"Because the climate of Egypt is especially favorable for the preservation of antiquities—desert conditions prevail south of Cairo, as one goes up the Nile Valley—an astonishing number of very early Coptic manuscripts have been discovered, dating from AD 300 onwards, and the number continues to grow.
"Coptic literature, which survives in a number of dialects, comprises both original works and translations from the Greek and was mostly intended for use in the non-Greek churches and monasteries of Egypt. It includes several translations of the Bible made from Greek starting about AD 300, which are a very early indirect attestation of the Greek text and a direct indication of an Egyptian (perhaps Alexandrian) understanding of what it meant: the Coptic versions are of great importance to modern scholars of Biblical textual criticism." ~COPTIC IN 20 LESSONS by Bentley Layton - Professor of Religious Studies and Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University.
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