Alphabet Letters
Coptic Letters
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Origin Coptic is the last stage of the Egyptian language, not a separate tongue
Khi is the twenty third letter of the Coptic alphabet and carries the numeral value six hundred. In Greek it wrote an aspirated k, and Coptic uses it in that role and also as a shorthand for the sequence kappa plus hori, in the same pattern as theta and phi. Its most conspicuous appearance in Coptic is not as a sound at all but inside the contracted sacred names Coptic took over from Greek Christian book practice, where the name of Christ is written with its first and last letters under a stroke, so khi stands at the head of one of the commonest abbreviations on any Christian manuscript page in any language of the period. The letter is otherwise chiefly at home in Greek loanwords, since Egyptian had no aspirated k of its own that needed a dedicated letter.
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. Attributions
Associated SoundAspirated k; also used as a shorthand for the sequence kappa plus hori 1 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 NameCoptic kept the Greek letter names, reshaped by Egyptian speech 1Tradition: The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt Origin of the NameGreek chi, a Greek addition with no Phoenician ancestor 1Tradition: The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt Sense of the Nameaspirated k (a Greek addition to the Phoenician series) 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. 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-third of the thirty-two letters of the Coptic alphabet, carrying the numeral value six hundred 1 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 SourceOpens the contracted sacred name for Christ, a practice taken from Greek books 3Tradition: The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt Meaning in the Attesting SourceValue 600 in the Coptic numeral series 1Tradition: The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt Learn More
Khi: The Coptic Letter (Value 600), from Greek Chi
Khi is the twenty third letter of the Coptic alphabet and carries the numeral value six hundred. In Greek it wrote an aspirated k, and Coptic uses it in that role and also as a compression for the sequence kappa plus hori, following the same pattern as theta and phi. Egyptian had no aspirated k of its own that demanded a dedicated letter, so in independent use khi is chiefly at home in Greek loanwords and names. Its most conspicuous appearance in Coptic is not as a sound at all.
Coptic inherited from Greek Christian book practice the system of contracted sacred names, in which words such as God, Lord, Jesus, Christ and spirit are written as their first and last letters with a line drawn above, and the contraction for Christ begins with khi. That abbreviation is one of the most frequent things on any Christian manuscript page of the period, in Greek, Coptic, Latin, Syriac and Armenian alike, and it is one of the clearest pieces of evidence that early Christian book production was a single connected practice across languages. The letter also gave the monogram combining khi and rho that became a standard Christian sign in late antiquity, in Egypt as elsewhere. The monogram of khi and rho deserves a word of caution as well as of interest. It is a genuine and widespread late antique Christian sign, formed from the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ, and it appears in Egypt on the same range of objects as elsewhere in the Christian Mediterranean. What it is not is a Coptic invention, and its history belongs to the Greek Christian world Coptic was part of rather than to the Coptic script in particular.
Khi and the Contracted Sacred Names
The habit of writing certain sacred words in contracted form, first and last letters with a stroke above, appears in Greek Christian manuscripts from very early and spreads with the scriptures into every language Christianity was written in. Coptic took it over completely. The words treated this way are a short and stable list, the names and titles of God and Christ chiefly, and the contraction is not an abbreviation for the scribe convenience so much as a way of marking the word as holy, since it makes the sacred names look different from every other word on the page. Khi stands at the head of the contraction for Christ, which is among the commonest of them.
The practice raises a question for anyone reading Coptic that is worth stating plainly: the same overline mark does more than one job. It marks a contracted sacred name, it marks a letter used as a numeral, and in Coptic it also marks a consonant carrying a syllable without a vowel, which is a use Greek never had. A reader tells them apart by context and by which letters are underneath. This is the sort of thing that makes early manuscripts hard to read and makes reading them a trained skill, and it is also the sort of thing a modern printed edition silently resolves, which is one reason serious work still goes back to the page.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived From
Taken over chiefly for loanwords and for the contracted sacred names
Related To
Coptic Khi is the Greek chi, an aspirated k Coptic also uses as shorthand for kappa plus hori; both carry the numeral value 600.
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.
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