossed the Eyptian border, and a long-lasting conquest, like that of the Achaemenids of old, was to be feared. The bishop of Keft, Pisentios, though an ascetic detached from worldly interests, did not fail to take note of this critical development. He put the affairs of his diocese in order and set out with a faithful disciple, John, to the mountain of Gimi to pray. Although Keft (better known perhaps as Coptos) had not yet been captured, we may wonder why he did not stay with his flock at such an anxious moment and pray with them.
1 ‘Probably in the spring of 619’ according to Baynes, N. H., CMH 2 p 291 Google Scholar.
2 In Étude sur le Christianisme en Égypte au Septième Siècle. Paris 1887. For an account of the Abbé Amélineau as the incompetent excavator of Abydo but a good copticist see my paper in SCH 17. By a strange coincidence, on the day of completing this paper I read in a book review that he ‘deliberately destroyed some of his finds, enhancing the value of what he preserved for his backers’ (The Times, 30 May 1980). I reserve my opinion; so authoritative an Egyptologist as Sir Alan Gardiner makes no such serious charge.
3 Though the element of the macabre can be abundantly paralleled and might pass as an Egyptian national trait. My translation of this extract is independent of the one by Battiscombe, Gunn in Land of Enchanters, ed Bernard, Lewis (London 1948) pp 89 seq. Google Scholar
4 I have translated literally, and Amélineau gives an equivalent sense, but the Coptic is uncommonly clumsy at this point.
5 There is no doctrine of Purgatory.
6 The Coptic Story of Cambyses’ Invasion of Egypt (Oslo 1950).
71 I should be afraid to differ from Crum, W. E. ‘Coptic Documents in Greek Script’, PBA 25 (939) pp 249-71Google Scholar, who is decisive for a date under the Arabs.
8 Edited by M. H.Davis, PO (1919).
9 Publications de l’École des Lettres d’Alger Bulletin de Correspondence Africaine (Paris 1890).
10 Paris 1914.
11 This is difficult to explain. We cannot suppose that he allowed himself to be promoted over Meneson’s head.
12 There are some descriptions of healings at a later stage, after Isaac has become patriarch. One, the headling of the son of Athanasius, a court official who was working against him, is notable for the Christian spirit of forgiveness which it breathes and for the touching repentance of the grateful father.
13 I am not sure that Amélineau’s comment, ‘On peut voir par cela que les grandes abstinences du temps passé avaient cessé avec la ferveur’ is altogether justified. There were doubtless at all times varying degrees of asceticism.