23 1 Ra’ūf Habīb, Classical Mythology in Coptic Art (Cairo: Mahabba Bookshop, 1970), 2. Historically, Coptic manuscripts were printed upon a type of parchment paper derived from the skins of gazelles which was then cured until appropriate for the task of writing. It was not uncommon for old parchment papers to be erased and later re-appropriated by scribes, resulting in the loss of what is assumed to be a large amount of significant literary and historic texts. 2 Suzanne Lewis, “The Iconography of the Coptic Horseman in Byzantine Egypt,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt. (1973) 10: 27-63. Eastern Christian art was generally expected to adhere to a strict iconographic tradition wherein artistic adaptations to visual imagery were not generally approved. The horseman imagery present in this Agpeya fit in with this Eastern hagiographic tradition and may have been copied from pattern books. 3 Habib, Classical Mythology, 2. Bilingual liturgical texts originally appear in the Coptic tradition before the recorded Arab Conquest of 642 AD. 4 Dirgham Sbait, Interview by Professor Anne McClanan and author. Oral Interview. October 31, 2011. Transcript available at PSU Library Special Collections. 5 Sbait, Interview by Professor Anne McClanan and author. 6 El Shaheed Smiha Abd, El Nour Abd, “Copyists and the copying of Manuscripts in the Coptic Church,” Bulletin de la Société d’archéologie copte 44, (2005): 81-84. 7 Febe Armanios, Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 8-36. 8 Armanios, Coptic Christianity, 8. 9 Armanios, Coptic Christianity, 36. 10 Armanios, Coptic Christianity, 5.
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