Alphabet Letters
Coptic Letters
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Origin Coptic is the last stage of the Egyptian language, not a separate tongue
Khai is the twenty eighth letter of the Coptic alphabet as it is used in Bohairic, the dialect of the Delta that became and remains the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church. It writes a back fricative, a sound made in the throat, and it carries no numeral value. Sahidic, the dialect in which most classical Coptic literature survives, does not use it at all, which is why the Coptic alphabet is counted as thirty two letters in Bohairic and thirty one in Sahidic. Where the sign came from is not settled. It is grouped with the letters taken from Demotic, but its relationship to hori, the letter for h, has been read in more than one way, and the atlas records the disagreement rather than choosing between the readings. Its liturgical importance is not in doubt: a Coptic Orthodox service book uses it constantly.
Facts
Disputed
Origin PeriodGreek letters wrote Egyptian from about the first century CE, settled by the fourth 1Tradition: The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996) surveys the small corpus of Old Coptic texts, pre-Christian magical and astrological papyri in which Egyptian was first written out using Greek letters plus a few signs borrowed from Demotic, against the standardised Coptic used in Christian scripture translation from around the third century CE onward. Comparing the two corpora, its contributors find the evidence thin enough to support two readings: that the Old Coptic magical texts already fixed the practice of writing Egyptian in Greek-based letters, or that the Christian translation project, needing a stable and teachable orthography for scripture, was the decisive act that standardised the script that survives. Because both readings draw on the same handful of surviving texts and no source describes an official act of decision, the volume treats the question as open rather than favouring either camp. Origin PeriodGrouped with the letters taken from Demotic, but its derivation is not settled 1Tradition: The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt Khai is conventionally listed among the seven Coptic letters taken from Demotic, but its origin has been read in more than one way. One position derives it from a Demotic sign in its own right, on the pattern of the other six. Another treats it as bound up with hori, the Coptic letter for h, rather than as an independent borrowing. The atlas records that the readings differ and does not choose between them; nothing about how the letter is used in the Bohairic liturgy depends on the answer. Origins
Origin PeriodCoptic is the last stage of the Egyptian language, not a separate tongue 1Tradition: The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt Place of OriginEgypt, where Greek letters were taken up to write the Egyptian language 1Tradition: The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt Origin of the NameAn Egyptian name, for a letter taken from Demotic rather than from Greek 1Tradition: The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt Sense of the Namefrom Demotic, for a sound Greek could not write 1Tradition: The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt The pictographic sense is a modern reconstruction from the letter name rather than a meaning attested in the script's own period, and the atlas records that position elsewhere on this letter. The name itself is inherited; the picture behind it is inferred. Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceAlphabet of 32 letters in Bohairic, 31 in Sahidic, which lacks khai 2Tradition: The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt Meaning in the Attesting SourceNo numeral value: the Egyptian additions stand outside the Greek series 1Tradition: The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt Meaning in the Attesting SourceUsed in Bohairic and not in Sahidic, which is why the counts are 32 and 31 2Tradition: The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt Identity
Script TypeAn alphabet: each letter writes a single sound, consonant or vowel; twenty-four of its thirty-two letters are the Greek uncial alphabet taken over directly, and the remaining letters, drawn from Demotic Egyptian sign-forms, write Egyptian consonants Greek had no letters for. 1 PositionTwenty-eighth of the thirty-two letters of the Coptic alphabet as counted in Bohairic (thirty-first in Sahidic, which omits it); carries no numeral value 1 Attributions
Associated SoundA back fricative made in the throat; used only in the Bohairic dialect and absent from Sahidic 1 Open Questions
Historical OriginSix of the seven Egyptian additions to the Coptic alphabet are taken from Demotic without dispute. Khai is the exception: it appears in Bohairic and not in Sahidic, and accounts of where its shape came from differ.
The atlas states khai's letter, its dialect distribution and its sound, and does not state a derivation, because no comparison of dated Old Coptic and early Bohairic forms against the Demotic sign repertoire has settled where the shape originates. Learn More
Khai: The Bohairic Letter and Its Disputed Origin
Khai is the twenty eighth letter of the Coptic alphabet as Bohairic uses it, and Bohairic is the dialect of the Nile Delta that became and remains the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church. The letter writes a back fricative made in the throat, and it carries no numeral value. Sahidic, the Upper Egyptian dialect in which most classical Coptic literature survives, does not use the letter at all, which is why the Coptic alphabet is counted as thirty two letters in Bohairic and thirty one in Sahidic. The discrepancy is not a disagreement about the script; it is a straightforward dialect difference, and both counts are correct for the dialect they describe.
The origin of the sign is a different matter and is genuinely unsettled. Khai is conventionally grouped with the letters taken from Demotic, but its relationship to hori, the Coptic letter for h, has been read in more than one way by specialists, and this atlas records that the readings differ rather than choosing between them. What is not in question is the letter working life. A Coptic Orthodox service book uses khai constantly, and any Bohairic text of any length will carry it, so it is among the most familiar letters to a Coptic reader today even though a scholar working on fourth century Sahidic manuscripts will never meet it.
Khai and the Difference Between Sahidic and Bohairic
Coptic was written in several dialects and two of them matter most. Sahidic, associated with the Nile valley of Upper Egypt, became the dominant literary form through the first Christian millennium, and most of the classic Coptic corpus survives in it, including the Nag Hammadi codices, the great monastic writings and the bulk of the early biblical translations.
Bohairic, of the Delta, rose later and became the language of the Coptic Orthodox Church, which it remains. The two differ in vocabulary, in grammar and above all in the vowels, and khai is one of the plainest differences at the level of the alphabet itself. The relationship between the dialects and how far each reflects a genuinely regional spoken form as against a scribal tradition is a question on which specialists differ, and the evidence is uneven in ways that make it hard to settle, since some dialects are known from very few manuscripts and the place a manuscript was found is not necessarily where its text was composed. What follows for a reader is practical. A statement about Coptic that does not say which dialect it describes is often wrong for one of them. The alphabet is thirty two letters or thirty one letters; a given word takes one vowel or another; a sound is reconstructed or is heard in church this Sunday. Khai is where that distinction is easiest to see.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Related To
Both are among the seven letters Coptic took from Demotic, and Bohairic keeps both while Sahidic keeps only hori. The relationship between the two in the dialects is one of the reasons khai's own derivation is argued about.
Bohairic writes both. Khi came from Greek and appears chiefly in words borrowed from Greek; khai is one of the letters Bohairic carries beyond the thirty-one of Sahidic, which has no khai at all. Where khai itself came from is not settled.
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
Where does the Bohairic Coptic letter khai come from?
Six of the seven Egyptian additions to the Coptic alphabet are taken from Demotic and their sources are not in dispute. Khai is the exception. It appears in Bohairic and not in Sahidic, which has thirty-one letters where Bohairic has thirty-two, and accounts of where its shape came from differ. This atlas states the letter, its dialect distribution and its sound, and does not state a derivation.
What would resolve this Forms collected from dated Old Coptic and early Bohairic manuscripts and compared against the Demotic sign repertoire, with the dialect distribution of the letter mapped alongside. A published palaeographic study of that comparison would settle it or would establish that the evidence does not.
Coptology and Egyptian palaeographyDivinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.