Coptic language in Christian Ethiopia (until the 19th Century)

The purpose of this paper is to present various forms of presence of the Coptic language in the Ethiopian writing until the 19th Century. In this period we witness the birth, flourishing and decay of a Christian ecclesiastical culture with Classical Ethiopic (Ge‘ez) as its literary language within a well-defined political entity of the Ethiopian Empire. The middle of the 19th Century saw a significant break with the tradition and radical shift towards modernity in many spheres of life. The presence of the Coptic language in Ethiopia is an outcome of the long-standing relations between Ethiopia and Egypt or strictly speaking between their respective national churches. There is a large literature devoted to these relations, they will be therefore treated only briefly. The article will deal with such phenomena as: Coptic loanwords in Ge‘ez, documents written in Coptic within the context of Ethiopian church administration, the treatment of Coptic names in translated literary texts. It will certainly not be exhaustive but rather will put together information scattered throughout various publications, not necessarily accessible to the audience interested in Coptology