A strange object

A cow’s rib is not a normal medium for writing. Yet, on this bone, someone wrote a text in Coptic. Coptic is the final stage of the Egyptian language, not written in hieroglyphs anymore, but in a slightly modified form of the Greek alphabet. Coptic exists in different varieties (‘dialects‘); here Sahidic is used, the most important variety of Coptic in southern Egypt (Upper Egypt).

Coptic as a literary language was used from about 300 AD onwards, predominantly by Egypt’s Christians. The text on the bone contains nothing pious, however. It is a text of magic, more specifically black magic…