Anafora - December 27

I slept well, only occasionally woken by the braying donkey - something I haven't heard since I lived in Africa in the early 90's.

At breakfast I met Bishop Thomas (picture to the right) - the founder of Anafora. He is around 50 years old and has a special twinkle in his eyes that have seen much suffering but also much joy. He's one of those people who seem to look straight into your soul. Over tea and a breakfast of rice pudding and homemade jams and bread, we chatted about the difference between the Egyptian and Ethiopian Coptic churches (primarily cultural and linguistic), and the origins of the written Coptic language, which I had seen on the gates when I arrived.

In pharaonic Egypt (from about 3,000 BC to 332 when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt), the written language was hieroglyphic but the people spoke Demotic. When the Greeks came they applied the Greek alphabet but there where 6 letters that did not exist in Greek so these were simply added. The Egyptian language, as represented by Coptic today, is the oldest surviving language in history.

The name 'Egypt' is derived from the word Copt. When the Arabs conquered in the 7th century BC they forced most Egyptians (who were all Christians at the time) to become Muslims, and Arabic became the lingua franca of the country, which is called Misr in Arabic. Today the Christian Copts are a minority (about 10%) and suffer considerable discrimination in Egypt because of their refusal to confirm to Islam (although the government claims to be tolerant, there are numerous examples of blatant discrimination which are never resolved equitably, creating periodically serious ethnic tensions). Very few families speak Coptic today but the language is very much alive in the church services - about half of the psalms I heard in the advent service were sung in Coptic (the rest in Arabic). At Anafora children are taught Coptic in "Sunday school."