Coptic Ostraca

A. ARTHUR SCHILLER
 

WITHIN the past year the Columbia Library has
acquired a most remarkable collection of Coptic
"ostraca," perhaps without equal in this country.
Some sixteen hundred in number, these potsherds and limestone
fragments are likewise of considerable linguistic and cultural sig¬
nificance. For this collection comprises, in the main, the bulk of
written material which came to this country from the Egyptian
archaeological expeditions of the .Metropolitan .Museum of Art. It
is a splendid sampling of the day-to-day writings of the inhabitants
of upper Egypt during the seventh and eighth centuries of our era.
Many of these texts, together with hundreds of other ostraca
which arc now located in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, pro¬
vided the information upon which Dr. Llerbert E. \^'inlock, the
director of the expeditions, and Dr. Walter E. Crum, the leading
scholar of Coptic language and literature, based their monumental
study of the life of the inhabitants of the monastery of Epiphanius
in the hills of western Thebes. The Columbia ostraca which have
already been published will offer futute students practice materials
in reading various styles of Coptic handwriting. For many of the
texts, however, translations alone have been provided and the
reading of the ostraca themselves will give further insight into
linguistic and palaeographical problems. The great mass of the
ostraca have yet to be read and, although there is little likelihood
of startling discoveries, there is no telling what may be found.
Coptic ostraca, in contrast to Greek—which are uniformly minor
official documents, generally tax receipts, with monotonous repeti¬
tion of the same .simple formulae-, run the gamut from Biblical
texts and magical incantations, through the range of literary effort,
to the humblest notes and lists; all manner of private correspond-

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