How to cure a migraine

and other ailments in old Egypt

I was reading an article from the Journal of Coptic Studies about Coptic medicine practices.  Apparently one of the first Coptic kings, Manaqiusch ibn Aschmun, of whom nothing is now known, ordered the construction of the first Egyptian hospitals.  Also, during this early period in history, ca. 1300 AD, women were among the practicing doctors of Egypt, as mentioned in early Coptic medical documents: TCAEIN EEI EHOUN (tsaein eei ehoun) 'the (female) doctor (who) entered' (the T- prefix is the feminine definite article, thus indicating a female).  The Coptic word for doctor, CAEIN1, goes back to Ancient Egyptian (AE) swnw (sunu); the word for medication, prescription or treatment, PAHRE (pahre), goes back to AE phrt (pahret?).2 


Following are a couple of the more interesting treatments (some of the documents appear incomplete or in fragments):

For migraine: KOPROC N[EROMPE, LIBANOC, ARCUNIKON ... ;NOOU HI HYMJ (kopros ncherompe livanos arsynikon ... thno'ou hi heimdj xro) 'pigeon dung, incense, arsenic... rub  with vinegar and turn.'

For a cold: OUACCWWD ETBE PEHREUMA MN PMAUE ETHORS ECWTM JI NAK ...  NEUVORBIOU, ;NOOU HI NEH ME ] EHRAI HN SENTF SAULO EUO NHREUMA NCECWTM NKECOP (ouassood etve pehreuma mn pmaue ethorsh esotm dji nak ... neuforviou thno'ou hi neh me ti ehrai hn shentf shaulo euo nhreuma nsesotm nkesop) 'A cure for a cold and hard-of-hearingness: Take ... Euphorbium (?), rub it with olive oil.  Give it in the nostril.  The patient will cease being stuffed up and will again be able to hear.'

Well, it's up to you if you want to try these treatments at home!

From:

Kolta, Kamal.  2004.  Krankheit und Therapiemethoden bei den Kopten.  In Journal of Coptic Studies 6, 149-160.

(Translation from the original German is mine.)

 

1 Could this Egyptian word be the ultimate origin of the -cine and -cian suffixes of English medi-cine, physi-cian?

2 The vowel sounds of AE are often still a mystery, since the AE hieroglyphic writing did not indicate vowel sounds, only consonant sounds, as in the scripts of other Semitic languages.  Coptic, written in a version of the Greek alphabet, can often help supply the unknown vowel sounds, however.

 

 

Will the Coptic Language Rise Again?

Portion of an article appearing in Egyptology News and RantRave.

Some people agonise over endangered species. My pet cause is endangered languages. When I hear that a dialect is dying out or that young people aren’t passing on an obscure language, it saddens me. It is one thing to examine shards of pottery or fragments of a manuscript found insulating a wall. It is another matter entirely when people alive today represent and advocate a point of view that fell from political dominance. When I hear about the descendants of British Loyalists proudly proclaiming their ancestry, it makes my own country’s history come alive with the freshness and immediacy of current events. It is for this reason that I so enjoy Alistair Cooke’s history of America. To me, the proper way to study the past is to recreate the crossroads at which past generations once stood, to wonder anew about truths received as a part of collective memory.

It is generally believed that Coptic is an extinct language, alive only in the prayer books and scriptures of Coptic Christianity, which is one of the major branches of the Christian faith tradition. Coptic is the language of ancient Egypt. Unlike Arabic , it is not Semitic but Afro Asiatic.1 In its earliest from, it was written with hieroglyphics. Later, it was written with a phonetic alphabet which is mainly Greek but has added characters for sounds not found in Greek.

The Islamic conquest of Egypt involved harsh repression of coptic as a spoken language. Indeed even today, the adherents of Coptic Christianity endure civic liabilities in Egypt that are unimaginable in the west.

The most commonly believed time line of the Coptic language lists the mid 1600’s as the time in which the last speaker of this language died. Now there are reports that the language may still be spoken, still a living language.

The most solid report of Coptic language survival comes from the Coptic Monastery of St. Anthony in the Red Sea Mountains about 110 miles southeast of Cairo. According to the “redbooks” web site, the monks in this monastery speak Coptic among themselves as a language of daily business and discourse . The article notes as follows.

“Amazingly, the monks who live here still speak Coptic, a language directly descended from the language of the ancient Egyptians.”

Of course, what really makes a language alive is when families pass it on to children, or better still, when villages perpetuate an endangered tongue. Such reports about Coptic are not numerous enough for those who wish the language well.

