Atkinson — On a South-Coptic Text of M. Bouriant. 235 



That is :— 



[a] he has made o, the copula verb, a verb of existence ; 



{I) he has ignored its following connexive of the predication ; 



or, he has transformed ho into an adj. ; 

 (c) he has made ho, 'face', a noun that can take a suffix pronoun ; 



{d) and he has made a suff. pron. 2 sg. masc. out of the appended 

 (ho)-t. (!) 



n-ho-tj en face de ioi. [! !] 



19. And it needs no great familiarity with the Coptic language 

 to see that his text and his translation are alike, wrong, at [227, 13] : 



nekbasauos tes supplices, 



nai etjei- nhwo frop aigus 



enkot pour etre supportes 



Snacolte par mes reins. 



Certainly no form of grammatical analysis will supply that meaning; 

 and no dictionary will lend any aid to it, either ! There is nothing 

 about '■ supporting \ and nothing about '■loins''; absolutely nothing. 

 The words mean : " sharpened more than the lolieels of carts ", nhwo 

 e-n-kot nn-acolte. 



Perhaps I can make it clearer by an example, cf. Isai. xxviii. 27 

 (Maspero) auo pkot an ntacolte pe safkote hijm ptapn, ouSe 

 Tpo)(o<s a/xaf?js TrepLci^eL iirl to kv/xlvov. And if this is not sufficient, the 

 study of Isai. xli. 15 will probably remove all doubt : ws t Popovs 

 d/x.a^ijs . . . TT ptaT7]po€L8 els, ' saw-like wlo.eels\ 



He imagined the last word to be na-cloote ' my loins ' ! 



20. The following is a good example of the necessary confusion 

 which arises when the Editor of Coptic texts is not tolerably saturated 

 with Biblical knowledge. This Coptic language, in the form in 

 which it has come down to us, is so permeated with the Bible, that 

 it is foolish to attempt the publication of a Coptic text without 

 having acquired this requisite familiarity. At every turn we meet 

 phrases which can only be understood by their ' situs ' being remem- 

 bered. 



Thus, when it is told how the count summoned the young virgin 

 and asked her name, the answer she gave is utterly emptied of 

 meaning by the trivial version M. Bouriant has provided : elle lui Ait : 

 * Pourquoi demandes-tu mon nom ? Cela m^etonne\ But the words are 

 [232, 13], etbe w ksine nsa paran pai wspere pe, where the last 

 words most assuredly were not intended by the writer to be thinned 



