Our examination of Old Coptic texts has led us to focus on the sociology of their readers and/or writers, with the aim of defining the functions of this script and identifying not only the factors that contributed to its development, but also the palaeographic, textual and contextual characteristics that distinguish it from Coptic proper.
The profile of the writers and readers of Old Coptic texts, unlike that of the more motley users of pre-Old Coptic, is clear and homogeneous, pointing us towards the milieu of Egyptian temples or, with the later magical texts, circles connected with temples or traditional Egyptian religion. The function of the Old Copt in these texts is generally to help vocalize Egyptian, a function all the more important as the correct pronunciation of these formulas is essential for their performativity. In addition to the lack of vocalization specific to Egyptian script, the growing gap between the spoken language and the orthography of hieratic and demotic scripts was becoming increasingly acute. To this end, the priests developed a transliteration system based on the letters of the Greek alphabet, supplemented by signs noting sounds unknown to Greek and derived from Demotic. These signs are striking for their resemblance to those that would be definitively adopted by Coptic proper, and for the relative homogeneity of texts from regions as different as Fayoum, Oxyrhynchos and Thebes, despite a few formal differences. Since this system can already be seen in its entirety in theOld Coptic Horoscope from the very end of the 1st century, this means that it had already been canonized, so to speak, at this time, and distributed to temples throughout the country.
