The Coptic calendar

A little history

Coptic comes from the word Egyptian or, more precisely, from its Greek translation Aigyptos. The Arabs who invaded Egypt in AD 641 pronounced it Gypt or Kipt. They therefore called the people of Egypt Copts.

Originally, the word Copt referred at once to a people, a language and a religious confession.

A people: Almost all Christians at the time of the Arab conquest, the Copts gradually converted to Islam. The term “Copt” then came to designate those who remained Christian, and the word lost its ethnic meaning.
In modern French, “copte” now refers to the old liturgical language (now dead) and to the Orthodox Church of Egypt.

A language: It has its roots in Egyptian hieroglyphs. When Egypt was occupied by the Greeks, Egyptians found the Greek alphabet easier to use than hieroglyphs and adopted it. They added seven new symbols to represent specific Egyptian sounds.

The Coptic language evolved as follows: hieroglyphs => Neo-Egyptian => demotic => Ptolemaic => southern Coptic (Sahidic) and northern Coptic (Bohairic).

Today, the language is still studied at some universities.

A religious confession: According to tradition, the Coptic Church was founded by Saint Mark, one of the four Evangelists. Its history was marked by hardship and persecution.

When the Church was founded, Egypt was under the rule of Diocletian, whose accession was set at AD 284. Christianity was not recognized by Rome, and Diocletian ordered the persecution of Christians across the Roman Empire. The Copts of Egypt suffered particularly from these measures, and many of them were martyred as early as 305.

The Coptic Church followed a miaphysite/monophysite tradition (the doctrine according to which Christ had only one divine nature and no human nature).

After the Council of Chalcedon (451), which defined Christ as one person in two natures (divine and human), relations moved toward a split between the Coptic Church and the Great Church.

Today's Coptic Church is under the authority of the Patriarch of Alexandria and seems to be drawing closer to the Eastern Orthodox Church, with a desire to move past old controversies.

The calendar

Like the Ethiopian calendar, the Coptic calendar has its origin in the Egyptian wandering calendar with an adaptation for leap years.

It therefore closely resembles the Julian calendar.

The year consists of twelve months of 30 days, followed by a “small month” made up of 5 or 6 epagomenal days (5 in common years and 6 in leap years), called in Arabic 'Ayyam al-Nasi.

The twelve months kept the Egyptian names used in the first millennium BC. Spellings vary from one source to another; here is one common form.

Unlike the Egyptian wandering calendar, this calendar has a fixed starting point (1 tout, year 1), corresponding to 29 August 284 (Julian).

Why 284? Once we know that the Coptic era is also called the Era of the Martyrs (symbolized by A.M. for Anno Martyrium) and that this calendar is sometimes called the calendar of the martyrs, the answer is straightforward: the Coptic calendar starts in the year Roman tyrant Diocletian came to power.

The Coptic New Year (Nayrouz) begins on the date that currently corresponds to 11 or 12 September in the Gregorian calendar (29 or 30 August in the Julian calendar).

Leap years

They follow the rhythm of Gregorian leap years as follows: Coptic leap years are those in which the end of the corresponding Gregorian year is immediately followed by a Gregorian leap year.

Example: misra 1719 (Coptic) corresponds to August/September 2003 (Gregorian). 2003 is followed by 2004, which is a leap year. Therefore 1719 A.M. is a leap year.

The Coptic week and day

The Coptic week has seven days, with Sunday as the first day. The day names are:

The civil day begins in the morning, but the liturgical day begins in the evening at sunset.