In a message dated 11/22/2004 1:11:02 PM Pacific Standard Time, peterkirk AT qaya.org writes:
Yes--my memory served me wrong. The Coptic alphabet certainly does have aGreek
"thita"--but I have never seen it used in *Egyptian* words--which is what I
should have said in the first place. It is reserved for the writing ofwords, which certainly proliferate in Coptic texts. ...Well, maybe. But "ethouab", the last word of Figure 9 and the 7th word of the Coptic text in Figure 12 of http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n2636.pdf, is not a Greek word. Do you recognise it as of Egyptian origin? In Figure 9 it is glossed as "saint" (in French, but the English meaning is also "saint" or "holy").
My Coptic grammar says thita can be an abbreviation for "t H"--such as "ethneete" for "t Heneete". "Heneete " is "monastary" and "t' is the feminine article "the". I can't tell you why the thita is present in "ethouab" because I am not sure of the meaning of the entire phrase. I don't read Coptic very well because the syntax is very different from ancient Egyptian. And the dialects vary, too. The only thing I recognize in the term is "wab" or "pure" in AE. Coptic is a specialization all by itself and few Egyptologists are well-versed in it. The Sahidic Coptic dictionary gives "pure" or "holy" as "ouaab"--but gives no term for "saint". So I can't tell you so quickly what "ethouab" is all about--but I'll have a further look.
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.