Speaker Details

Dr Hind   Salah El-Din
Faculty of Archaeology - Cairo University

Presentation Abstract:

A New Light on Coptic Cryptography 

 Coptic Cryptography is considered to be one of the most important aspects of the Coptic script. It was especially used by the Coptic monks in order to hide their forms of annotations, inscriptions, as well their messages. Only about thirty examples of this type of writing have been recorded until now whom were scattered in the religious books, the walls and the doorposts of the churches and the monasteries , as well the cliffs of the Egyptian deserts. The Subject of this essay concerns with the publishment of two unique Coptic ostraca from the NMEC Museum and the Coptic Museum in Cairo. These ostraca bear a unique forms of the Coptic Cryptography. Their importance lies in that they will throw more light on the Coptic Cryptography systems of script as well the life of the monks in the Egyptian deserts during the Christian period.