Michigan Coptic Texts

This edition of Coptic texts from the Michigan collection is the third in the series of volumes begun by W.H. Worrell and continued by E.M. Husselman. In preparing it, I have derived great benefit from Dr. Husselman’s description, in Worrell’s volume of the Michigan Coptic collection, as well as from her unpublished inventory. The present publication contains texts - on papyrus, parchment, and paper - of a theological nature. They extend from the fourth to the eleventh centuries of our era. One piece was uncovered during the 1928/1929 excavations of the University of Michigan at Karanis; the remainder were purchased by the University between 1920 and 1929. Of those purchased, at least two, and possibly more, come from the celebrated library of the White Monastery the source of many of the Coptic literary texts in the Michigan collection. Nos. 1-8 contain Coptic translations of the Bible; especially noteworthy are No. 2 and No. 6: they present important early witnesses to the Coptic Old and New Testaments and contribute to the study of dialectology. The rest of the volume includes the beginning of Gregory’s Encomium on Vasil (No. 9), a hymn to the archangel Michael (No. 10), a fragment from an early Bohairic text dealing with the archangel Raphael (No. 11), and two pieces which represent religion on a more vulgar level: one is an amulet (No. 12), the other a kind of almanac (No.13). Initially I studied the texts in this volume through photographs provided by a generous grant from the Research Board of the University of Illinois; later I was able to collate my transcripts autoptically with the originals in Ann Arbor.