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Updated: June 25, 2025
Resolving at once to attempt the solution himself, he set to work to learn Koptic, which was rightly believed to represent the nearest existing approach to the ancient Egyptian language.
He wrote in the Koptic language a work in explanation of the old hieroglyphics, which has gained a notice far beyond its deserts, because it is the only work on the subject that has come down to us. The only Christian writings of this time, that we know of, are the paschal letters of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, which were much praised by Jerome, and by him translated into Latin.
Musa ibn Isa, however, held the appointment of Governor of Egypt on three separate occasions, and of his third period Said ibn Batrik tells the following anecdote: "While Obaid Allah ibn el-Mahdi was ruling in Egypt," he relates, "he sent a beautiful young Koptic slave to his brother, the caliph, as a gift. The Egyptian odalisk so charmed the caliph that he fell violently in love with her.
While Syriac was her native tongue, she was not ignorant of Latin, which she was careful to have taught to her children; she carried on her government in Greek, and could speak Koptic with the Egyptians, whose history she had studied and written upon. In her dress and manners she joined the pomp of the Persian court to the self-denial and military virtues of a camp.
In the earlier times of Egyptian history, when navigation was less easy, and when seas separated kingdoms instead of joining them, the Thebaid enjoyed, under the Koptic kings, the trading wealth which followed the stream of its great river, the longest piece of inland navigation then known; but, with the improvement in navigation and ship-building, countries began to feel their strength in the timber of their forests and the number of their harbours; and, as timber and sea-coast were equally unknown in the Thebaid, that country fell as Lower Egypt rose; the wealth which before centred in Thebes was then found in the ports of the Delta, where the barges of the Nile met the ships of the Mediterranean.
The leaders of the rebellion, Athinis, Pausiras, Chesuphus, and Irobashtus, whose Koptic names prove that this was a struggle on the part of the Egyptians to throw off the Greek yoke, were brought before the king at Saïs.
Nothing of political importance happened in Egypt under the long reign of Hisham, the only events noticed by the Christian historians being those which relate solely to their ecclesiastical history. The 108th year of the Hegira saw the death of Alexander, the forty-third Koptic Patriarch of Alexandria.
Whenever a Koptic inhabitant was a party in an action, the Koptic authorities had the right to intervene, and the parties were judged by their equals in race and religion. One striking act of justice succeeded in winning for Amr the hearts of all.
Henceforth the Melchite or royalist patriarchs, who were appointed by the emperor and had the authority of civil prefects, and were supported by the power of the military prefect, are scarcely mentioned by the historian of the Koptic church. They were too much engaged in civil affairs to act the part of ministers of religion.
The Nile was exceedingly low, and water was comparatively scarce. The older part of Cairo was simply unbearable; the little Koptic community dwelling in the low huts, which reeked with dirt and vermin, would, one would have thought, have been glad to have died. I had no success in Cairo.
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