Coptic or
Coptic Egyptian (Bohairic:
met.rem.ən.khēmi, Sahidic:
mənt.rəm.ən.kēme, Greek:
Met Rem(e)nkhēmi) is the latest stage of the
Egyptian language, a northern
Afroasiatic language spoken in
Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written in the
Coptic alphabet – an adaptation of the
Greek script with some letters inherited from
Demotic – in the 1st century AD. The new writing system became the
Coptic script, an adapted Greek alphabet with the addition of six or seven signs from the
demotic script to represent Egyptian sounds the
Greek language did not have. Several distinct Coptic dialects are identified, the most prominent of which are
Sahidic, originating in parts of
Upper Egypt, and
Bohairic, originally from the western
Nile Delta in
Lower Egypt.