Despite this, there is a report of an extended Egyptian family that speaks Coptic among themselves, including even the detail of a woman who got strange looks when she spoke it on her cell phone.

The Daily Star of Egypt reports ‘ “Mona Zaki is one of only a handful of people that continue to use the language in everyday conversation. She speaks a colloquial form of Coptic with her parents and a few relatives that dates back 2,000 years.

______________________________________________

I also hope that Coptic will revitalize and be successful.  It would be a shame for the rich language and culture of the Egyptians to forever end up, like so many others, in the dustbin of history.  - Dave

Footnote:

1  I must respectfully disagree with the author here.  Semitic is part of the Afro-Asiatic family.  Egyptian is related to Arabic, Hebrew, and Akkadian.

A Coptic (Egyptian) Magical Text

Yes, yes, I admit, it has been a long time since my last post. But my time offline has been productive. I have, in fact, begun learning Coptic, the 'modern' form of ancient Egyptian, and the official language of the Copts, the Egyptians who converted to Christianity early in the first millennium AD.

Just some notes on the following passage and on the language: Coptic is highly agglutinative, meaning that words often consist of a root plus one or more (usually more!) affixes, primarily prefixes. An interesting thing about Coptic is that verb conjugations are not suffixed but are prefixed to the verb. Also, the definite and indefinite articles are always prefixed to the noun, e.g., prome (p[e] 'masc def article' + rome 'man') 'the man'; the feminine definite article is t[e], thus tsxime (t[e] 'fem def article' + sxime 'woman') 'the woman' (the e of the articles often drops out before the noun). (The x here is pronounced like an h, although perhaps a bit more guttural.) Coptic incorporated many Greek words during the time of Greek rule over Egypt, so those of you familiar with Greek may notice some of these, e.g., soma 'body', sarks 'flesh', and tavos 'tomb.'

The translation is that of the author; the transliteration into the Roman alphabet from the Coptic is mine.

I can't help but wonder what the poor Pharaouo did to deserve such a curse upon him!

pmour etpe pmour epkah pmour epaeir pmour epestrewma pmour etchefmoute pmour eprei pmour epo'oh pmour enhalate pmour e peksoure epiot pmour entauror TC pe XC nheitf hijn pshe mpestis nheitf pmour epsashf n shaje nta-hiliseo'os jo'os ejn tape net toua'av ete nai ne newran Psuchou, Chasnai, Chasna, Ithouni, Anashns, Shourani, Shouranai. Mare pmour etnma'au1 shope hijo psoma nho'out nfaraouo men tefsarks ntetnsho'oye mos nthe noushe auou ntetna'as nthe noutoeis hijn tkoupria nnepefset dos nnefto'oun nneftisperma nnefkenonia men Touaien tsheinKamar men la'au nsxime oute ho'out oute tefnei shanta osh anok alla marefsho'oue npsoma nho'out nfaraouo psheinKirantales nnef kononia men Touaien tsheinKamar nthe nourefmo'out efkei hnou tavos ennefaraouo psheinKiranpoles neishkeinonia men Touaein tsheinKamar.

Aio aio, taxei taxei.

O spell of the sky, O spell of the earth, O spell of the air, O spell of the firmament, O spell of the Pleiades, O spell of the sun, O spell of the moon, O spell of the birds, O spell of the father’s ring, O spell with which Jesus the Christ was bound upon the cross, O spell of the seven words which Eliseus uttered over the heads of the saints, whose names are these: Psuchou, Chasnai, Chasna, Ithouni, Anashns, Shourani, Shouranai. May that spell be upon the male organ of Pharaouo, and his phallus, may ye dry it like wood, and may ye make it like a rag upon the dunghill. May his phallus not become stiff, may it not erect, may it not produce seed, may he not have intercourse with Touaein, the daughter of Kamar, or with any woman, wild or tame, until I myself call out; but may it dry the male organ of Pharaouo, the son of Kiranpales, may he not have intercourse with Touaein, the daughter of Kamar. Like a dead man lying in a tomb. May not Pharaouo, the son of Kiranpolis be able to have intercourse with Touaein, the daughter of Kamar.

Yea, yea. Quickly, quickly!

1 ma'au means 'mother,' but this doesn't appear anywhere in the author's translation (?). The ' equals a glottal stop.

Appearing in the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 56, No. 3, 1939, 305-7. From documents in the Moritz Collection, Oriental Institute No. 13767. Author and date of original document unknown.
Author of text translation: Elizabeth Stefanski.