Elementa linguae copticae: Grammaire inedite du XVW siecle.

• Author: Depuydt, Leo
• Position: Book review

Elementa linguae copticae: Grammaire inedite du XVW siecle.By Guillaume Bonjour. Edited by Sydney H. AUFRERE and NATHALIE BOSSON. Cahiers d' orientalisme, vol. 24. Geneva: Patrick Cramer Editeur, 2005. Pp. ci + 190, plates.

The history of a science is the science itself, Goethe famously stated. The last person able to read or write the hieroglyphic script died probably sometime in the sixth or seventh century C.E. But the Egyptian language remained alive in its last stage. Coptic (a variant form of "Egyptian"). Coptic is written with Greek letters supplemented by a few characters derived from hieroglyphic writing. Sometime between 1000-1500 c.e., Coptic ceased being spoken. Arabic completely supplanted it. But Coptic remained in use in the liturgy of the Coptic (or Christian-Egyptian) church. This hardly means Coptic was perfectly understood. During the Renaissance, the Latin West rose to intellectual dominance and higher learning flourished. The Catholic Church's desire to bring Christian churches of the East back into the fold played a prominent role in the nascent interest in Coptic, but the knowledge of Coptic had to be imported to Europe.

Such is the prelude to the arrival on the scene of a principal character in early Coptic Studies, Guillaume (William) Bonjour (1670-1714), an Augustinian monk from Toulouse in southern France. Bonjour spent his final years in China. His appearance in this Journal's pages is germane. Few journals include contributions to both Coptic and Chinese studies.

It was not Coptic that brought Bonjour to Rome from his monastery in his native Toulouse in 1695 at age 25. It was an interest in chronology, which he shared with cardinal Henri Noris (1631-1704), who invited him. In 1582, the Julian calendar had been reformed under Pope Gregory XIII. This reform led to problems concerning the placement of Easter in the lunar calendar. In 1701, Pope Clement XI would appoint Bonjour to a commission for the reform of the calendar.

In 1696 Bonjour began studying Coptic. It remained one of his main pursuits until he left for China in 1707. In that eleven-year period, he wrote several studies pertaining to Coptic, only one of which was published, In Monu.me.nta Coptica seu JEgyptiaca Bibliothecae Vaticanae brevis Exercit-atio (1699). Manuscripts of the others are kept at Rome's Biblioteca Angelica, named for its founder and benefactor, the Augustinian monk Angelo Rocca (1545-1620).

What led Bonjour to study Coptic? In...